Glorious landscapes of... Hebei! by Evan

Just two days ago when I woke up at 11:00am in my top bunk sleeper train berth, we were rushing past tranquil scenes of rolling green hills and high rice paddies. In fifteen short hours of much-needed repose coiled up in less space than corpses get in coffins, I had been passively sped back to the enchanting South and its rice, a sight that previously required two months of hard cycling across the Mad Max landscapes of the North China Plain. More than any moment in Beijing during the few days prior, it was those paddies that made me violently awaken to the fact that the all-consuming trip of my lifetime (up to this point), the one where the scenery changed gradually and pedal by pedal, is now over. As I now recall the last week up to the finale, all the events have taken on blurred edges as if part of a dream.

Without further ado, I should relate some of the details of that last week. To our dismay, the forecast called for up to six days of rain across all of central Inner Mongolia, and for once did not deceive us. The first bit out of Hohhot had us push up the longest, hardest hill we’d face for the rest of the week through a steady rain. The driving rain and gusty wind on the downhill robbed my body of all its heat and forced us to take shelter and change clothes in the first crappy restaurant of the town after the descent. I had gotten so chilled that Andy could in no way convince me to finish the day — it was still raining — to our goal, especially since the patron had cheap rooms to let. Then said patron did himself the disservice of attempting to double the cost of our fare on account of our having “cleaned up in the bathroom,” and so anger propelled me the last miserable 20 km.

Tea in Inner Mongolia? by Evan

The next morning we started the day to one of the greatest surprises of the whole trip: ganja plants growing in abundance all around the shores of Lake Daihai (岱海湖). Yes, cannabis, and full grown! It was the kind of thing you’d never ever see in a country where the inhabitants are acquainted with the medicinal effects of the plant bearing those beautiful five leaves, and if you did, well, you wouldn’t see it for long.

It took us until just before Shanxi to realize that it wasn’t growing on accident. A farmer in a small town just north of the Great Wall had several of the plants growing as high as myself, clearly well tended. He explained that they are planted specifically for their seeds, which they roast and eat like sunflower seeds, but that it had never occurred to anybody to smoke the things — oh how innocent these folk are!

See what I mean about Hobbits? by Evan

The first weed day of Inner Mongolia unfortunately ended in a second afternoon of cold rain. We ducked the worst of it with some migrant workers in the office of a tree farm, but I ended up that night going to sleep early due to yet another sore throat. It wasn’t until the next day that we were to be pleasantly surprised again, this time in one of the places we’d least expected.

We had inadvertently saved the best part of Inner Mongolia for last, as the valleys leading up to the northeastern corner of Shanxi were truly exquisite! Huge mountains hemmed in waving seas of sunflowers, corn, buckwheat, and several other grain crops. The villages and towns had by and large been spared the disfiguration of scientific development. The houses were mostly earthen, long and narrow with wide round windows and doors, all latticed with intricate woodwork. In their tight, courtyarded clusters, they more closely resembled Hobbiton than the dreary northern villages that tarnished my memories of the north. The ubiquitous donkeys — the beast of burden in those parts — both near the dwellings and on the fields, lightened the mood with their silly looks — Andy thinks they look like awkward teenagers — and drawn out eeee aaawwwwwws.

The Great Wall of Shanxi behind rows of ripe grain, by Evan

In the middle of these valleys, dividing Inner Mongolia and Shanxi (a quite appropriate border), stretched out remnants of the entirely unrestored Great Wall. The wall itself was mostly an elongated mound of grassy earth punctuated regularly by guard towers, which in their varying stages of erosion look like overgrown sandcastles. I’m more accustomed to the reconstructed stone wall that soars across impossible mountain ridges north of Beijing, so this demure wall gliding peacefully through fields of ripe grain gave me new perspective. Seeing it then so far from Beijing also reminded me what an insane project it was in the first place, and at the same time conjured images of what deep significance the imposing border line must have held for both the northern tribes and the Han — for centuries! I’m just sure the first Qin emperor (秦始皇), who dreamt up the epic project — the cost in human labor and life of which eventually caused his weaker son to lose the empire — could never have imagined that Han farmers would replace barbarian pastoralists for hundreds of kilometers north of his wall. Or maybe that’s what he was hoping for all along?

Tower of Terror, by Evan

Either way, I couldn’t resist the urge to take a closer look. Departing from Andy, Dave, and Ellen, I walked nearly two kilometers from the road to explore one of the more intact looking towers. The specific feature of that particular tower that attracted me was its large doorway, still intact. I scrambled up the wall and crawled through the short passageway until I reached a vertical tunnel of about 25 feet leading to the top of the tower. Almost without thinking, I started climbing up with the help of the footholds until I was about 5 feet from the top, where the passage suddenly widened, and the footholds disappeared. I suddenly realized that I wouldn’t be able to reach the top. Then I made a critical mistake, which was to look down. I saw 20 feet of air, but I couldn’t see the footholds anymore. At this point, alone, several kilometers away from any dwellings (I hadn’t seen a soul the whole walk out to the tower), that I imagined myself lying at the bottom of a guard tower with two broken legs and no way to summon help. That led to a horrible panic attack that took about ten minutes to snap out of. Finally I forced myself to descend, painstakingly feeling around for each hidden foothold, until I reached the bottom, a good fifteen minutes after I had left it. For most people, that would have been enough, but for me, the great fear-overcomer, I felt compelled to make myself finish the job. So like an idiot, I climbed right back up to the exact same spot, again realized that I still couldn’t get onto the roof, and again panicked, but this time with about half the intensity. After a second terribly slow descent, I crawled out and jitteringly crossed the crops back to my bike. I caught up with Andy et al in a restaurant in the first town of Shanxi, aptly named Changcheng (長城, “Great Wall”).

A nice spot to camp in Shanxi, by Evan

Now Shanxi, the home of Linfen (臨汾), the most polluted city in the world for the last godawful amount of years running, has always represented to me a place I’m sure Dante was envisioning when describing one of the middle-lower circles of hell. This prejudice was forged on my first visit to the province, to Datong (大同市), the horrors of which the nearby hanging monastery and Buddhistically significant Wutai Mountain (五台山) could not compensate for. So it was yet another fine surprise to find that northeastern Shanxi, up in the mountains, is really quite a charming place (although I wouldn’t wouldn’t wish for anybody but BP top management to traverse it north to south. Since it was Ellen’s birthday on our sole night in the province, when we camped next to acres of corn under a shadowy ridge, we had a chance to make another discovery. Fenjiu, (汾酒), the signature alcohol of the province and the last of the major baijiu’s we had yet to sample, is probably the most tolerable of all baijiu, bordering on the “I might buy this in the US if it were sold for the same price/volume as Colt 45” range, hitherto uncharted territory for baijiu. Its xiangxing (香型, “flavor category”) of nongxiang (濃香, “dense flavor”), is also probably also Andy’s and my favorite — over the jiangxiang (醬香, “sauce flavor”) of Maotai and qingxiang (清香, “delicate flavor”) of Wuliangye — but at the end of the day, trying to taste test for the “best baijiu” is a task akin to smelling around for the “least noxious of barnyard turds.”

A Bad-ass way to get around, by Evan

Early the next morning we crossed back into Hebei, a border we had been dreading for months. One of our stupid recurring jokes throughout the trip was to point out anyplace remotely pleasing to the eyes and say, “well, it’s OK, but it’s no Hebei!” So deep was our disdain for the south of the province we entered on the first day of our trip that we were overjoyed to reach Shandong, as you can see in the first post from that province. Our return to our most loathed province, however, proved once again that there are sometimes glints of gold even in the nastiest refuse heaps. The mountain villages were even more picturesque continuations of the hobbit theme from Inner Mongolia and Shanxi. Seeing their completely undeveloped nature and the slow, easy pace of the locals milling about in their donkey carts, Northern China finally vindicated itself in my eyes. Of literary importance, I finally could imagine a Hebei worthy of being the birthplace of Liu Bei (劉備) and Zhang Fei (張飛)! [Non-China geeks, please excuse this final Three Kingdoms reference]

And more surprises were yet to come. On our first day back in Hebei, along with the usual three wheeled blue putt-putt trucks overloaded with corn and donkey carts, we caught sight of… a gorgeous old European classic car, driven by gringos no less! My first thought was that it must be a mirage, but then came another, on which this time I spotted a red tag claiming “Peking to Paris.” Then there were more and more until we finally hit a little gas station that was full of laowai-piloted restorations. An old Brit standing next to the “organization” van explained that the eleven-nation rally had first been run in 1907, and that it had been reorganized in 2007, this being the 3rd annual of its current incarnation. The eccentric collectors, who he claimed had “more money than brains,” shelled out 35,000 British pounds per car and would be passing through Pakistan and Iran on their way to gay Paris. And they say we’re nuts!

Peking to Paris does Hebei, by Evan

The world, however, usually finds a way to balance good and bad fortune, and on that day with the scenery and the classic car rally also came Hebei’s revenge in the form of an involuntary 48 hour colon cleanse-a-thon, breaking my previous 48 hour record (I can only assume the protector gods of that miserable province had heard our remarks all year). So well short of the distance goal on that day, we stopped to camp on a freshly harvested patch of field next to endless rows of sunflowers taller than myself by a full head. It was a beautiful place to stop.

The following day, which we had slated as the final rest day of the trip, ended up being far less restful than we would have hoped. First off, there was a pesky patch of tiny gray lines on my map (country roads, usually indicative of good visuals) that on the google earth view  (have I mentioned how indispensable this program was to our trip?) crooked wildly up and down like a purple EKG printout through the hills. It was on these EKG roads, as easily predicted, that we experienced the crowning moment of our last week and near full redemption for Hebei: the most quaint villages and easy going LBXes we’ve ever seen anywhere north of the Yangtze. As always, they’ve got the mountains to thank for the inaccessibility to scientific development. One interesting point to note was that during this last leg of serene surroundings, we passed dozens of river beds, but not a trickle of water in any but one. In fact probably 95% of all rivers we’d seen since Gansu have been bone dry, presumably all of them suffering from desertification or completely tapped for irrigation or industry. It’d be nice to get an explanation on this phenomenon from somebody in the know.

Hebei redemption, by Evan

Anyhow, at the end of that blissful country road, two things happened to alert us that we were reentering the northern China that we remembered so well. First, the terrain opened up and got largely dry and barren, more or less all of a sudden. Then, right as we were about to hit our rest-ination in the early afternoon — with still enough time to throw up pictures and a post — Hebei reminded us with gusto that it was a mistake to even momentarily reconsider our negative preconceptions.

All along we had planned to end the day early in the county of Zhuolu (涿鹿縣). A few kilometers before the valley road emptied into that city, a man holding a camera standing next to a pink Suzuki two-door hatchback tried to wave us down — the Chinese wave of a straight arm with the wrist flapping up and down that women use to hail cabs in Shanghai. Since he was in regular LBX attire, we thought little of him and just sped by, since LBXes try the old “if we just stand in the middle of the road and wave like our life is in peril, the laowai will have to talk to us” trick all the time. They soon passed us and pulled over again, but this time the same man held out to Andy what looked like a badge, though he was holding it upside down.

“Passpoahts!” he demanded, at which Andy, livid, immediately assumed the role of “bad cop.” My preferred role taken, I had no choice but to be as cordial as possible to make the stupid situation pass. The passpoahts were rounded up and handed over to his female colleague, also in plain clothes and at the helm of the pink mini car. She looked at only mine, with a bewildered look on her face, and then handed the lot back to me — can’t beat Chinese cops for thoroughness, especially when defending the public from the unparalleled evils of four Americans on bikes! The man then launched into a barrage of hilarious questions, as follows:

Cop:    What are you doing? (你們在幹嗎?)
Me:    [looking down at the bike between my legs] Uhh, riding bikes! (啊… 騎自行車呀!)
Cop:    Where did you come from? (從哪裡過來?)
Me:    Hohhot. (呼和浩特)
Cop:    Where are you going? (現在去哪裡呢?)
Me:    Beijing. (北京)
Cop:    What’s your next stop? (下一站是哪裡?)
Me:    Zhuolu. (涿鹿)
Cop:    And then where? (然後去哪裡?)
Me:    Beijing! (北京!)
Cop:    But what’s the stop after this one? (可是下一站是哪裡?)
Me:    Zhuolu, and then Beijing! (涿鹿然後北京!)
Cop:    But what route are you taking, and where do you plan to stop? (你們要走怎麼個路線？要在哪裡過夜?)
Me:    We don’t know! We’re going to ask directions as we go! (還不知道！我們邊走邊問路!)
Andy:    Do you want us to show you every single village between here and Beijing on a map? (你需要我們在地圖上給你看這裡與北京之間每一個小村落嗎?)
Cop:    Ok ok, so where are you going now? (好的好的，那你們現在去哪裡?)
Me:    Are you joking!? Zhuolu, then Beijing! (開玩笑嗎？先去涿鹿然後去北京!)
Cop:    Are you staying in Zhuolu? (你們今天在涿鹿住嗎?)
Me:     We don’t know! (還不知道!)

Hebei country roads, by Evan

Finally he seemed to give up and got back into the driver’s seat of the Suzuki, which didn’t immediately take off. Laughing to ourselves, we rolled toward the highway. At the intersection, we stopped a second to check Andy’s iPhone for directions (I lost the Hebei map a long time ago). The pink Suzuki then pulled alongside us, and the male cop rolled down the driver’s side window to ask, as though our previous conversation had never happened, “Where are you going? (你們去哪裡?)” I bit my tongue and answered “I already told you, Zhuolu. (跟你說過，涿鹿)” “Do you need us to tell you how to get there? (需要我們給你指路嗎?)” he finally seemed to make himself useful. I said we’d figure it out, and, due to the cars building up behind them at the intersection, they were forced to cross the highway and park on the side of the road ahead of us. It was at this point that I noticed the back window of the Suzuki was filled with stuffed toy animals. Never forget, in China, face is all important! Thankfully, the iPhone indicated we wanted to go the opposite direction from them, and so we took off toward our much needed lunch. Not two minutes down the road, I turned my head and discovered that an oddly familiar pink Suzuki was trailing us very slowly about a half a kilometer behind. I can only assume they had seen this ridiculous maneuver in an old cop movie and didn’t realize that it’s hard to be discreet when following bikes at 15 km an hour on a highway. When, after our turn onto the main boulevard of the city, I noticed that they were indeed still following us, I had had enough. I made a sharp U-turn and rode straight up to their car, waving that silly Chinese limp-wristed wave that the man had used to pull us over in the first place.

Me:    What’s the problem here? (到底有什麼事兒?)
Cop:    Where are you going? (你們要去哪裡?)
Me:    [about to explode, but containing it] BEIJING!!!! (北京!!!!)
Cop:    But this is Zhuolu (可是這裡是涿鹿)
Me:    I know it is. We’re going to eat here. (知道。我們要在這裡吃飯)
Cop:    [blinking compulsively and starting to stammer] So you’re going to stay here for the night? (那你們今天晚上就在這裡住?)
Me:    I don’t know yet! You’re looking awfully anxious about all this, buddy! (還不知道！老兄，你看起來很急!)
Cop:    [still stammering] I’m not anxious! (不急不急!)
Me:    Also, buddy, do you need to follow us? (還有，老兄，你們有必要跟蹤我們嗎?)
Cop:    [he reflected with his eyes to the ground for a moment] Why wouldn’t we need to follow you? (怎麼沒有必要跟蹤你們?)
Me:    [realizing I was talking to a wall] Ok, do whatever you want, I’m going to eat now. (好吧，隨便你們，我現在去吃飯。)
Cop:    Ok. (好的)

I rolled to the next intersection to the rest of the gang. The pink stuffed animal wagon passed a minute later, the male cop looking straight ahead seemingly to avoid eye contact with us. Thoughts of requiring a cop escort for the rest of our route into Beijing haunted me throughout lunch. After the meal, we set out to find a hotel, since after all, it was our last, and much needed day of rest (I was still on auto colon filtration mode too). However, the city, overfull of cop cars and uniformed teenagers — always an omen of heightened vigilance on the part of the local brass — seemed bent on ruining our ambitions. We were turned away from three different establishments — since none had a license to entertain foreign guests — before we resigned ourselves to seeking lodging at the 30+story mega-tower complex of the Zhonghua Grand Hotel (中華大酒店), the tallest building in town. The staff were all vapid looking 20+ year olds in clean white shirts. The conversation went as expected:

Me:     Are you the only hotel in town that can accept foreign guests? (你們是全縣城唯一能接待外賓的賓館嗎?)
Kid:    Yes. (是的)
Me:    How much for a double room? (雙人間多少錢?)
Kid:    After discounts, 246 RMB, down from 400. (打完折246塊，本來是400塊)
Me:    Sweet Jesus! Go cheaper! (哎呀！給便宜點好吧!)
Kid:    I’m sorry, but that’s as low as it gets. You’ll note that it was 400! (不好意思先生，這是最低價。你看，本來是400塊呢!) [this is my absolute favorite of all Chinese sales tactics, one as prevalent in grand hotels as it is in trinket markets -- tell you a stupid price, and then add that by sheer luck you’ve avoided the truly absurd price, since you’re so special]
Me:    Can we put four people in one room? (可以四個人一間房嗎?)
Kid:    Sorry, no can do. (不好意思，不可以）

We had a little powwow, the decision of which was that we’d just pay the damn thing since we wanted rest and time to update the site. I then grabbed the bike from outside and pushed it into the lobby, at which point three of the blank-faced youths shouted at me simultaneously. I told them we wanted to put the bikes in the room, as we always do, but the kid from the counter came over to tell me that there was mysteriously a rule against bikes being in the rooms, but he could generously offer the use of the garage for storage purposes. I refused categorically, since we couldn’t watch over them, but as always, we were assured that nothing could possibly happen to them down there, where they’d be constantly supervised, wink wink! Eventually somebody mentioned that we could lock them in the luggage room, at which point we finally acquiesced. A zit-faced teenage guard then proceeded to lead us away from the front door and around the side of the complex, where, presumably, we were going to enter from the rear, so as not to offend any of the esteemed guests with the unseemly sight of our bicycles. He walked us right up to the edge of the garage ramp, where he finally informed us that the manager had not agreed to let us put the bikes in the luggage room, but that we could still put them in the garage.

At this last insult, a paroxysm of anger seized Andy and me simultaneously, and after spitting on the ground and some choice verbiage, we decided on the spot to ride the 30 km to the next county, rest day and this godforsaken city be damned! Amazingly enough, our two stupidest days with police and officialldom both occurred in Hebei, the first two days into the trip, and the second two days before its close. We rode the next 30 km of trucks, coal, and dust down National Highway 110 up to dusk, finally settling down around 7pm. It was one hell of a last rest day.

The next morning saw us roll down good old 110 through the armpits of Beijing’s external radius of industry, but sadly we came too late to experience the 100+ km coal truck jam of recent notoriety. It might have slowed us down, sure, but how often do you get a chance to be part of poor planning of historically hilarious scope?

Crossing the Great Wall a second time at Badaling, by Evan

By midday we had regained the good old municipality of Beijing. A turn off of the highway had us cruising through terrain still respectably bucolic considering it belonged to the great capital of the motherland (祖國偉大首都 — this is how conductors actually refer to Beijing in train announcements). We made the last supply re-up of the trip and then tackled the last mountain, right up to Badaling. The awesome restored wall shooting across lofty ridges, a new extension of the Beijing light rail, and lastly, the presence of gringos en masse signaled the end of our being in places seldom observed through round eyes.

It’s always been funny for me on the trip whenever we’d run across foreign travelers, usually only in big cities and tourist destinations, to compare ourselves with them. For most outsiders, and hell for most Chinese too, China isn’t a continuous mass inside its borders, but is a collection of accessible points on a tourism trail. “Oh yeah, I went to China! I saw the wall, the terra cotta warriors, and Shanghai!” Thinking back on it now, I am most grateful to know that China exists in real 3D between the various easily traversed points on the graph. More than that, I’m proud to say that it’s very unlikely that most people will ever have heard of the best places in this country, since it’s only the undeveloped places that have any value to them!

God Willing, this will be the last time we ever taste nescafe and noodles in the morning again! by Evan

Anyway, on that last night, we summited Badaling and camped in a dense wood just a stone’s throw from the wall. I had no idea you could find such nature just a Mongol invasion’s distance from the capital! We savored our last night of camping over trail mix and one last bottle of baijiu (I know, we have problems).

The next morning we broke camp lazily and late and after our last hit of Nestle instant coffee (seriously, we have a lot of problems) careened into the gray skied abyss of Mordor, down to an elevation of 100 meters, our lowest since Hainan 6 months earlier. We crossed the sixth ring (40 km from city center, because that’s just how much you want to sprawl!), fifth, fourth, third, second, and finally we were back in front of Tian’anmen scrambling to take the requisite photos while a fat cop screamed, “no stay! no stay!”

That's a wrap! by Evan

Exhausted and filthy, we arrived that afternoon, the 13th, at Cathy Li’s apartment, the same place from which we departed 355 days earlier. After showers and a snack we dragged ourselves (we hadn’t rested in 7 straight days from Hohhot) to Beer Mania, as you might have known from the announcement on the site, and thanks to the hospitality of many, including gracious proprietor Thierry, beered ourselves to maniacal levels. I woke up the following morning at noon on the couch of my friend Drew’s apartment, and despite a splitting headache (apparently even high quality alcohol does this when over-enjoyed), the first thing to hit my mind was: “how long do I have to feel better before we have to make today’s distance goal?” It was days before I could wake up late with a clear conscience. Only upon deconstructing and packing my bike into a box handed over to a shipping company did I realize it was finally all over, the same way seeing a coffin lowered into the earth symbolizes a final separation.

Since people seem interested in gushy stuff, I’ll add a little of that too before wrapping up. I was all mixed up emotionally, both from the end of the trip and the sudden reentry into mundanity. I like telling people that finishing was like breaking off a lusty, tumultuous relationship. It’s a relief to be able to move onto other projects, projects I’ve had countless hours on a bike over the span of a year to turn over and over in my head. It’s also a relief for my butt, which I’m fairly sure will be permanently marked with a giant red spot in the middle of each cheek. At the same time, sedentary life is horrifying. The prospect of returning to the numbing routine of working M-F at an uninteresting job, the fate of most of my remaining Beijing friends, makes my stomach churn and keeps me up at night. Thankfully, one of my greatest resolutions of the trip has been to never turn myself over to that lifestyle again, as I’d prefer poverty of the wallet to dissolution of my dreams.

So that’s where I am for the moment, all mixed up inside and despite being done with the bike trip, still not perched anywhere for long. I’ll need to quietly reflect for the next few days in the outlying islands of Hong Kong and probably a long time afterward in Shanghai on all the deeper implications of the past year. Then hopefully I can summarize a few of the major themes and satisfactorily verbalize them here. That is to say that there will be — at least — one more post coming, but I’m not sure when.

Best wishes to all from Wan Chai,
Evan

A beautiful day on the grundle busters of Bayan Nur. This picture was taken just as we realized that our path, which a farmer had told us to take "all the way" to the next village, had suddenly ended. By Evan

I’d like to quickly jot down some thoughts here about our time in Inner Mongolia as I lay in the top bunk of a Mongolian guesthouse in Hohhot. First, and as always, I don’t know why I even bother forming expectations anymore, since they invariably turn out to be wrong. We chose our current route through the “autonomous region” with a few such expectations in mind: 1) we’d be able to avoid most of the terrible industry that blighted our last trip across northern China, 2) we’d spend time with a lot of Mongolians and experience one last cool culture on the way out, and 3) by virtue of 1 and 2, we’d be able to keep up the spirit of the trip and finish out our year on the highest possible note. We were especially anxious for the above after our time in Ningxia, which was a total washout. The place was scarcely more Hui Muslim than large parts of Gansu; it was more a bastion of scientific development, with its vast industrial parks along the Yellow River alternatingly spewing odors of lighter fluid and ammonia.

So you see, we had big expectations for the grasslands of Bayan Nur, a destination we chose specifically for chances to mingle with Mongolians (since it’s just south of Mongolia). The corridor leading from Yinchuan to Bayan Nur, however, was a bleak desert traversed by innumerable coal trucks. Our only consolation for this period was the company of our friend Pete, the company of the whisky Pete brought us, and camping every night in a new place (this may be the single thing I miss the most about the trip after it’s over). Our little whisky sipping sessions were abruptly ended at the fall of dusk nightly, as swarms of mosquitoes in amounts I had never imagined in my worst nightmares (made New Orleans summer nights look like child’s play) simultaneously began their sanguine assault

Finally we did break into the big green patch of Bayan Nur that we had spied on Google Earth, but again my expectations were to be dashed. A simple internet search or query of someone in the know would have revealed that the area has been majority Han for over a hundred years, and what might have been a scene similar to what we found on the Tibetan plateau in the time of Marco Polo is now effectively an exclave of the North China Plain. Thankfully, above National Highway 110, the area exemplified the best characteristics of North China: quaint, tightly clustered villages of earthen buildings and vast fields of grain and sunflowers cut by hundreds of winding dirt “grundle buster” trails from which, had we not asked directions every ten minutes, we might never have escaped.

Dave riding through one of the quaint old villages of Bayan Nur, by Evan

I’d like to make a cultural note here about the Chinese and their concept of directions. We Westerners appreciate precise instructions on which roads will take us from our present location to our destination, i.e. take this road, turn left at the first fork, continue until you get to a point where this road disappears momentarily, cross the bridge, reverse 180 degrees through a cornfield, turn right on the first road there, and go straight down the canal until you get there. In that same situation, a Chinese farmer is likely to wave his arm in the general direction of the destination (as the crow flies) and tell you, “take this road in this direction.” You can try and try to pry loose some other clues about what exact course to take, but 95% of the time, they will be unable to give instructions clearer than “just go that way!” repeated over and over. This is by no means an isolated event, as Chinese all over the country, other than truck drivers and cabbies, seem absolutely unable to express directions to a place they’ve been to a thousand times. My theory is that most of them have either never traveled too far from home or have never had to give road instructions to strangers before. It’s comparable to somebody who has never received a formal education trying o explain why the grammar of his language works the way it does. Usually the answer is simply, “because it sounds right.” Anyway, despite the directional impairments, it was a fun, bumpy day.

Nevertheless, along our entire trek through Inner Mongolia, we never once came upon a non-Han settlement, which was a huge disappointment. Again, if I had done any research at all, I would have known that the Han were resettled into these areas as early as the Qing Dynasty, and that most of the Mongolians, who make up less than 20% of the population of their “autonomous region,” live up in the northeast. This was doubly bad, since my patience for the Han has of late worn all the way through. As I said in my “personal reflections” post a while back, one of the worst parts of traveling through China as an OG (obvious gringo) is that everybody cheers and jeers at you as though you were a trained monkey. Many will talk about us openly right in front of us as they crowd around, and upon learning that we speak Chinese, many will mimic our words between peals of laughter, i.e. “oh ho, isn’t it cute, they’ve taught it to speak a few words! (several people have said things very very close to this)” Now when this happened before, we were either bright eyed/bushy tailed enough to power through it, or something alluring about their habitat or occupation compelled us to ask questions and get beneath the surface. Lately, however, the squalid conditions of most towns we pass and our general fatigue of dealing with LBX annoyance has just been overwhelming. Whenever possible, I pretend not to speak Chinese just to avoid having the same goddamn conversation with the same goddamn people every single day. The goal of our trip has been to commune with LBXes and learn their stories, but lately we’ve mostly been far too burned out to care.

The passage through Inner Mongolia did become brighter a few days ago when we finally entered the mountains west of Hohhot, where once again, geography has the upper hand on scientific development. The days were glorious, riding through rolling hills of grain and old villages of earthen houses. The villages, in fact, have been the most charming places we’ve seen in weeks, with the sad exception that most are in varying stages of ghost-town-ification (空村化), young people mostly absent from the scene. At the tail end of these mountains, just before Hohhot, Andy and I were on the cusp of what seemed like a potentially rewarding LBX encounter. Having just caught a ride on a blue truck to the top of a huge mountain, we came across two men and two women in their 60′s with bikes and matching red “Retired Persons of Hohhot Bike Touring Association” jerseys. I tried my darnedest to find out about where they go biking, or what their equipment is like, or what they think of biking at such an age, etc., but the conversation took a bizarre, although not entirely unexpected twist, something like this:

Me:     We rode out of Beijing 11.5 months ago and are about to return there. Here’s my card. [hand them USA-China Friendship Bicycling Team card]
Man:   Friendship between the US and China, that’s a very good thing!
Me:     Yes, it is. So where did you ride today? Was it hard?
Man:   Just to Wuchuan (50 km from Hohhot) and back, not hard. You know, if the US and China are friendly, the whole world will be at peace! We’re both great nations!
Me:     Sure sure, so do you ride often?
Man:   Hu Jintao and Obama! You know, we should explore space together!
Me:     What?
Man:   If our two great nations join together, we can explore other planets! Soon we’ll have such a population that we have to send people to other planets to live!
Me:     Other planets? We’re not doing such a good job with this planet right now. (I was terribly tempted to tell him how much of a shithole most of his autonomous region is, but he didn’t give me the chance)
Man:  Yes, other planets. The future will be great! We must continue our development, and we must be friends with the US!
Me:     Sure…

At this point I realized that this guy was talking the way farmers give directions and just gave up. I thanked the man and said it was a pleasure, at which point one of the women said, “that’s our team captain!” I shook his hand, saying “nice to meet you, team captain,” to which he replied, “serving the comrades! It’s nothing!” A piece down the road we caught up with all 10 or so of them and took the requisite 50 individual photos with them. Finally we were rewarded by a screaming descent from the mountains into the sprawling urban mess of Hohhot, yet another rude awakening.

Thankfully the day was saved last night after a delicious Uighur cooked dinner and beers in a bar where the keeper was Mongolian. After the rest of the crew retired, I hung out with my buddy, a 22 year old herdsman from the northeast who had an uncanny wealth of Asian history knowledge. We talked until dawn about statecraft, the role of climate in determining the politics of Asia, the long dominance and recent subjugation of the Mongolian people, Han encroachment, and their dissolving culture. At one point he devoted no less than an hour just talking about Genghis Khan. It was like stepping into a walk-in freezer on an August day in Baton Rouge to hear this uneducated sage talk, and I’m not just saying that because he gave me free beers all night!

Anyway, back to the subject at hand, Inner Mongolia has not at all been what I expected, but again, that’s because I based my expectations on the name of the region (which I more than anybody should know is a joke) and a big green spot in Google Earth, not actual research. That said, we could probably have done a better job getting into the culture here, but we’re just a little tired of the same thing over and over again. As I assume that the rest of our route, through the corner of Shanxi and northern Hebei, will be rehashes of the first leg of our trip, I fear that the best may be firmly behind us. Nevertheless, we’re going to power through the next 550 km, completing at least the physical goal of our circuit if not entirely reaching all our LBX goals. No matter what, I promise, for those who care, that there will be more posts coming, though probably after our arrival on the 13th, so stay tuned, and wish us luck on our last week! Good night to all!

… continued from last post. After thanking Rinchen for his gracious hospitality, we took our leave from him and inspected his monastery, which is populated by 300 monks, from the hill behind it. The premises were about as large as an average American high school with scattered buildings organized around two large temples with gilded roofs. Even from hundreds of meters above, we could tell that even the parts of the monastery not currently under construction had not long been around. Almost no monasteries we came across had existed for over 30 years, since all their previous incarnations had been destroyed by red guards during the black period.

Dorgye then drove us back to the town for Tibetan dinner in the restaurant of his ex girlfriend, a plump, rosy cheeked girl in her thirties. Over yak dumplings, noodles, and butter tea, we tried our best to describe America, the place our new friend most wants to visit in the world, despite the fact he’s sure he’ll never be able. During the meal, a short man with curly hair and sharply arched hunchback joined us at our table. He, like pretty well everybody in the town, was friends with Dorgye, and he was another example of Tibetan eccentricity that makes us love these people. Sitting next to us for nearly an hour, he neither spoke a word nor ate any of our food, despite our repeated offerings. He was subjecting himself to a day of fasting — to feel the pain of hungry people — and a day of silence — to feel the pain of the animals, who cannot speak — apparently both common practices. At the conclusion of the meal, Dorgye drove his friend to his home and us to his own, where his mother had prepared for us about two gallons of yoghurt from fresh yak’s milk — probably the best I’ve ever eaten in my life (no, we didn’t finish it, but god did we fart that night from the overwhelming of our systems by dairy products).

The next morning saw yet another overly generous meal prepared by Dorgye’s mother, the most caring Tibetan momma around. At breakfast, we chatted some more about his personal life, during which time he told us that he has two children by a poor herding girl out in the country — whom he supports financially — but no intentions of marrying that or any other girl. Apparently this is accepted practice among Tibetans, whose religion — like so many others — is a moral iron trap on certain all-important issues and a blank road map on the rest.

After replying affirmatively to his mother that we had found our time with Tibetan nomads to be enjoyable and bidding the family adieu, we proceeded on a wild goose chase in town for decent Tibetan cowboy hats (which Andy did end up finding a week later). During the search, however, we ran across a monk about my age, dressed up in deep maroon and pink robes and built like a tank — with some deep scars on his face. He turned out to be one of Dorgye’s best friends, and the only other Tibetan in town to receive a two year sentence for being the “lead instigator” of the 2008 protests, a term from which he had recently been released. I asked him through Dorgye what his prison time had been like, and how he viewed the overall situation. His reply, likewise through Dorgye (he spoke almost no Chinese), began, “I don’t know if you’re good people or not, and I am not sure why you want to know, but since you ask, I’ll tell you…” He had initially been beaten severely and subject to a number of cruel punishments, such as bouts of starvation, having his mouth spit into by soldiers, and prolonged interrogations while being deprived of sleep. The guards lectured him for hours about how good the Chinese had been to his people and built up their infrastructure, and demanded that he answer what had ever been done for him by his beloved Dalai Lama or American government (I cringed to hear that our government was invoked in his torture). Now that he’s been released, he hopes, like every Tibetan, for peace, but he will “never forget” what he suffered at the hands of his Han captors.

Not having any emotional experience for how to respond to his story, I thanked him for his frankness and expressed support for his people, which seemed to have some minor positive effect on his emotional demeanor. Just before we took our leave, I asked Dorgye what he would do after his full release was granted. “Try to find a job,” he answered, “and if I can’t, it’s ok too. I can always watch my father’s yaks.”

Urban sprawl... in Qinghai! by Andy

Dorgye is at least lucky that his family’s situation is stable (or maybe they’re lucky that he provided the money to stabilize theirs), and they haven’t had to depend on the government for their livelihood (Dorgye thought the Tibetans who relied on government yak semen for artificial insemination were insane, since “they know how to do it themselves”). The situation of some of his neighbors, however, was quite different. Along the highway in his town, as in dozens of other similar Tibetan towns, was a “nomad resettlement area (牧民定居點),” or a recently built group of single room, mono-style brick houses, with two windows and one door on only one side of the house, lined up in tight perfect rows, all facing the same direction regardless of which side of the road they were on. They cosely resemble inner city housing projects, with the exception that their backdrop is the vast Tibetan sky and endless grasslands, which makes them look ridiculous. It was explained to us that the government brings inland construction crews to build the settlements for the locals, providing about 40% of the funding outright and the other 60% (the ratio varied from place to place) in low interest loans, usually totaling 50,000 yuan for a completed unit. What at first glance seems like a stroke of great benevolence was explained to us over and over again as a plot to bring the “unruly minority” under closer surveillance. “What use are clustered houses like that to nomadic herders?” asked Dorgye, who said that the families accepting the deals generally consider them just-in-case insurance policies and mostly use them as storage sheds.

It’d be nice to think that the houses are nothing more than a humane gesture on the part of the government, kind of an atonement for their severe crackdowns and firm lockdowns in the last two years. But the sheer scope of the construction of these soul-deadening shack-towns tends to indicate that something less philanthropic is intended. Outside one town in Qinghai, we rolled into a deep crater valley and onto a grand, stupefying sight: about five hundred such shack dwellings broken into three “neighborhoods,” the mass of which increased the area of the town itself by 200%. Upon further investigation, we found that the vast majority of the dwellings were absolutely empty, but further construction, under the flag of a Jiangsu-based company, rages on. In the town, we came across a couple of sharply dressed men (I mean LBX sharp, black shoes, black slacks, and short-sleeve white staffords with oiled up hair) from the construction company eating at the table next to ours in a Han restaurant. Driven by curiosity, I engaged the most talkative one in the following conversation (you might think I’m making this up, but I swear I wrote it down word for word immediately following its taking place):

Me:     How long have you been building the houses outside of town? (你們建外面的牧民定居房子建多久了?)
Man:    7-8 years (七、八年了)
Me:     But they’re mostly empty? (可是大部分還空空的?)
Man:    Yes, they haven’t been fully occupied yet (對，還沒住滿)
Me:    Then why are you still building them? (那為什麼還在建新房?)
Man:    This is a minority area. Tibetans, you know? (這裡是少數民族地區，藏族知道嗎?)
Me:    I know (知道)
Man:    We have to build them, for harmony. (必須建，因為要和諧)
Andy:    [in his token incredulous voice] If you build the houses, there’ll be harmony? (建房就有和諧嗎?)
Man:    Yes. Before, they lived in tents. (是的。以前他們都住帳篷)
Andy:    Tents aren’t harmonious? (帳篷不和諧嗎?)
Man:    Tents are harmonious too, but the Tibetans need to know that they should live in houses! [I realize that’s an awkward sentence, but that’s exactly how it came out] (帳篷也和諧，但是藏族要知道他們應該住房子!)

I’m not sure if he spoke from malice, ignorance, or pure brainwashing (i.e. “bringing warmth to the frontier” à la Heavenly Road), but the whole time he maintained a kind, fatherly tone, like a patient math teacher explaining addition to a 7-year-old. Again, you can’t get mad at the messenger, but rather the system that convinced him that yak herding isn’t conducive to “harmony,” an abstract term which, by the way, is utterly meaningless unless those things being harmonized are listed (i.e. “harmony between man and machine”). Judging from the inner Mongolia grassland of Bayan Nur (where I now write this post), from which Mongolian pastoralism was over the last century erased without a trace before the expansion of Han agriculture, I have to presume that those “resettlement areas” will become something less than a convenient option in the years to come. If the Chinese follow our example of dealing with American Indians, the Tibetans are likely to be fed story after story and yield inch after inch until they’re completely subdued. We met and had dinner with a Harvard man researching Tibetan ethnic tourism, and his theory was that the government’s chief aim in locking them down is to get their kids into compulsory education, where they can be indoctrinated and slowly turned. Whatever the ultimate goal is I can’t say, but if I ever founded a religion, its cardinal sin would be to force a self-sufficient man into dependency.

All the cool kids will be wearing Tibetan robes soon, by Andy

In our travels in the Tibetan regions, Dorgye was neither the only excellent English speaker nor our only gracious host. We met several Tibetans returned from the Dalai Lama’s schools all over Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai, most of whom know each other and have spent some time in jail for their escape antics. In another town, one such English speaker introduced us to his monk friend, who also spent a long time explaining the details of his religion and people to us over milk tea. It was this monk who took us to the store of his friend to buy our beautiful Tibetan robes (couldn’t resist) for 350 yuan, fully 100 cheaper than she offered to the Han tourist who followed me in (have I mentioned that they hate the Han?). We knew the products were legit not only by their heavy wool fabric or intricate patterns, but by the picture of the Dalai Lama she hung proudly on her wall. Incidentally, contrary to what I would have thought, you can find his picture displayed prominently ALL OVER the plateau, despite the inherent danger. I love their guts!

The morning after we had acquired our robes, our monk friend Tashi and his English speaking friend Dawa invited us over for tea and Zamba with some of their friends. At this breakfast, an older Tibetan man, well traveled and speaking decent Sichuanese, went on and on about the military clamp down on every aspect of life in Tibet and the terrible scale of environmental damage there through military mining projects. Again, I expressed sympathy and support as we left the room, but as we left the room, the man, my father’s age, was openly weeping. Looking back on the entire situation weeks later, the whole thing seems like a sad, romantic dream.

I complain a lot because I'm just in one of those moods, but there have been some cool places out here, as Pete demonstrates between corn and sunflower fields, by Evan

Although I wish I had gotten these posts up earlier, it is good that I’ve waited until now to delve into them. Returning from Qinghai into northern China was like being roused from a pleasant dream about a young girl feeding me breakfast and rubbing my head by a raging truck horn at 6am (how I actually woke up yesterday). The plateau truly was the crowning experience of the trip, the place where I felt most inspired and happy about the world, and since then, I’ve been too disillusioned to care very much anymore about LBXes. If I tried to write a post right now about the gritty pollution we’ve come through from Gansu to Inner Mongolia or the utter lack of cultural inspiration (almost no Hui in the Ningxia Hui Region and absolutely no Mongols in the Mongolian region where we now rest), it’d be a blur of hateful invective. All I will say is that is that between the redoubled “HALLO” and “LAOWAI” jeers and the stark ugliness of so much of this part of the world, I’m dying to leave the Mad Max dystopia and get to a place where I can feel like a real person again.

That’s not to say we haven’t had fun lately though, not the least part from our consumption of fine whiskies (we’ve gone through 6 bottles in the last 4 weeks) at night in our varied campsites: along lake Qinghai, in trash burning landfills, under desert dunes (woke up covered in an inch of sand), in fields of corn, next to fields of sunflowers (these have been the picturesque saving grace of our country jaunts in this region), etc. It was likewise nice to have the double pleasure in Yinchuan of being joined for a stretch on a Dahon by our old friend Pete (you may remember his drunken antics from my second Hong Kong post) and to spend time with Ellen Mosemen, our comrade-in-bike from 2wheels4girls and her riding partner Jason Yen. I’m also looking forward to looking for something interesting along our final route, which will take us 928 more kilometers over the next 12 days to the conclusion of our trip, almost one year after it began and 10,000 miles (16,000+ kilometers) cycled, into Beijing. Anybody who has read to the end of this horribly long post and is interested in joining us for beers at our finish-up party on September 13th in the Sanlitun area, please send an email to me or Andy for details. Until then, stay tuned for more from our final leg.

黃昏我站在高高的山岡
At dusk I stand on a tall mountain
看那鐵路修到我家鄉
And see the railroad that has been built to my homeland
一條條巨龍翻山越嶺
Huge dragon after huge dragon cross the mountains
為雪域高原送來安康
Bringing peace and health to the snowy plateau
那是一條神奇的天路哎
It is a miraculous heavenly road
把人間的溫暖送到邊疆
Bringing the warmth of the human world to the frontier
從此山不再高路不再漫長
From now on, the mountains are no longer high, and the road is no longer endless
各族兒女歡聚一堂
The sons and daughters of every race joyously assemble under the same roof

The plateau, a place not easily forgotten, by Andy

The preceding is an excerpt from the song Heavenly Road (天路), a song sung in Chinese set to Tibetan style music about the Beijing-Lhasa railway. It is likely the current most popular propaganda song in China (by far surpassing Dao Lang’s “Salaam Chairman Mao”), and also the single song I hate most in the world. I hate it so because unfortunately I used to be pretty into it, owing to the frequency with which I heard it, until the one day I bothered to pay attention to the lyrics, which I’ve pasted in totality at the bottom of this post for the curious. Aside from the fact that it’s hilariously ridiculous to think that prop-pop is actually an acceptable art form in China, the song’s popularity highlights the attitudes most Chinese have toward Tibetans: that they are griping benefactors of the goodness of the Han. I’ll go into this topic in depth in the post that continues this one.

Aside the hundreds of times I’ve heard the first lines of this song as a ring tone on this trip, I was graced to hear a group of vacationing cyclists from Liaoning wearing matching red long spandex uniforms singing it boisterously within eyesight of the miraculous railroad on the northern bank of Lake Qinghai. Beside the fact that these were some real chumps (like most of the vacationers making a circuit of the lake), their shameless rendition reminded me that we were on our way out of traditional Tibet and headed back into the hard world of Northern China.

The chorus of cretiny, by Evan

If the song wasn’t enough, the next few days revealed layer by layer that we were leaving our dreamy time up on the plateau. First there were the highways clogged with miserable trucks and dust. Then there were trees and corn again. Two nights after leaving the lake, there were prostitutes under my hotel again, for the first time since Sichuan. Then the ride into Xining, a giant concrete shithole exuding all the allures of scientific development, finally shook us completely from our revery. They always say you have to leave something before you can appreciate it, and now that we’re in the middle of the clusterfuck that is northern China, our time on the plateau seems all the more brilliant.

No, it’s not just the glorious landscapes or refreshingly clean air (as I’ve said before, it’s insane that this should even need to be mentioned), that made us love the place, although it helped. It’s definitely not the cuisine, because God knows we couldn’t have taken too much more yak noodles, zamba (barley and yak butter), or yoghurt. It’s certainly not all the people there either, since frankly toward the end I was itching for a little personal space at last. But it is the special people and their personalities and the stories of their struggle that make the place and our time there mean so much to us. I’d like to share just a few here.

A few weeks ago in a small town surrounded by soaring mountains, Andy and I were unexpectedly invited into a Tibetan home by a man on a roof screaming, “come sit down and have a rest!” Ordinarily a request so worded would indicate that the potential host was a twit, but his accent was so spot on that we had to see what was up with this guy. A quick walk around to the gate of his courtyard, and a young man in a grey bowling hat opened the gate to his courtyard to us and led us past his family and to a second floor sitting room behind a picture window with a view onto the endless prairie.

Our host, named Dorgye, laid out snacks and milk tea and then started telling us his story, in nearly flawless English. It turned out that at the age of 17, he and four other men from his town had set out toward Nepal on an escape run — on foot. Over the month it took to reach the border, the group had swelled to 29 Tibetan men, often without ample water or food. Finally they reached Kathmandu and the Tibetan Welcome Center, which dispatched them forthwith to Daram Sala in India and the Dalai Lama’s education centers of the Tibetan government in exile.

Dorgye in disguise, by Andy

Dorgye there spent three years of study, mostly focusing on English — all for free. He could have stayed on there forever, but he so missed his mother, father, older brother and older sister that he reentered China, against his mother’s orders to stay where he could be free. He was fined for his malfeasance, but at that relatively politically stable time, he was allowed to find work. So Dorgye became a translator in a local dairy enterprise, and earned a fortune — by the standards of his yak herding family. So he bought himself a car and some nice clothes, and his family a brand new home of his own design, small and without many amenities, but what you might call nomad chic.

Life was rolling along ok until 2008 and the protests started up. Once he heard from a friend in the local monastery that the monks would march in protest following the example of their compatriots in Lhasa, our proud and pertinacious friend ran to join them in pumping his fists and screaming for the Dalai Lama. He had expected to be killed for his actions, but it didn’t matter so much. “It was my only chance to say what I felt, to be a man,” he told us. Immediately afterward, his mother ordered him to go into hiding and not to come back until everything was forgotten. So he flew into hiding among the mountains, and lived off the generosity of fellow Tibetans, who all supported him unquestioningly, for four months. However, he eventually realized they’d never forget and that life on the lam meant separation from his dearest family. So he turned himself in.

Since he had illegally escaped to India (his words… I don’t believe there are many legal escapes to India), and was generally flippant toward the Han police, whom he hates with a burning fire (really he hates all Han), the local commissariat deemed him the “instigator (罪魁禍首),” even though he had just followed behind some monk friends. The sentence was two years in prison (yes, for a nonviolent protest), which was mitigated after a year to long-term limited house arrest due to a heart condition that almost killed him in prison. For the past year, he’s had to stay within close watch of the police, and has spent most of his time fixing up his family’s house. That’s when we met him.

After a hell of a lot of talking and milk tea, he said we should meet his uncle, the abbot at the local monastery. We agreed, and he drove us down to the picturesque bluff-set monastery, rebuilt, like most things of religious significance in this country, thirty years ago. Thanks, Mao! Dorgye led us into the house of the abbot and sat us down sitting Indian style before the short table, which he set with fresh yak dumplings and more milk tea. Presently the good abbot, Rinchen, appeared himself and conversed with us in his excellent Mandarin.

A friendly yak herder who fed us lunch, by Andy

Rinchen was in his fifties, bald, donning the deep maroon garb of a monk, and smiled every bit as effusively as the Dalai Lama himself. First he tried to explain his religion to us — the 3000 different coexisting worlds, the levels one arrives at before nirvana, the loopholes allowing monks to eat meat (these are funny, but I won’t get into it here), etc. He further explained the difference between the various Tibetan monastics, which had been falsely conveyed by several Han previously. There are regular monks (和尚), like Rinchen, who choose to leave their families (出家) to join the order. They can advance through levels and even serve as abbot (掌經師), but they cannot serve in the highest capacities. Above monks there are Huofos (活佛), “living Buddhas,” and Lamas (喇嘛). These positions are filled by children who are reincarnations of a previous Huofo or Lama, something that monastics authenticate.

Eventually Andy asked if the government ever forced any “patriotic education (愛國教育)” on the monastery, to which poor old Rinchen replied “YES,” nodding his head fervently. The government types come through frequently to hold lectures and make the monks sign documents criticizing the Dalai Lama. I asked if the DL would forgive them for this, to which Rinchen made a sound and a face to indicate that I had asked the stupidest question in the world. “Not only can he forgive us,” said the monk, “but he is the one who told us to comply!” The DL, he said, has issued universal orders to do whatever it takes to preserve the peace, and has even stopped issuing pictures of himself to people he knows will bring them back to China, for fear of government retribution upon his subjects.

Rinchen then spent a long time explaining how bad things were. Monks under the age of 18 have to be regularly hidden when the G-men come through. Only a certain number of men are allowed to study at one time in the monastery, and so the extras too have to be regularly hidden. At least now it’s better than back in the cultural Revolution, said Rinchen. At that time, monks were forced to return to lay life (還庶), and apparently were forced to sleep with women, who would spy on their activities. Texts that were not carefully buried or otherwise hidden by cautious Tibetans were destroyed en masse, like the monasteries themselves. The communists did their damnedest to wipe out the whole religion, but much to Beijing’s chagrin, it has regrown with gusto since reform and opening, said Rinchen.

A group of monks practicing philosophical discourse, by Andy

Right in the middle of his lengthy explanations, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. Andy and I withdrew into the corner to observe the audience that followed. Four dark faced Tibetan men entered in an air of reverence. Their spokesman, a rather fat guy in his forties, placed a white sash in front of Rinchen and began to speak in Tibetan. The tone in his voice, and the somber faces of his fellows, made Andy and me both think that something terrible had happened in the community — stolen yaks, a girl knocked up, a killing even — and that they had come to beg advice from a wise man. After ten minutes from the spokesman and a two minute response from Rinchen, the men’s faces washed over in relief, and they took their leave.

Have they come to ask for advice, I asked. “No,” replied Rinchen, “they believe they have identified a Huofo in a young child of their family and want somebody to go investigate, which I promised I would do soon.” With that over, we continued our conversation with Rinchen, which became slowly more and more depressing as he laid out the hard road they have to walk, which has become significantly harder since the 2008 protests, in which Rinchen refused to participate. As his promotion to abbot required ratification by the local government, he probably made the right decision. Worst of all, said Rinchen, was the uncertainty the future brought for the leadership of their community. When the Dalai Lama (Rinchen always made a reverent sign above his head when mentioning the DL’s name), passed away, there would be turmoil. As we already knew, the Panchen Lama, number two in the Tibetan hierarchy, became the world’s youngest political prisoner immediately after his identification, and has not been since seen. The DL, realizing his political predicament, has declared that his successor will be chosen from within Tibet (he means Tibet controlled by China) if the people want that, or from outside Tibet (presumably Daram Sala with it’s million strong Tibetan population) if the people want that. How the “people” will have a say in this, Rinchen was unable to answer, but he admitted that the DL’s death will be a major turning point for the Tibetan people. Dorgye in fact later told us that the reason the Tibetans have not emulated their comrades in misery, the Uyghurs (whom he said most Tibetans admire for their backbone), in violence is that the Dalai Lama has restrained them from so doing. Once the Dalai Lama is gone, said Dorgye, it will be very difficult to persuade angry Tibetan youth to continue turning the other cheek.

Finally I asked of Rinchen if he thought there was any hope for the Tibetan cause. He looked down at his table somberly and did not respond. A minute of silence passed, in which I wondered if I had asked the wrong question. Finally he looked up sadly and said in a low tone, “maybe (可能).”

Right about this time, another monk came in to talk to Rinchen, and it was time for us to excuse ourselves. Despite the melancholy nature of our conversation, Rinchen was still beaming at us with his huge smile. He fetched two sashes of white cloth and presented them to us with great ceremony. Explaining that they are called Khataghs (哈達), he wrapped them around our necks and bade us return as often as we can, since it’s unlikely he’ll ever be coming to see us.

…TO BE CONTINUED (Since I have a lot more to say on the subject of Tibetans and stories to relate, and this is already too long). FYI, we’re currently in northern Gansu proceeding across the desert through landscapes that look like scenes from Hero (英雄). We’ll be in Ningxia later today. Greetings to be changed from Zhashidele to Salaam. Stay tuned.

All lyrics of Heavenly Road (Evan translated):

清晨我站在青青的牧場
At dawn I stand on a lush green pastureland
看到神鷹披著那霞光
Watching an eagle draped in the rays of dawn light
像一片祥雲飛過藍天
He’s like a stretch of propitious clouds flying across the blue sky
為藏家兒女帶來吉祥
Bringing auspiciousness for the sons and daughters of the Tibetans
黃昏我站在高高的山岡
At dusk I stand on a tall ridge
看那鐵路修到我家鄉
And see the railroad that has been built to my homeland
一條條巨龍翻山越嶺
Huge dragon after huge dragon cross the mountains
為雪域高原送來安康
Bringing peace and health to the snowy plateau
那是一條神奇的天路哎
It is a miraculous heavenly road
把人間的溫暖送到邊疆
Bringing the warmth of the human world to the frontier
從此山不再高路不再漫長
From now on, the mountains are no longer high, and the road is no longer endless
各族兒女歡聚一堂
The sons and daughters of every race joyously assemble under the same roof
黃昏我站在高高的山岡
At dusk I stand on a tall ridge
看那鐵路修到我家鄉
And see the railroad that has been built to my homeland
一條條巨龍翻山越嶺
Huge dragon after huge dragon cross the mountains
為雪域高原送來安康
Bringing peace and health to the snowy plateau
那是一條神奇的天路哎
It is a miraculous heavenly road
帶我們走進人間天堂
Bringing us to heaven on earth
青稞酒酥油茶會更加香甜
Barley wine and yak butter tea taste even more delicious
幸福的歌聲傳遍四方
The song of happiness is sung across the world
那是一條神奇的天路哎
It is a miraculous heavenly road
帶我們走進人間天堂
Bringing us to heaven on earth
青稞酒酥油茶會更加香甜
Barley wine and yak butter tea taste even more delicious
幸福的歌聲傳遍四方
The song of happiness is sung across the world
幸福的歌聲傳遍四方
The song of happiness is sung across the world

I am writing this post just to convey the events of yesterday, which may stand as one of the most ridiculous days of the journey so far.

A nice place to camp, by Andy

I woke up in my sleeping bag around 7. The wind, which was blowing so furiously the night before I thought my fly would rip itself in half, was by now completely still. Andy and I climbed out of the tents nearly simultaneously. We hadn’t showered in three days and had camped on the open grassland two nights running. We sun dried the flies and packed up quickly. I took one last look from the top of the hill over the half-mile-deep crevasse behind us and the half-mile-high mountain ridge before us. We both munched down a few handfuls of trail mix, planning to be in the next township of Yangxia (羊峽鎮) around lunchtime. Bikes packed and sunscreen applied, we began crawling up the long mountain road.

About 10 km into the ride, the scenery became so stunning I felt I was in a scene from Lord of the Rings. For days now, our surroundings have grown steadily drier, and the peaks starker. At points it felt like riding across the face of the moon, if the moon had some sparse grass, a few herds of sheep, and an occasional Tibetan. For almost the last month, our route has been so naturally resplendent and wild that I almost completely forgot we were in China.

This is what I mean by "the face of the moon," by Andy

About twenty km in, my rear derailleur cable frayed, and soon thereafter went snap, crackle, and pop, reducing my 21 speeds to 3. As roads in this part of Qinghai dive and climb more sharply than a roller coaster, this slowed the going.

At 45 km in, we arrived before the second most breathtaking ravine I’ve ever seen (after only the Grand Canyon): Longyang Canyon (龍羊峽) on the Yellow River. Just across the man-made reservoir was visible the township of Yangxia (羊峽鎮), where we had planned all along to soothe our growling stomachs. The following ten km were a giddy, winding free-fall around dozens of switchbacks. The milestones on our road from the previous town had all along seemingly counted down to the point where we’d cross the river into town. At the bottom of the switchbacks, the road suddenly dead-ended into the 383 square kilometer reservoir like a boat slip. An old man pumping water out of his boat next to the slip pointed me up a dirt road to the southern end of the dam, where the presence of a military post seemed to confirm our worst fears.

Longyang Canyon from above. Don't be fooled by the blue water -- that is indeed the Yellow River. by Andy

You see, the day before, a nice Tibetan guy the town at the head of the road, called Guomaying (過馬營鎮), who had just bought us rose-flavored soda waters — after the store owner had insisted the entire province had no bottled water — informed us we’d need a “travel permit (通行證)” to take our intended route. This sounded stupid, since no maps or signs anywhere indicated any kind of military base or hiatus in the roads there. Nor did we see any indications of this nature on the entire approach to the dam. We might have considered changing our route from Guomaying to Gonghe (103 km) on his advice, if the next fastest route hadn’t been 309 km through Xining. Since Andy’s posse (girlfriend, dad, and dad’s girlfriend) had planned to meet us in Gonghe on the 10th, we had no option but to stick to our original plan.

So, we pushed the bikes up the gravel road to the guard kiosk on the southern end of the dam. A little PLA soldier, who couldn’t have been over 18 years old and 110 pounds, threw a hefty shotgun over his shoulders (I doubt he could have pulled the trigger without being propelled out into the reservoir) and walked out. The ensuing conversation was ridiculous to epic proportions:

Guard:     “What are you doing here? (你們來幹甚麼?)”
Me:         “We need to get over there. [pointing to Yangxia township about 500 meters across the water] (我們要過到那裡去)”
Guard:     “Do you have a dam-crossing permit? (你們有沒有過壩證?)”
Me:         “No. (沒有)”
Guard:     “Without a dam-crossing permit, you can’t cross. (沒有過壩證就不能過)”
Andy:        “Can one get a temporary dam-crossing permit? (能不能辦一個臨時過壩證?)
Guard:    “Yes, they’re 50 or 60 yuan. (可以，五、六十塊錢就能辦到)”
Me:        “Then we’d like to process a temporary dam-crossing permit. (那我們就辦臨時過壩證吧)”
Guard:    “Temporary permits are processed on the other side. (臨時證要在對面辦)”
Me:        “Then we’ll go to the other side and process one. (那我們先過去在對面辦一個證吧)”
Guard:    “You can’t cross. (你們不可以過去)”
Me:        “Why? (為甚麼?)”
Guard:    “Because you don’t have a dam-crossing permit! (因為沒有過壩證!)”
Me:        “So… how do we get across? (那麼，我們怎麼過去?)”
Guard:    “Where are you from? (你們的老家在哪兒?)”
Me:        “America. How do we get across? (美國。我們怎麼過去呢?)”
Guard:    “America! That’s really far away! (美國！好遠噢!)”
Me:        “Yes, it is far away. How do we get across? We’re really hungry, and we’d just like to get over there to eat. (是好遠。我們怎麼過去？我們現在非常的餓，只想過到那邊吃個飯.)”
Guard:    “Sorry, you need a dam-crossing permit to go there. (對不起，沒有過壩證就不能過去)”
Me:        “How do the locals get across? (當地人是怎麼過河的呢?)”
Guard:    “They have dam-crossing permits. (他們有過壩證).”
Me:        “We just rode a long way and are terribly hungry. Surely there must be a way!  (我們剛騎了很遠，現在非常的餓！肯定有辦法!)”
Guard:    “How did you get here? (你們是怎麼過來的?)”
Me:        [Andy and I, wearing bike shorts, jerseys, and helmets, both look at the bikes, which we pushed right up to the dam and which have been next to us the entire time] “Uhhhhh, on bikes! (啊啊啊啊啊，騎自行車來的!)”
Guard:    “Where did you come from? (從哪兒騎過來的?)”
Me:        [There is only one single road that leads to this point, and it comes from Guomaying 55 km to the south] “From Guomaying! (從過馬營過來的!)”
Guard:    “Then ride back there. (那你們就騎回去).” [If we rode back and around, it would now be 364 km to Gonghe instead of 46 km across the reservoir.]
Me:        “But we’re trying to get to Lake Qinghai! (可是我們要去青海湖!)”
Guard:    “Oh, you want to go to Lake Qinghai and ride your bikes? You’re going to compete in the Tour de Lake Qinghai! (噢，你們要去青海湖騎自行車是吧！ 要參加環湖比賽啊!)”
Me:        “Yes. (是的)” [We didn’t correct him on the second point since we figured it might help our case.]
Guard:    “When you came out touring, you didn’t think to process any permits? (你們出來旅遊沒想過要辦一些證件嗎?)”
Me:        “Uhhh, we got visas. (啊啊啊，我們辦了簽證)”
Guard:    “What? (什麼東西?)”
Andy:        “Passports! (護照!)”
Guard:    “…” [blank face]
Me:        “We’re in a rush here and have no time to go all the way around. That would be too far. What exactly are you afraid of here? We’re on bikes, and you have that gun. We’ll cross slowly with you behind us watching our every move, ok? (我們趕時間，繞過去太遠了。你到底怕甚麼呢？我們是騎自行車的，而且你手裡還握著那支槍。我們慢慢過去，你從後面跟著看著我們就沒事吧?)”
Guard:    “I can’t let you go without permission from my superiors. (沒有領導的批准就不能讓你們過)”
Me:        “Then please call your superiors and explain the situation! (那請跟你的領導聯系解釋我們的情況好吧!)”
Guard:    [Returns to kiosk, picks up telephone, pushes some buttons] “Hello, I have a situation here. Two Americans want to cross the dam… No, they don’t have dam-crossing permits… No, they’re on bikes… Ok. (喂，有個情況，來了兩個美國人，想過壩…沒有過壩證…不是，騎自行車來的…好的)” [hangs up phone]
Me:        “What did he say? (他說甚麼?)”
Guard:    “He’s asking. (他在幫你們問一下)”
[We wait patiently. A black sedan with tinted windows comes down the road, has the gate lifted for it, and is allowed to drive across. Now there is no doubt that the dam bridge is indeed crossable. At this point I see the CPI (China Power Investment Corporation) logo on the guard gate. In my previous life employed by an American nuclear power company in Shanghai, I used to work with this infernal company. I even shook hands with their CEO. I check to see if I had any numbers of influential people, but of course I’ve lost my phone twice since quitting. Then the phone rang in the kiosk. The guard picked it up, muttered a few words, and came back out.]
Guard:    “He doesn’t dare to let you cross. (他不敢放你們)”
Me:        “So what do we do? (那我們怎麼辦?)”
Guard:    “I don’t know. (不知道).” [He then returned to the kiosk.]

Zipping down to the reservoir. That's Yangxia township on the far right. by Andy

At this point I laid down on the outer wall and started mulling over our options. First I thought, maybe we should just camp next to the kiosk until they’re so embarrassed that they let us cross. Playing “face” games has usually worked in the past. Then I remembered that the Tibetan guy had said that buses could cross, and indeed we had seen a bus on the road coming from Gonghe. So I figured we’d just wait a few hours until that bus returned to Gonghe, flag it down, put our bikes in the hold, and cross that way. The guard even confirmed this would be ok. If we had wanted to blow the dam up, we could very easily have stuffed bombs into the luggage compartment of the bus and taken out some bystanders at the same time. But two guys on bikes, which we even offered to let them search if that would help our cause, could not be allowed to cross the dam, which constituted the only way across the Yellow River for well over 100 km in either direction!

As we waited, the guard seemed to forget our presence and any obligation of professionalism. Exiting the kiosk with the shotgun, he shouted to the dark green hovel behind us: “I’ve been out on guard for an hour and a half, somebody else come out and stand watch! (我上哨一個半小時了，換一個人來上哨!)” From within the hovel came a reply of “your mom’s stinky pu**y! (你媽的臭屄!)” More insults were tossed at the little guy until he finally gave up and returned, dejected, to the kiosk, gun still slung around his shoulder.

After a good while longer of sulking under the hot sun, the solution finally presented itself. A young guy of around 20, wearing top and bottom camo and an MTV trucker hat (universal hick attire) approached us. “I can get you across on my boat (我有船，幫你們渡過去吧),” he offered. The price quoted was 30 yuan, less than we would have paid even for a temporary dam-crossing permit, and so we were overjoyed.

The rip-off skiff, by Evan

We followed him down to the water and loaded our bikes onto his 20 foot (~6 meter) metal skiff. He then hopped on another boat (about ten were anchored there) and siphoned half a 10 gallon can of gas out of it. Engine gassed and running, we then found out that his boat was stuck on shore. The water level, he said, had gone down since he last went out a few days ago. So he called up his friend, who came out, started up his own skiff, and with a rope towed us out of the mud. During this de-sticking ordeal, our deliverer explained that even if locals get a dam-crossing permit, they’re only allowed to traverse the dam from 8:00 to 9:30 in the morning, all other times off limits! Anyway, we were finally off! As we passed by the side of the dam, it occurred to me how much easier it would be to attack the thing via water crossing, which was AOK with the soldiers, than from the road on top of it, which is monitored! Five minutes later we were on the other side and unloaded. The whole process had taken two hours, by far the longest we’ve ever needed for 500 meters!

On the other side, I pulled out a 50, the smallest bill I had, to pay our fisherman. He took it from me and said, “We agreed on 30, so with two people helping that’s 60, but I’ll take just take the 50 and call it quits (我們說好了30塊，兩個人幫忙就是60，可是我收你們50就夠了).” Of course, the price quoted was per person who helped, how stupid of us not to realize! Having no recourse and just relieved to have broken through to the other side, we let it go.

Once into the township of Yangxia, we quickly noticed that it was a decrepit ghost town. More than 2/3 of the buildings were abandoned and decaying. It was a creepy place, like a city from a zombie movie after everybody’s contracted the virus and is incubating underground. We found human activity only on a small stretch in the middle part of the town’s main street, where a few shops and restaurants were operating. The Mongolian owner of the noodle restaurant where we gorged ourselves informed us that it had been greatly built up during the construction of the dam and power plant, but that most of the buildings had sat empty for over twenty years since the work crews left. Oh China!

The badlands of Qinghai, by Andy

The ensuing route to Gonghe wound us through what looked like the American badlands on crack. This was what I had always envisioned when thinking about China’s Great Northwest (大西北)! Then on the final approach, the road was lined by farmhouses built of mud and stone, surrounded by earthen walls. Grasslands full of sheep and yaks gave way to farm fields, full not of Tibetan barley, but ripe wheat, which threshers were harvesting. We had returned to Han-dominated land, for the first time in over a month. Familiar old cries of “Hallo!” and “Laowai!” completed the transition. Finally, 100 km into the long day, we labored into Gonghe, government seat for the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Region (海南藏族自治州). The city, from which I type this post, turned out to be a miserable bastion of modern development, centered around sprawling concrete government complexes situated on a wide boulevard. For the first time since leaving the Sichuan basin, there was no doubting that we were indeed still in the PRC, a fact we had happily forgotten over a month in the frontier. Our frustrating recrossing of the Yellow — ten months after first traversing it in Shandong — symbolized not only our return to Northern China, but also the beginning of our approach to the city from which all the evil of Chinese modernity flows: Beijing. If only I had a ring of power to destroy, I’d be feeling a lot like Frodo.

Alexis in his training apparel / Alexis en habillement d'entraînement

English: Alexis, our friend and previous teammate, has finally gotten his lazy French butt around to opening his own site, entitled Sentiers De Chine (Trails of China), where he’ll be recording his adventures (in French) and pictures from May until whenever he decides to stop going. We wish him the best of luck on the rest of his voyage!

Pour les francophones: D’abord, comme Alexis me rappelle souvent, je ne suis qu’un ‘ricain, donc permettez-moi SVP quelques erreurs en la langue de Lafesse! M. Lerognon, notre cher ami et ex-co-aventurier, s’est enfin appliqué à se faire un site à lui-même, et avec seulement 3 mois de retard! Comme disent les chinois, “vite venu, vite parti (來得快，去得快),” et alors on espére qu’il pourra y partager les anecdotes et photos de son périple au moins aussi longtemps qu’il a pris en l’ouvrant! Mais franchement, le site, qui s’appelle Sentiers De Chine, est très bien conçu (apparemment grâce à Gilles Vigner), et nous lui souhaitons une excellente continuation et plein d’aventures et mésaventures (car celles-ci sont les plus marrantes à raconter)!

Now, after over ten months of munching away the dry bottom layers, we have finally arrived at the icing on the cake of our adventure: Qinghai. This, the fourth largest territorial unit in the empire and birthplace of the current Dalai Lama, embodies nearly every reason we undertook this colossal ride: pristine natural beauty, life highly unadulterated by the worst parts of modernity, and for once, healthy resistance to mainstream ideology. The green, spacious province was also the intended target for my China ride in 2007. Thankfully, however, a grocery store clerk and hobby cyclist outside of Chengdu managed to convince me that my friend and I were unfit and underprepared for biking of that order.

Truly in 2007 I was in no way ready for this territory on my folding Dahon without camping supplies, warm clothes, or bike tools (I didn’t even carry any chain oil!), and so I probably owe my life to that grocery store clerk I found riding outside of Chengdu. This time around, however, we’ve built the entire trip — endurance, equipment, etc. — around our eventual arrival here in the northeastern corner of the Tibetan plateau, the challenges of which we have met in stride. This, of course, flies in the face of nearly every Han we told of our eventual arrival here. The vast majority was convinced we’d meet with something between certain doom and probable vexation in the territory of the rowdy, lawless Tibetans. In the end, they were right about the trouble, but completely off base on where it would come from.

Biking across the roof of the world, by far the wildest stretch of our trip, affords stunning vistas of the genre that inspire epic poetry (I’d go on, but the photos page says it all) and for the first time since I was in California last summer, wildlife! But crossing this awesome terrain entirely exposed to the elements also makes one subject to a number of natural hardships. The most obvious are climatic: increased proximity to the glowing sun for 16 hours a day, sparse oxygen, and sudden, violent rain storms that soak you to the bone kilometers from shelter in any direction. For a while, the thousands upon thousands of huge yaks lumbering across the roads from every which direction caused some trepidation, but then we quickly realized that these hairy, horned beasts — which could end us handily if they had a mind to — are more terrified of us than CCP Central is of the Dalai Clique. There are also the throngs of biting horseflies (yakflies?) that have us instinctively doing the Harlem Shimmy on slow uphills — before we stop to purge them by the dozen when we’ve become focused on jiving than pedaling. The difficulty of travel is further multiplied by the gravel roads, utter lack of signage, and the fact that Chinese is frequently about as useful as Esperanto. Those, however, are all minor annoyances compared to the most terrifying aspect of Tibetan travel.

I was first warned about the danger of Tibetan Mastiffs in 2007 by the grocery clerk, who told me the huge aggressive dogs tend to assess anything moving slowly past their territory as a direct threat to their families. After that, internet searches and countless recounted experiences confirmed that the people best known for tranquility and peace have indeed over the centuries bred to perfection the most sinister dogs known to man. I then forgot about them until we noticed that our comrades-in-bike on the Pan-Eurasian tour had included in their equipment a sonic “Doggie Dazer” to ward off wild Siberian hounds. We thought briefly about the $70 investment, but in our true idiotic form chose to save the money instead (that’s seven pints of Guinness in Shanghai!).

Then about two weeks ago, the mother of our new Tibetan friend Dhargey was alarmed to hear we’d be traveling northward with no counter-canine contingencies. She pulled out from her woodpile for us two heavy sticks and told us our probability of being mauled was in direct ratio with how well we hit any charging curs. Since then our route has been lined by hundreds and hundreds of aggressive dogs, for nearly every campsite, herd of yaks, or house with smoke in the chimney — in other words, every place you’ll find a family — keeps at least one horrible hound. Blissfully, however, over 95% of them have the good sense to chain down their wooly barking masses of insanity during the day. Until two days ago, we’d only come across four “loosies,” and each of those times we had the good fortune to be rolling fast downhill as they picked up on our presence. Then three days ago, on the 30 km of uphill gravel from Gansu into Qinghai, our luck finally ran out. Two dogs well bigger than any pit-bull rushed howling through the wire fence adjacent to an earthen house, and would have been on us in seconds if we hadn’t jumped off the bikes and grabbed the sticks in one movement. Thankfully they must have been acquainted with the pleasure of a stick beating as they did not come closer than six feet (two meters) in front of us. However, they continuously circled, snarling menacingly, and tested our limits, coming as close as possible before the stick was again pointed at them. We tried several times to get on the bikes and ride off, assuming this would neutralize the threat in their minds. But that would be way too easy considering our luck, for the second we were even slightly in profile to them, they raced back in, fangs out. When all hope of a retreat at more than ten paces an hour seemed lost, Andy finally remembered what we’d been told by an American a few days prior about their being afraid of rocks, of which there was an unlimited amount the road. So we devised a new strategy: holding them in place with the stick and pushing them back with hurled projectiles. Truly only the sticks and stones were enough to save our sorry bones, because the words of their masters, who came mostly just to gaze disconnectedly at the fifteen minute spectacle, did little. We faced three more individual loosies that day, and now have the technique more or less down — we think. What’s worse than actually having to beat back huge beasts that do want to do us substantial harm, is having to be constantly on the alert, which rapidly accelerates my fatigue. I am ever on the lookout for PDAs (potential dog areas), mistake a hundred baby yaks and big rocks for dogs a day, and nearly fall off the bike at every sudden roar of a chained mastiff in the distance.

So in short, those have been the downsides of riding out here, not the people! Quite contrary to what most of the paranoid Han had told us, Tibetans have been — for the most part — the warmest, most generous people we’ve met so far, even if sometimes a bit much. One nice young guy said we’d never make our distance before dark (he well underestimated our pace) and offered to pull us by a rope behind his motorcycle. After our first pleasant experience with the yak herders detailed in the last post, we’ve been invited in, fed, and taken care of dozens of times. One day back in northern Sichuan, a hair after noon, a barefoot young man flagged us down off the highway to eat lunch with him. He led us past his mother, busily milking yaks outside, into the smoky black yak-hair tent that is their home. He placed before us bowls and the wooden box with drawers of barley flour, butter, and cheese, and poured out freshly heated milk tea. He exhorted us over and over with one of the only sentences he knew in Chinese: “eat zamba, eat zamba! (吃糌粑！吃糌粑!)” He and his family had already eaten, but he and his mother, who could speak some elementary Mandarin, explained that they just wanted to feed us, nothing desired in return. Since then, we’ve had to turn down many more similar offers than we could accept. I doubt anybody but an errant Han tourist or PLA soldier could starve to death while traveling near Tibetan nomads.

That said, Tibetans do exhibit a number of — shall I say — rustic habits that are highly off-putting to even our rough sensibilities. Anybody who has spent time in China knows that the Han have very little sense of shame about staring and violating personal space. It is safe to say that the Tibetans have zero such shame, congregating in groups of any size to stare at us and mumble to each other for as long as they please. If we could get a thirty minute television show called “Two White Boys Eating Noodles” on Tibetan television, we’d run it longer than Seinfeld! At least ten times a day a motorcycle will hover next to me for between five and ten minutes, eyes fixed on me and not the road.

They likewise seem to have little understanding of the concept of private property. They will pick up and play with anything that catches their fancy, seeming perplexed when we grab it back so defensively. I imagine, but am not sure, that this stems from a deep-seated community attitude toward possessions, a great way to live as long as everybody is in on the idea. Two days ago as we set up camp under a bluff next to a monastery, a group of five kids between 15 and 17 years old followed us off the road. Much to my displeasure, they picked up and inspected all of our belongings as I was trying to get my tent up before a sudden storm. Then, boom, the rain was coming down in rivulets before the poles were even set. Right as I was thinking this had to be the worst it could get, Andy shouted, “…and the bikes are gone!” It was a moment of complete defeat, myself, the inside of my tent, and and my scattered bags all soaked, the bike gone, pirated by some punk kids, and the dream of cycling triumphantly back to Beijing dashed — and right when I was really starting to build an affinity for Tibetan youth. But a few minutes later they were riding them back down the muddy hill toward us, absolutely no idea the intense panic their little joy ride had put me through. For reference, they then gawked idly at us for the following two hours as Andy and I just managed to get the tents dry before sunset.

Something else funny happened twenty-four hours after our free zamba lunch in the yak hair tent. Hungry and seeing no sign of a settlement for a good distance, we stopped on the side of the road to take down some snacks. A young, plump woman about thirty, smelling strongly of yak butter, walked out of her house with her son, set up an umbrella next to us under which to sit, and put out her hand for some of our food without saying a word. She’d share the handfuls with the boy, between Andy and me, and tossing into the grass the M&M’s from Andy’s trail mix. Get a little, give a little — that’s how it goes out here.

The only truly bad experience we’ve had came a few days ago. For background, I should mention that we’ve camped numerous times on the open grassland with no problems, and in fact twice passing Tibetans have even gotten off their motorcycles to help us set up our tents! On this particular occasion, we picked an innocuous site on a huge grassy plain a few hundred meters from the highway, far — on that side of the road at least — from any tents or houses with smoke in the chimneys (most houses are empty during the summer, the families living in tents with their yaks or sheep on far away patches of grass until the cold weather forces them home). Then right at dusk a woman in her twenties showed up in front of Andy’s tent demanding in firm, simple Chinese: “Give money, or go! Give money, or go! (給錢！或者走！給錢！或者走!)” I thought to myself, ugh, she had to wait until it was dark to come pull this stunt, or we could have just pulled up and moved a few km down the road.

Unfortunately we had only 4.6 yuan spare change between us. I gathered myself out of my sleeping bag and offered her the 2.6 from my pocket, which elicited from her a sharp scream of, “A hundred! A hundred! (一百！一百!)” For whatever inexplicable reason, the inanity of a woman unconfirmed as any kind of owner demanding extortion prices for camping after dark exploded the mercury out of my temper gage. I threw the money at her feet and started cursing at her in English, clearly an insane move in completely alien territory and one that I regretted immediately. She then made an “Oh ho! Now you’re in trouble!” gesture at me and stormed off, presumably to find some sort of enforcer. We decided without hesitation to decamp and ride back 5 km to the village where we had eaten dinner.

But before we could even get the bags out of the tents, a motorcycle carrying two men pulled within a meter of Andy’s tent, shining their high beams in his eyes. I clutched my dog stick and crept toward them slowly, hoping they wouldn’t turn on Andy before I could get there (and hoping that I’d be of any use if they did). He calmly wished them zhashidele (blessings and fortune to you), and after mumbling between themselves for a few seconds, they returned the greeting and rode back down to the road. They proceeded to ride back and forth on the road in front of us, only their headlights visible. Hearts racing, we got camp broken in record time and managed to roll off the grass through the pitch dark with no further incident, other than being grossly overcharged for a grungy little room without electricity or toilet back in the village.

That one mishap aside, it has been pure bliss to be among these Tibetans, and for more than just their generosity or the fact that many — very sadly — love us from a misguided belief that Americans will be their saviors. In a country singlemindedly obsessed with “development” and eradication of “backwardness,” the Tibetans for the most part are just living their lives the way they want to, the way they have for a long long time. More than that, they have bold personalities, grow long hair, wear bright colors, and walk with an easy swagger, as compared to their Han counterparts who by and large betray a downtrodden nature in their tight gait. In a word, they’ve got gusto. Life out here, if laborious and bitter, appears to be happily free from modern incarnations of stress — probably why I have yet to see a single Tibetan without a thick head of hair! The extent of technology most have incorporated into their lives is limited to motorcycles — the new horses — and cell phones. More than all of that, the biggest reason we love these Tibetans is their defiance, their willingness to hold up the middle finger to the establishment while their inland compatriots fall into line.

In fact, that defiance and fierce devotion to their way of life — and several amazing stories we’ve heard along the way — should be the subject of the next post… unless something truly crazy happens before our next rest stop. Until then, wish us luck as we push further into the wildest portion of our trip!

"The Han are inseparable from ethnic minorities; ethnic minorities are inseparable from the Han; ethnic minorities are inseparable from each other - CCP Xiahe Organization Department" If you follow our Flickr feed, you know one of my side pursuits out here is recording modern propaganda. This is tangential to the goals of this site, but seriously, wow, I had to show this to the world. It was taken in Xiahe (known in Tibetan as Labrang), the site of the most pilgrimized Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet. The southern half of town is old and Tibetan, and the northern half is modern Han/Hui. The old side is being torn down bit by bit to make way for new development, and the monastery itself is being tapped for tourism.

I said we’d go looking for Tibetan shenanigans in that last post, and boy, did we find them! We’ve seen and done so much in the last few days, I’ll do my best to redact and break up details. By the way, all the Tibetan names below have been changed and no pictures are included… just in case.

So out of Shuajingsi (刷經寺), we climbed and climbed all morning until we hit 4345 m (14,255 feet) and descended miraculously into the wide open grassland. Immediately we came across herds of yaks, nomadic tent clusters, and huge mastiffs — sure signs that we had entered the Tibetan regions. If the yaks weren’t enough to confirm this, the massive military presence sealed the deal. Behind the tourist trap tent city where we had our first real Tibetan meal was an encampment of hundreds of military tents, dozens of howitzers stationed on the road, and all other manner of malevolent machinery.

Thankfully though we were too lost in the scenery to care much about politics for awhile. These landscapes up in northern Sichuan are like something from another world, endless rolling hills of green sprinkled with yellow and purple flowers like the world’s biggest king cake, skies bluer than the deep ocean, and more clouds in every direction than I could even see in a dream. The place makes Yellowstone look like the Jersey Turnpike! It has also been refreshing, to say the least, to take in deep cycling breaths in some of the world’s cleanest (if thin) air, all the more striking due its proximity to some of the world’s dirtiest air.

So after a day of riding through heaven and dinner being stared at by five Tibetan men (they are quite curious), Andy suggested we try to camp out next to a nomad tent for kicks. Just down the road, and right as a storm filling half the sky was moving in, we pulled into a pasture on the side of the road. I asked the men sitting between the two army-sized tents (one was a blue earthquake rescue tent) if we could camp, and they said, sure! As we set up, we were joined by the youngest one, named Tenzin. Tenzin, 22, had an earing in his left ear, curly hair down to his ears, high rubber boots, and dirt on his face. He was fascinated watching us pull the gear from the bikes and set it all up into two tidy tents that held our bags and sleeping gear. Shortly thereafter, we were joined by Norbu, a 62 year old man wearing a traditional overly long sleeved coat and clutching prayer beads, Palden, 48 years old with a gaunt, dark face, and Palden’s 3 year old grandson.

As we sat in the grass, Norbu inquired our nationality. “We love Americans,” he said, “because you support our Dalai Lama.” We hadn’t expected the conversation to get serious so quickly, but they had nothing to hide from us. It turned out that they were all devoutly religious. In fact, I haven’t talked to a single Tibetan not serious about his religion or culture in the last 5 days. Through his shaky Chinese, Norbu let us know how important the Dalai is to the Tibetans and how “the heart is filled with pain” at the long separation from him. Norbu remembered vividly the “liberation” of Tibet when he was 13 and how the Dalai, 23, had been forced to flee. All three of them told of how difficult their situation is, how they hide pictures of the Dalai Lama in their houses despite the danger of doing so. All three of them even wore double-sided pendants bearing the image of the DL and the head monk of their local monastery.

They were as willing to talk about their resentment at Chinese occupation as they were about devotion to their spiritual leader. Both Norbu and Tenzin had participated in the protests of March, 2008, screaming “Long live the Dalai Lama” in the streets of their town with hundreds of compatriots. For their show of passion, they were both plucked from their homes by paramilitary police in the middle of the night and sentenced to prison terms for their outbursts. Norbu got a light 20 days, probably due to his advanced age, but Tenzin had to spend the entire 20th year of his life in prison. For stretches of four and five days at a time he was denied food. When he was finally released, he was told that next time he’d be facing not jail time but a bullet — like four others from his town and dozens in the surrounding area had faced this time. The year was particularly hard on the young man, who was the only man left to support his family after his father had been mauled to death by yaks when he was 13. Palden, who had been interpreting parts of the story for his junior and senior compatriots with weak Chinese, said that the Tibetans in the area had even pulled for the US against China in the Olympics. That’s how you know it’s serious.

After lots of really deep talk, two other men in their twenties, Lobsang and Choden showed up, and everybody headed over to the pen behind the tents where two yaks were tied down. Then Tenzin, a trained yak vet, got on a long pink glove and, after shooting me a smile that said, “I can’t believe my new American friends are going to see me do this” jammed his hand way up there to fidget something around before popping in a long artificial insemination needle and depressing the plunger. Thankfully, in case I had missed a detail, the spectacle was repeated on the second yak before both were released into the pen. About this time it started doomsday raining. Andy and I were rushed into the blue tent with Tenzin, and the other four spent 30 minutes in the rain pulling the herd of 200+ yaks into the pen.

Here I should explain something it took me a while to figure out. None of the men was related by blood. Instead, they were all part of a farming cooperative in which each family owned a certain number of yaks, which are taken care of in shifts. Tenzin was paid 1000 yuan a month for three consecutive months of living out of a tent and servicing the herd, which is all females of calving age. The other four were serving a short service term, for which each family in the cooperative has to turn out one man for fifteen days every year. They are paid 300 yuan for their time, or 20 yuan a day. Norbu, over the legal age to work, was risking a fine for his presence, but had come to take the place of his son who had some other business to attend to.

Back to the tent, Tenzin busily started a fire in the stove from dried yak dung and a little lighter fluid. Once it was going well, he threw a big pot of tea and a small pot of water on to boil. Incidentally, this mess tent was cluttered and dirty in a distinctly Tibetan way. There were two huge sacks of yak turds in the corners, dirty bowls flung around the sides, a solar battery powering a lightbulb, cloth sacks full of barley powder here and there, and a big slab of yak meat hanging from the ceiling. Soon the others returned soaking wet and joined us huddled around the dung stove. A few minutes later, three other men walked in from another herd several kilometers down the road to join us for dinner. Then it was like a yak herders’ bachelor den in the tent, with each of the men pitching in to help make the dinner: one setting rice to boil in a pressure cooker, one slicing the hanging yak meat, one slicing up some peppers, and everybody else passing bowls around to get washed out with boiling water. We weren’t allowed to help with anything. Instead, Lobsang, the 27 year old with long hair and two kids, handed us bowls, a his tin of yak butter, and his sack of barley powder to make zanba. We fingered out some butter into the bowl, over which he poured tea with the tea ladle. Once the butter was melted, we topped the bowl off with handfuls of barley powder, and then sank our fingers in to mix it all up until it was a brown doughy-y ball tasting like a combination of cheerios and butter. It’s filling as hell too, as it needs to be, since these guys eat it 3 meals a day! Eventually the rice and yak meat/peppers were done, and sticks were pulled from the yak dung sack to serve as chopsticks… yes, super gross. Since there were limited bowls, Tenzin and Lobsang had to wait until we were done.

After dinner, the men cut up with each other and laughed deeply at what I’m sure were lots of yak and women-related jokes. It kills us not to understand Tibetan and makes us embarrassed that we are forced to communicate with them in the language of their oppressors — which most of them can hardly speak anyway. Several of them pulled out their prayer beads and were reciting prayers between discourse. Every one had a cell phone and pulled it out to make prank calls or play music. Around 9, completely exhausted, we excused ourselves to our tents. They insisted that we come back to their tent in the morning for more zanba.

When we woke up, the guys, who had stayed up until 2 am playing cards neither gambling nor drinking in the process (I never thought it possible) were already up and in the pen with the yaks. To my horror, I saw that they were holding up the tea ladle from the previous night full of salt to lapping yak tongues… again, gross. Palden, the grandpa who had been our interpreter for most of the night, was also quite the yak-boy. He lassoed three heifers for the insemination pen, hitting their horns spot-on with every throw and reeling each one in within three throws. They then filed them out one at a time, counting as they went, and led the herd a few kilometers down the road to a pasture with high grasses. We sat with Tenzin in front of the yak crap stove and had more zanba, of which he couldn’t force enough onto us. Forty five minutes later, the others returned, we talked some more, and then it was time for us to break camp. This time they all pitched in, rolling up the tents, carrying bags, or just whatever they could see needed to be done. After some group pictures, we bid everyone “demu” (goodbye in Tibetan) and rolled down the gorgeous plain.

I can’t emphasize enough how well Tibetans work as a team — absolutely every task they undertake is everybody’s responsibility, regardless of age or status. They’re also the downright friendliest and most generous people we’ve met on our trip so far. It fills my heart with pain to know that they’re so tormented and bullied by their colonizers, the Chinese. Yes, peoples have been dominated by others since the beginning of time, and sure, some of the Chinese up here are ok people, but for the most part, it’s an ugly picture. I can’t help but imagine how I would feel if my dad were arrested and beaten for being caught with a rosary or publicly declaring his belief in Jesus. Heathen though I am, the experience with our yak herding friends has, more than anything, made me feel lucky that I was born in the USA.

More to come soon!