Portrait of an LBX

By Andy

2010/06/15 — 95 km

Getting out of a city blows. Photo by Andy

The day before we leave Kunming our friend Aaron flies in from Shanghai to spend a week biking with us on his 20” wheel, folding Dahon bike. A number of us own these things (including Evan and I), which are great for getting around in the city and occasionally folding up and taking on a short trip. Evan and I have both sworn off doing anymore long trips with them though. They’re just not quite meant for it.

We wake up in our 10-person dorm at The Hump hostel in Kunming and grab one more big breakfast of french toast, eggs and fresh coffee before heading out into the wild. We make another run by the bike shop in town to pick up some last minute things for Aaron, and then we’re off.

Despite its many charms (and we’ve decided we do quite like Kunming, especially after discovering the nifty restaurants and bars in the university district), getting out of the city is a soul-sucking experience just like getting out of any other. It starts out with just too much traffic and people, but soon we’re lost in the numerous overpasses and interchanges and wishing that for the love of all things good and holy couldn’t China just  put useful things on street signs, accurately? (more…)

By Andy

2010/05/25 — 42 km

Devi, you're looking particularly Yi (彝族) today, by Andy

I wake up to the sound of a pitter-patter on the overhang outside the hotel window and the swish of car wheels on wet pavement outside. It’s raining. Evan, Devi and I all meet up in the hotel lobby to do some post writing and picture uploading, hoping the rain will let up.

Rain brings down our pace and our moods. Until today, the rain in Yunnan has come only in the form of monsoons — quick bursts of intense rain that drench us if we get caught in them, but which we can easily wait out without affecting our schedule if we can find shelter. It’s been a far cry from the weeks of steady, depressing downpours we were subjected to in the winter in Fujian province. To go back to the statistics spreadsheet that I’ve mentioned before, the rain in Fujian caused us to average a mere 33 km per day during our roughly one month in the province. In Yunnan, we’ve averaged 52 km per day over nearly a month and a half — and the mountains in Yunnan are much taller! Thinking about it makes the weather today seem all the more gloomy.

But it’s no longer winter, and Yunnan is warm. So when the steady rain turns to a drizzle, we pack up our gear and head out to breakfast. After a meal of noodles at one of two Muslim restaurants in town (which also serves at the only mosque in town), we make our way up to the town’s Buddhist temple where Evan has discovered a study session of monks from six counties is being held.

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat, by Andy

Unfortunately, after our late start, we arrive just as the monks are breaking for lunch, but as luck would have it, they invite us to join them for lunch. We’re immediately surprised by the lack of discipline in the monks — when we arrive at the monastery, a group of them is standing outside the entrance smoking, and the majority of the dishes at lunch have meat in them. The meat is explained to us as a difference between the local Dai (傣族) style of Buddhism versus the Han (漢族) style, but the smokers outside are just being bad monks. From what we’ve witnessed on this trip, it seems that China has managed to water down the conventions of all its recognized religions — Muslim women don’t wear headscarves, Buddhist monks can get away with smoking, the bond between Catholics and the Pope is basically non-existent, etc. In China, it’s Religion Lite. (more…)

By Andy

2010/05/21 — 47 km

Having arrived so late in Fubang the night before, we opt for a “natural wake-up” (自然醒) rather than the usual alarm. It’s the best night of sleep I’ve had in a week. We frequently wonder why we don’t get better sleep considering the physical trials we put ourselves through daily. The night before took it out of me physically, but I think the mental exertion involved in the snails-pace climb up 15 kilometers of cobblestone road alone in the dark jungle was what finally brought me to the point of true exhaustion and thus a good night’s sleep.

We walk down the street to what looks like the only restaurant in town for a breakfast of noodles, which Devi is already tiring of. Since Henan, baozi and jiaozi have been scarce, and breakfast has been noodles just about every day.

After breakfast, we leave behind the concrete road in Fubang for the cobblestones again. To my surprise, the mountain keeps going up! As if 15 km of climbing wasn’t enough! A kilometer later we reach our turnoff, just as the sky once again starts to look like it wants to pick a fight with us.

Waiting out one last bit of rain after lunch, by Andy

Our new road is cobblestone as well, when it’s not mud, and it quickly dashes my hopes and dreams of an easy descent for the first half of our ride. It also seems to fork into two directions every few kilometers, and we keep having to stop and wait for another passerby on a moped to make sure we stay on the right route. China doesn’t bother making signs for most things, probably because the roads are traveled almost exclusively by locals who have no use for signs. (more…)

On our way through the beautiful, mist-covered mountains of Fujian today we passed this man herding his goats, which he explained were a local Fujian breed. Smaller than usual (and tastier), he said he can sell a two-year-old for 800 yuan ($117). In 2008 I went with a group of friends for a weekend trip to some grasslands north of Beijing where we bought a goat kid from a local family for 600 yuan ($88). Considering that we were almost certainly getting the “foreigner price,” 800 yuan does seem like a very good price. But on the other hand, it takes a two-year investment for the goat herder to make it.

You should be able to see Alexis making his way through on the opposite side. Strangely enough, he blends in a little too well. Is it a coincidence that lamb is his favorite meat?

By Andy

I have a sense of relief about being back on the road, as if during a drunken slumber in Shanghai the road itself seeped into my blood and my bike somehow became another limb. Already, our two weeks of relative luxury in Shanghai’s French Concession area seem like a distant memory, though today we have ventured only a relatively short 76km from where we awoke and said goodbye to our hosts.

The road feels familiar, like climbing back into bed with a lover after a prolonged period apart. As a result of yesterday’s cleaning and maintenance, my bike glides across the pavement, each push on a pedal propelling me away from the big city and toward the hinterland where we belong.  The memory of our final push into Shanghai, gears and chains grinding, clogged with the dust and grit of the North China Plain, makes me cringe.

I have never biked out of an American city before, but the experience of biking out of a Chinese city is nearly always the same. Tall, somewhat closely packed skyscrapers give way to endless expanses of high-rise apartments that become shabbier and more insalubrious as we move way from “civilization.” Eventually, the apartment complexes are replaced by ramshackle luxury villas, constructed, exactly like their high-rise counterparts, of substandard concrete and steel, but located basically in the middle of nowhere with no convenient public transportation options to speak of. Porsche SUVs sit in identical driveways, looking shiny and new next to identical houses with grimy, peeling paint. Then the middle of nowhere itself arrives. The occasional, half-complete high-rise complex still protrudes from the dark soil, likely the result of a land grab and sale by unscrupulous local officials looking to supplement scarce tax revenue out in the boonies. Farmers, whose houses may once have sat where the apartments are now rising, tend to patches of vegetables still planted in the shadow of the new high-rises. Occasionally, a patch of putrid air from a factory no longer permitted to operate within the city limits hits me full on. I turn my head, suck in a deep breath, and hold it until the factory is gone.

Finally, we are out. (more…)