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Cycling in China

Email from the Road

Part 16

On a beautiful day

I woke up this morning and saw it was raining. In fact I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the rain coming down. There was a feeling inside me to stay in bad where it was nice and warm due to an electric blanket. But there was a noise in the corner. Jim didn't agree. He felt I had been lazy enough in Kunming and it was time to go.

So I took a shower and left the hotel. After a bowl of noodles, not the best breakfast for a cyclist, I prefer some good rice porridge with veggies and meat or dumplings, I cycled out of the town. It was dry but cold. My thermometer told me it was only 13 degrees. The road looked ok and there was little traffic. I felt a bit cold and took out an extra shirt, my overshoes and a jack. A little later I had to use even my cloves.

It was not very interesting what I saw. Mostly agriculture fields and mountains in the far distance which actually came closer. It was not easy to find a rhythm. A look on my altitude meter showed me the road slight went up. And it continued going up to 2200 meters, 45 kilometers long while the temperature went down to just 6 degrees. It was very unpleasant and I thought it was a good idea to stay in the next town: Shizhou.

I arrived there around 1.30, had a big bowl of noodles and felt warm again. Even my cold feet felt better now. What to do? Wait here and then the next day a short ride to Luoping? Shizou didn't have a real attraction so I continued. The next 45 kilometers went first up but in the end all the way down to 1500 meters. It was still cold. A hotel was easily found. For just $3 I got a nice big room with bathroom but no water. Hopefully tonight there will be some. So the wonderful weather of Saturday was followed by some bad weather on Sunday. In the end it wasn't such a beautiful Sunday. But then again, isn't that what traveling is? Some days are great, others are not. Tomorrow I'll cycle to Xingyi. Hopefully it is warmer by then.

Shopping

Who like shopping? Not me at least. But it's sometimes great to walk around in those little towns that should have a name while they better should have none. In this case I was hanging around in Xingyi, a town I had visited in 1999 but I didn't remember anything interesting about it. The Lonely Planet, the Bible, said it was an interesting town. Why didn't I remember anything about this town? Because there was not much to remember, I found out. But, as usual shopping was interesting enough. Not that I want to buy something. Looking around is more then enough.

I checked in a hotel, found I had no water, no towels, no TV, no blankets and actually not even hot drinking water. The staff was friendly enough to bring everything one by one but this morning I changed my hotel for a cheaper and better place.

The first thing I saw on the streets were cars. It was a hell of noise. In this town it seemed everybody who has a vehicle HAS to use his claxon. But I walked on the pavement, if I could. The first shops I saw were selling all kinds of grocery stuff. This is nothing special since it seemed everybody in Asia is selling some kind of foods.

Next door I saw a shop where they tried to sell sun collectors. Probably the business wasn't too good because apart of the sun collectors they also sold furniture. I guess the additional business wasn't good too because the girl who should keep an eye on the business lie fast asleep on the table.

A shop where they sold steel wires, those you can use when you want to build a house. The wires were several meters long and it was the only thing the shop sold. Again it seemed to me there was little business in this branch.

Hospitals were there enough. It seemed on every corner I saw a red or green cross. Most spectacular of these hospitals were the beds, which could be seen from the street. One who would be ill and had to stay here might be protected by a windscreen while he or she had to changed clothes but once the patient was in bed it was all visible from the street side. In this case blue windows would have a significant purpose but here those were not used. So I saw a doctor working on an infuse with a patient. Strange.

Even more strange was next door. This was a shop were they were selling welded racks. The racks should be used with stairs. There were some hanging on the wall. The stairs should have just a few steps so the rack was just small. Big business? I guess not because outside some people were playing mahjong to kill the time.

One of the shops that knocked me out in China are the wedding shops. Tabei Wedding is a shop were mostly women go to for get the make-up and dresses for the wedding. I walked a couple of times on the street and saw in two hours time the same girl sitting and made pretty. It's usually not the day of the wedding when the girls come here for their make-up. When the work is done, the girl and her husband will visit a photo session. The real wedding has taken place earlier or maybe later.

I was saying something about the groceries. One thing which is very different from Holland are the prices of the grocery shops and the supermarkets. In Holland the supermarkets are much cheaper then the local grocery stores. In China it's usually not. The supermarkets are only marginally cheaper. For example, I bought a six pack of yoghurt for Y7 at the street corner, in the supermarket the same pack cost me Y6,5.

Looking at the shops I wonder sometimes how people make money. It seems the margins are so small that making business cost just a lot of money. The internet shops are a good example. One PC here in China cost probably around Y5000 but for an hour on the internet as a user cost only Y2-3. It takes light-years before a machine will be paid off, it seems.

Food is the same. Everybody, well almost everybody is selling some kind of food. Some do it in little street restaurants, others sell just on the streets, barbecues or sweet potatoes, vegetables or fruits. One kilo of mandarins at the moment cost about Y1,5. Nothing much to gain fat!

And Guizhou, were I am now seemed to be a lot poorer then Yunnan. The difference even between Xingyi and Luoping, where I stayed two days ago and which is still Yunnan is big.

The streets are all open here. The condition of the houses is bad, worse then I have seen in Yunnan. Sure, there are fashion shops where one can buy all the fashionable clothes or shoes from Shanghai or Guangzhou. But who can buy it? Besides, the clothes shops can be a real funny thing. I saw like in Chengdu a few shops where they only sold brown trousers. For black trousers one has to go to the opposite of the street! It was the same for shoes.

And the shops sometimes look from the outside very dirty and poor but inside they are clean. Old houses with bad architecture and mostly ready to fall apart are still in use, for shops too. It's hard to understand one can walk in such a shop and not be in danger for the eventual collapse of the house.

But tomorrow I will leave this town though it's a bit difficult to find a way out. Today I cycled around but I do not really know where I have to leave the town! There are no roads markers so I probably go back to were I entered the town and hope for the best!

Guizhou

After Xingyi I expected worse roads. On the maps I use the colors of the roads have the wrong color. But it was all in all not too bad. The road mostly went down which made it not too difficult to cycle too. Still, the climbs were more steep then in previous days. It had a lot to do with the type of landscapes. After Xingyi the landscape became more and more like the scenery of Hechi and Yangshuo. There were lots of karst mountains and sometimes the road had to go up steep since there was no alternative.

karst1.jpg (18857 bytes)

Karst Hills

In one of those climbs the screw under my saddle broke off. It's the screw that holds the saddle on the saddle pin. Without a saddle it's difficult to ride. But I am in China. Almost anything can be fixed in this country. The problem occurred in front of a house were they were making barbed wire. They had a screw for me but it was too short. A few hundred meters earlier I had seen a little barn, which was full of metal. I tried my luck.

Indeed they had a screw but it was too long and it had no possibility to tie it saddle pin. It wasn't a problem. The man in charge first found a screw head and welded it. Then he saw a part off the original screw and I could use it. Chinese are very inventive with this sort of problems.

Then the one of the screws of my front rack broke off but this screw I still had available in my bags. More important was the key of my lock. The key broke too! It was a new Chinese key since all my other keys were by now too weak to use. So my lock is unusable unless I can try to get the broken part out of the lock which is unlikely.

But the landscape made it a lot more positive. The whole scenery between Anlong and Ceyang was like Hechi or Yangshuo and very spectacular as far as I could see it! There was fog, lots of fog. There was no way I could make some pictures or even film but maybe in the next coming up days it'll be better. I am at lower altitude and it might be slightly warmer here too. But in that perspective, I am not optimistic.

Even in the hotel they were not optimistic about the weather. I got without bargaining a cheaper price and I got a heater! My bike got a private room and the shower was so big I could play football in it! I will not tell you about the toilet, it's a typical Chinese one. Do I have to explain more?

Next: Part 17

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