Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

Note: With Alexis having moved on to do his own thing, there’s now no one keeping a diary of daily events, in English, French or any other language. I’m going to attempt to pick up some of that task, but being as unreasonably wordy as I am and only having so many hours in the day, I’m going to have to limit it to some of my more memorable riding days. This is one such day.

We set out from Lancang late in the morning as has been our habit lately after two days of rest and a woefully low-budget celebration of Devi and my four years together. In the dreary city of Lancang we’re unable to find even a restaurant with four walls. Fortunately, my mom has sent over a bottle of Cuvaison 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon for my birthday, and after finding a couple wine glasses at the local supermarket, we manage to make a memorable evening out of it at a Sichuan restaurant down the street from our hotel.

We hear from numerous people that the road from Lancang to Lincang is torn up and under construction for the entire 267km. The willingness of the government here to inconvenience people on that sort of scale continues to amaze us. I just try to imagine heading onto the road from Harrisburg to Philadelphia back home and seeing a sign that says, “Construction next 100 miles.” But in China, there’s no sign, no detour markers, and the road is under construction for 165 miles. Having gone nearly insane a few weeks previously on a similar, 60km stretch of under-construction national road through the mountains a couple weeks previously, we decide to take a radical route through the mountains, even though the thought of the switchbacks on Google Maps make our stomachs curl.

The road starts out pleasantly enough as we move out of the rather miserable county seat of Lancang and past about a dozen fish farms selling tilapia fry (there are also shops in town selling expensive fishing gear for those who want to go dangle a line in one of the small ponds). We hit the first construction just as the sky begins to turn an ominous dark gray and the wind picks up worrying notch, and we seek shelter under a gas station that has been converted into a rebar-welding depot for the construction work. After 15 minutes or so there’s still no rain in sight, and we continue on our merry way.

It turns out the road is not nearly as bad as we imagine, as most of the construction of the new highway is being done high above on the mountain while we crank along on the old two-lane road far below. I start thinking, “If it’s going to be like this the whole way, we might as well just keep going and skip the crazy mountain route.” But not wanting to jinx things I keep my mouth shut. (more…)

By Evan

*For all our pictures of Hainan, click here.

So, fair readers, allow me to pick up from where I left off last.

Aerial view over the center of the jade province, by Evan

We had just experienced Xinglong, and all its various overseas Chinese bounties and made our way to Lingshui (陵水縣, click the link for coordinates), just in time to celebrate simultaneously the halfway point of our trip and coincidentally the point furthest south we will go for the year. It was at this point that we parted from the coastal Han-heavy portions of the island to make a trek through the mountains and go searching for the indigenous Hlai people, who occupy 55% of the island’s territory but comprise only 12% of the population.

Speaking of the Hlai, on the way into Lingshui, we had stopped in a little restaurant for rice noodles and tea, as was our custom on the island, and struck up a conversation with the lethargic owner of the shop. “Those minorities used to paint their faces and be very wild. Now they’re all sinicized. They’ve made progress! (他們少數民族以前都喜歡塗花臉，很亂！可現在漢化得差不多了，他們進步了!)” Immediately we were afraid he’d be right, and that the minorities would just be boring Han replicas, but I figured, what does he know anyway? I bet he never goes into the mountains!

Outside of just the minority culture, we had had enough of “modern China” on the fringes of the island, despite access to intermittently beautiful beaches to be enjoyed there. Lingshui itself boasted a tourism alley that called to mind the atrocities that will be committed upon local culture in the name of the brand new “international tourism island (國際旅游島)” policy. We were ready to enjoy the Hainan, a place the Chinese have nicknamed Qiong (瓊), or fine jade, due to its boundless verdancy, and about which the famous poet Su Dongpo (蘇東坡) wrote the following verses when he was banished to the then-fringe colony:

九死南荒吾不悔，玆遊奇絕冠平生

Though I may die nine (many) deaths in the southern wilderness, I shall not regret;
For in this moment I have reached the apex of my life of exquisite travels. (more…)

By Evan

Yesterday as we made a rough 90 km cold, rainy push from the charming — if dilapidated — old town of Chayang (茶陽鎮) south through some amply steep mountains, the last we ought to see for probably a month, something I’ve read recently popped into my head. For background, I believe I mentioned in a post some months ago the importance of geography to politics and culture after we had crossed the desolate wasteland of the North China Plain (華北平原，古稱中原). The great flatland surrounding the Yellow River, the “cradle of Chinese civilization (中華文化的搖籃),” has apparently always been extremely susceptible to sweeping political or cultural changes since the entire area is flat enough to allow for rapid horseback transit within its boundaries. As such, the language, ethnic makeup, and culture of the areas within the plain are largely identical. While that makes trade and communication vastly more expedient, it also allows for easy conquest by armies of whatever marauding warlord happens to be strong at the time and subsequent assimilation into whatever said warlord’s imperial imagination can conjure.

I can’t speak to what China looked like a hundred years ago, but I do know that the North Plain now has been the victim of several quite overwhelming imperial edicts (詔) over the previous decades, the Great Leap Forward and Scientific Development to name the two that come most to mind most quickly. Since there’s literally nowhere to hide from such movements on an open plain close to imperial power (China’s capitals have by and large been in the plain for the last two thousand plus years), the whole place is, as we found it, a dusty, polluted Mad Max-like dystopia (with Chinese characteristics, of course). It was thus with great relief that we arrived at the northern boundary of South China’s sprawling mountain ranges (take a look at this map) after our stay in Shanghai, even if it meant slower progress. (more…)