A Bouyei (布依族) man pauses from his work hauling watermelons from the boats to the road above.

Finally, a picture that doesn't involve a rice paddy! This is right before we took a cool dip and did some rock jumping into this river down below.

We caught a glimpse of this beach at Dahua Corner (大花角) from on top of a hill on our ride and had to check it out and have a swim. It ended up being the perfect camping spot, too. Thanks to the Gorillapod for making shots of all three of us possible!

In a bike shop in Zhanjiang we ran into a Chinese guy with a ~$6,000 digital Leica camera. He took some shots of us and put them on my computer. That thing takes pretty nice pictures, but shooting in jpeg with a $6,000 camera seems like sacrilege to me! If anyone needs a Christmas present for me though...

We have ventured into the hills of Zhejiang, which are truly the most beautiful place we have discovered thus far. The area we are traveling through, within and surrounding the country of Anji (安吉), is known for its bamboo and white tea, and as we expected, the mountains are providing us with a picturesque and serene respite from the chaos of development in the valley. We were surrounded today by a sea of bamboo, undulating like waves up and down the green hills, broken only by the occasional tea farm etched into the side of the slope. This morning, we came across a crew of about five workers making bamboo brooms by the side of the road. They take bamboo branches of equal length and bind them together, then dry them over a fire, the smoke of which is reminiscent of incense burned at a Buddhist temple. After drying the bundles, each is put through a strange machine of whirring metal bars, which strips off the weakest of the bamboo leaves. Affix a handle, and you've got yourself a Chinese-style broom, which is quite unlike those of the West.

Recently, I personally have been a bit worried about our physical condition. Evan has done the most biking recently, with trips up and down the California coast and a few weeks spent in Taiwan. I have taken only a handful of long-ish rides over the past three months, while Alexis has never gone on a long bike ride before. In the three weeks we were in Beijing waiting for my visa and passports, we didn’t even get out on one decent ride. Our bikes are all fully loaded with gear and are extremely heavy. One of these days it’d be nice to come across a hotel or a family with a scale, so we could figure out how much we are each carrying. Nevertheless, once we got up to speed, we cruised along on the flat and well-paved road out of Beijing. Our goal for the day was only to get to Hebei province, which is where we told everyone we’d end up. Failing to make it out of Beijing would be far too embarrassing. Beijing is massive. Our total ride today was 70km to a town called Gu’an in Hebei province, but the town itself is only about four kilometers into Hebei.

After a late lunch near the China Watermelon Museum (strangely, I have been there once before, five years previously) in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, we pulled into Gu’an at around 4:30. Coming into Gu’an was like passing through a demolition zone. Actually, it wasn’t like passing through a demolition zone — it was a demolition zone. It seemed like everything for two or three kilometers on our way into the town was a massive pile of bricks and rubble. The Chinese government lists Gu’an as a “development zone,” and when they say something like that anywhere near a major city like Beijing or Shanghai, they mean it. After we made it through the rubble, we quickly found a cheap hotel to stay in. For the first two weeks while we get acclimated to what we’re doing, I imagine we will be staying in a number of hotels before we try out more camping and hopefully staying with people we meet. But the price is right — we’re each paying a little less than $1.50 to share a 3 person room…and we got to shower.

I spent a little time walking around town with my camera while Alexis and Evan showered. I am always amazed at how quickly Chinese people change from basically ignoring foreigners in Beijing or Shanghai (because we’re everywhere and nothing special anymore) to exclaiming “Look, a foreigner!” or yelling “HALLO!” from a passing car. When we finally get away from the urban centers on the east coast, maybe people will even start complimenting me on my Chinese again!

A Uighur boy sells fried pockets full of lamb in Kashgar's quickly vanishing old town.

I took this picture in Henan, a generally bare and dusty place that is one of China's poorer provinces. What is immediately surprising about this family is that it has three children, despite China's One Child Policy. In rural areas, I believe the policy permits you to have a second child if the first is a girl, but it looks like all three of these little hedgehogs are boys. It's possible they are from different families. What is not surprising is that they are being cared for by an older woman. The garden in my own apartment complex in Beijing is filled with little babies running around with crotchless pants, each with a middle-aged "ayi," or auntie, taking care of him or her. Here most of the ayis are hired and paid for their work. In the countryside, they are just an older member of the extended family who can care for the children while the parents labor away in the parched fields of Henan.