Ha Giang to Yangjie: 178 miles
China was a step into the unknown.
On TV it was coal-fired power stations, Tiananmen Square and the march of the Belt and Road. But I’d also heard fond talk from cyclists that had visited and hoped my ride would lift the lid a little.
Assuming I made it that far! The Tianbao border was a strange place to cross.
The road to the checkpoint was empty, so it was reassuring at least to see a coffee shop just before the gate. There wasn’t much else: a yard of empty wagons, a dormant sawmill and a sleeping dog.
The guys at the table in front set the tone. One had a huge owl tattoo (its eyes peeping above the neckline of his shirt), his colleague wore a sole black glove and the third in this trio, a polo neck, in the 25 degree heat. A girl in a leather miniskirt and red lipstick took their order.
I wondered if Iβd walked into a John Woo film.
The Vietnamese guards couldnβt fathom what I wanted and dismissed me with the flick of a wrist. I showed them my visa. After turning it upside down several times and summoning a supervisor they decided to leave me to the whim of the Chinese and waved me through.
After a short walk through no manβs land I caught the attention of a guard and was immediately ushered into a cavernous new building and through to an interview room. I took a seat and three police officers appeared with starched uniforms and perfect English. Maybe this was a John Woo film…
βWhere are you going?β, they began, genuinely baffled. βWhere are you from? Where have you been?” …Have you seen a man with an owl tattoo…?
It took about an hour of note-taking and phonecalls to superiors. Why did you visit Albania in 2017? But they were very polite. It was procedural but they were also quite intrigued: Are there many Chinese people in England? I told them we have a Chinese restaurant in most towns (impressed nods of surprise). And do you have passport scanners, like these ones? Yep. Wow (more nodding).
Eventually – after stripping the bike and feeding everything through the x-rays, I had my rubber stamp. And with it, a firm handshake and a very sincere βWelcome to China!β from a row of smiling guards.
Only there wasnβt a lot of China to welcome me to at this forgotten outpost. Just a handful of shops none of which could sell me a SIM card (Chinese ID holders only), and it was Chinese cards only at the bank too, so no cash either. Good thing I had that coffee.
After the delay, I needed to get going. But where to? I had no proper map, no SIM, no Google β just a few screenshots and a list of the Chinese characters for the next few places on route.
I canβt read Mandarin but I developed a ‘system’ to try and ascribe some meaning. In this picture I am 34km from can-can dance guy / octopus ιΊ»ζ ε‘. It sort of did the trick!
With no map, I wasn’t expecting to kick off with such a climb either, 40km in the end. Most of it gradual (see the staircase below) but a climb nonetheless.
Having found no lunch, I was flagging, and happy to pick up some roadside bananas – this the only pit stop I would pass.
In fact the road and surrounding landscape were eerily quiet at times. This is explained partly by population distribution and the Heihe – Tengchong line which I was about to cross, into the comparative emptiness of the south-west.
I wanted to camp, but the sides of the roads were just too steep.
I was nearly at Malipo (ιΊ»ζ ε‘ – the can-can / octopus town from earlier) but wasn’t sure about hotels. I knew they needed a special license to host foreigners and had heard stories of some cyclists being turned away and effectively chased out of town by the police. So having found a hotel ι εΊ (sort of a pi symbol in a bunk bed) – I fully expected to have the door shut in my face or to not have enough money (still waiting on an ATM).
I tried my best to act natural then when I was marched up to this room for a reasonable price and waited for the door to close before celebrating!
I rushed around like a child checking everything out. An electric kettle and electric blanket! It was a bit silly getting so excited. China has the same things as everywhere else really, it’s just somehow all a little different. I turned on the TV, for instance, to find a panda channel (dedicated entirely to the panda enclosure at Chengdu Zoo!).
Meanwhile, Chairman Xi was on an official visit to Macau, with wall-to-wall coverage across all news networks. While he inspected aircraft carriers and sat in front of huge paintings, the English language channel interviewed some ‘everyday’ folk in the street. All were incredibly happy and grateful for the unrivalled success of ‘one nation, two systems’. A not so subtle middle finger to Hong Kong.
In the morning it was cold and misty, having climbed quite high the previous afternoon. I was still completely overwhelmed by everything. Even breakfast was a huge adventure! Which noodles? Which broth? Which toppings? They soon sensed it was beyond me and took the reigns.
In the end it was a good idea to have come into town (rather than camp) as I was able to get cash, a SIM card and a nice flask for the colder weather. Registering for a SIM card as a foreigner in rural China is a bit like buying a house. It took seven pretty determined members of staff (from two different branches of China Mobile) to work through the maze of photocopies, photographs, signatures and phonecalls necessary to pull it off.
With access to the Chinese net and a range of Mandarin-only mapping apps to explore, I sat down for a simple but incredible stir-fried potato feast.
Lunch sorted, I climbed out of Malipo and back into the countryside. It was very hilly. Terraces were carved in for crops. They looked nice but didn’t make the riding any easier.
Some of what I rode through over the next few days was quite bleak, but interesting all the same. Villages were small and dusty and unfinished buildings were common, jostling for space against ancient wattle and daub.
Occasionally I’d pass a big work party, like the group cutting cane below. It was December though and for the most part I saw nobody other than the occasional farmer wandering with a buffalo or tending to a market garden.
In slightly bigger towns (anywhere with a shop or two) people were very friendly – out in the fields they were often more reserved.
I bought some oranges from the smiley guy above and, with rain threatening, found a rough shelf of land for my tent a few hills later. Patriotic songs echoed from loudspeakers in the small village below but I was a long way from the party machine in Beijing. In fact these border regions are famous for resisting assimilation – the culture, traditions and language of the local minority groups proud survivors of the Cultural Revolution.
The lady in the shop below was from the Zhuang minority – pictures of her in traditional dress taking pride of place along the back wall.
I’d called in to get some breakfast and to ask for some water. People were universally happy to fill my bottles wherever I went but I soon learned that water in China is nearly always drunk hot. You can’t see the steam, but this kind lady is actually filling my sports bottle with boiling water. Refreshing!
She then disappeared to pick some greens for my breakfast, which was excellent.
I also picked up a few tea eggs from her neighbour for the road (literally – boiled eggs soaked in spiced tea π )
From here it was another bleak day in the mist which didn’t lift until late afternoon.
I entertained myself with a Learn Mandarin tape on Audible. It involved lots of repetition – if anyone was around they’d have learned that “I would like some fried noodles” (over and over!).
Helpful for when I reached the city of Wenshan in the afternoon and got to order some noodles for real (chow mein – kind of a cheat!). Wenshan was a small city by Chinese standards, but with enough traffic to require concentration. The separate bike lane was a gift!
I cranked out some miles on the very handy bike lane then stopped at a petrol station to quench my thirst with some more boiling water.
I briefly considered camping on a heavily wooded roundabout, then pressed on an hour or so, past a creepy farm and into these creepy woods instead. I stepped out to confront the trees a few times in the night, but otherwise, it was a fine enough spot (and realistically, much better than a roundabout).
Again – the morning was misty.
But it soon cleared with the bright chilli oil and cheery smiles of this small town noodle shop. As the cheapest and most available option, I would eat a giant cauldron like this at least once a day for the next 5 weeks!
Sometimes people in these places would ask for a selfie. My best conversation starter was to show them my WeChat. EVERYONE uses WeChat in China! It’s like a What’sApp, social network and form of payment all in one. Handily it has a built in translator. So after the picture below, we were able to chat (through our phones). Sort of weird, but also nice as people like the guy below would always check in with me a few days later to see how I was getting on.
After all the drab grey villages I was really happy to see these stacks of steaming bao buns just over the road from the noodle place. The pastry was delicate and layered in a way I’d never seen. The one in the picture is black sesame – a new favourite.
The sun came out in the afternoon and I felt all round very excited to be in China. Even the ubiquitous party slogans were an event. Now and then I’d stop to try and translate them. This one, something about building a prosperous family.
There are some fair old hills in Yunnan, but the new highways just laugh as they barrel right through. This was great for me, as they absorbed all the traffic. But it did mean I was doing things the hard way.
At least I had the people on side: two sets stopping in the same afternoon to hand me drinks!
Stopping for some noodles, I noticed this group in traditional dress. They looked to be H’mong (known as Miao in China) – the most significant minority over the border in Ha Giang. The man in the bottom picture is using a water pipe – also very common in Vietnam.
Pit stop over it was back into open country to try and find a place to sleep. This was harder than I expected as an unusual number of families seemed to be wandering through the fields.
The brother and sister below flagged me down and invited me to their house. The sister was very excited as she was studying English at college. As we chatted they explained that today was one of two grave cleaning days (hence all the folks in the field). They were about to head out themselves for the festival, but packed me off with an armful of cakes and fruit – hugely appreciated later!
With all the activity in the usually quiet countryside (including quite a lot of firecrackers!) the best I could find was this uneven ground in the woods.
I was hiding in a ditch – but happy π
While of course there was Tiananmen and the Belt and Road, there were also kind people ready to put the kettle on.
In China the bike was a way of moving, but it was a way of seeing too.
Rolling Project 