It's Happening....
By Jon Sims: Far from the Maddening Crowd
- Details
- Category: Ningbo News
- Published: Monday, 15 October 2012 09:27
With courtesy to Jon Sims, please find the below story about his way to see and travel China. He is a long time ready of NingboLife and plays an active part in Ningbo expat community. NingboLife would be glad, if this story would encourage you to write your story, we will "print" it and thousand viewers will read it... not only in Ningbo
By Jon Sims, Ningbo
I bought this Suzuki 400 (pit pike) motard on a whim, as you do. I didn’t like the 17” front wheel so I put a real off road 21” rim on it. Took it into
the mountains to play and realised the gearing was way too high for off road and seating position was way too high.. Very easy to fall over. It has a top speed of around 140kmh and it was then I realised what I had.. A tough little machine ideal for cruising Chinese roads. So… Change the knobblies to road tires, make some panniers, mounting brackets and a rack for the top box and voila! Probably the most ideal dual purpose machine for Chinese roads. As it was time was against me and a 6,000Km round trip to Kunming was out of the question. The wee baby needed testing on something a little less demanding. A 2,000Km trip around Qiandao Lake and Huangshan would be good. Because this is China there is little difference between off road and the main highways, apart from the speed. Frankly speaking the main highways were probably more of a shakedown than any off road excursions.
The drive from Ningbo to Jiande town where the trip starts is not interesting. In fact it is incredibly boring.
Not only that it is incredibly dangerous. The rule of the road here is “there are no rules”.. Accidents are everywhere with Pedestrians, Electric Bikers, Cyclists and this ilk totally devoid of any responsibility at all. If they cause an accident it is your fault as you have a driving license and insurance. It sucks and it is stupid and it will change sometime in the future and knowing this GVT it will change very quickly when it does. Until then it’s stupid and the best thing you can be is incredibly vigilant. However, politics aside, my intention was to drive around the south side of Thousand Island Lake, around the corner up to Huangshan city and then back home via the north side of the lake. I had done the north side before as well as Huangshan. A country lane from Huangshan winds up through the mountains to descend rapidly to a village called Jie Kou. In English this means “mouth of the road”. The number designated to this road by the Anhui Province is X001. I’m sure if you asked someone in the know they would be able to tell you why. Apart from this the ride is spectacular and there is wild honey to be had at the township!
The journey really began at Jiande, a town on the banks of the Xinan river, a tributary of the Qian Tang River which flows into Hangzhou bay, which has an annual bore wave to match the mighty Amazon. It is supposed to be an amazing site. Being a surfer, I can’t get excited about this and after 17 years here have still to get off my lardy arse to drive the 100Km or so from home to watch it.
But Jiande is pretty, sitting in the river valley astride the Xinan, steep cliffs clad in green bush, reflected in the limpid silkiness of the deep still water.. Blah blah blah. It’s nice actually. At this time of year it’s very crowded and very expensive. So driving the south river road, passing tripper boats on their way to the dam which creates Qian Dao Lake and the endless mineral water factories (one of which is called WAHAHA… (laughing all the way to the bank!!!), I cruised onward into the baixia line road which wends around the south side of Qiandao.
The first thing I found surprising about this was the road immediately wound mountainwards. This was not surprising per se but the traffic jam was. One reason for liking motorcycles was the word Jam only applies to the prefix ; toast and….;
It turned out this country lane was actually the only main connection to the hinterland. The rest of China and sveral articulated trucks were at loggerheads as to who had first dibs in passing the roadworks. Yawn, yawn.. I gunned the bike up the gap and was out of there!
As the road progressed the traffic thinned and then was almost bald when I came across a bevy of shanghai bikers. A little further on was a guy and his “chick” on his low rider. They were not particularly friendly which was a bit of a surprise but then, I didn’t care. It was good to be out of the crowds and the scenery just kept on getting better and better.
The lanes became leafy and quiet, winding around one placid finger of water gently massaging the hills to the next. The corners gently lulling your thoughts into pure peace and the gentle thrum of the bike massaging your soul. I guess on a very big single cylinder it would be massaging your Ahhhh soul..
The sun, sending golden shafts through the leafy covering overhead was warm enough for me to strip down to shorts and a tee shirt. With a view like this, getting naked seemed about the right thing to do.
A group of cyclists swished by from the opposite direction. They all had the gear and the bikes and it was a beautiful site. Seeing Chinese people enjoying their leisure time and spending money on stuff that only two years ago would be frowned upon is probably the biggest indicator of a developing country. It’s not the roads or big buildings that shows development. It is people having spare time and the money to pursue anything other than survival or the accumulation of wealth.
Eventually the road reached Feng Kou Town, the end of the lake and where the road I took was northwards to Huangshan city. The road got progressively smaller and smaller and eventualy there was nothing but rock and a deep valley.
Little villages lined the way, with maize hanging on racks, drying in the Autumn sunshine. The world was good.
The bike simply kept on pulling. Every now and then I’d stop to take photographs. In fact the place was so damned photogenic I ended up dangling the camera around my neck rather than stowing it away inside the boxes.
I had bought aluminium boxes on line. It turned out they were plywood with an aluminium foil covering. Having my own workshop meant I could cut out my own 2mm aluminium sheet and make real boxes.
The brackets and carrier I made out of steel tube, bent and welded in my own shop and then sent out for powder coating. I was very happy to see they were taking this trip in their stride.
The road kept on climbing upwards and upwards and at the pass was a parking area with spectacular views of the road descending the other side. Long brown lines cut into the precipitous pine clad hills, winding back and forward as it snaked it’s way into the valley below.
Click Click.. So many photographs.
Just before I hit the top of the mountain pass I came upon these two scarecrows.
Again, another indicator of the prosperity and development of China.
Even the scarecrows go shopping nowadays!
Eventually X022 hit the main highway. I was back in civilization, well, rural civilization alongside the G205 highway, trucks, dust and all. I stopped at the junction to have a tinned coffee and whilst checking my location an incredibly gorgeous bit of totty in a clingy dress and high heels came up to me and started talking English. Turned out she was an English teacher and was at home with the parents, who were my age. Sigh… One good thing about being a bloke in your fifties is ogling sexy bodies seems to be ignored, whereas if I were half my age I would probably be getting stony stares and the cold shoulder.
Not only this but it was her mother who had sent her over; (maybe she would be a hottie too!), to make sure I was not lost. This did not stop my imagination racing off into the world of dusky sirens keeping me as a sex slave in a remote country village. What a way to go!
Eventually they invited me to their home (after assuring me the man of the house was there).
The man of the house turned out artisan. Not just any artisan. In fact, one of the best.
There were no photos on the walls, Instead there were
amazingly good portraits he had painted. Pieces of work like the hand made lacquer container below were worth many thousands of dollars US. He was so well respected that pieces from the forbidden city were sent to him for repairs. The quality was amazing and this was the first time since I had come to China I could actually say here was a truly skilled craftsman.
That night I slept in a local town packed with tourists. It was weird. There was a youth hostel with good western food and beer. China is truly changing.
The next day I was riding through Huangshan city on my way to Jie Kou on X001 provincial road. From the main highway X001 snakes through 60Km of some of the most radical scenery one can experience.
A year ago I had made a wrong turn and ended up on this road. By the time we were in the hills it was dark. We knew the views were going to be good as you could see nothing in the valleys below.
At that time I had the responsibility of taking 4 other biker mates down this road. They were tired and hungry and the name Jiekou means; mouth of road; in other words there was no more road. My balls were on the line. The road was terrible and eventually I was praying for a miracle.
The miracle happened in the guise of wild honey (which was about the best tasting thing that has ever entered my mouth) plus a retired couple got out of bed to ferry us across the water to the road at the other side of the inlet.
But this was daylight and the views were amazing.
Did I say the views were amazing?
The roads had been fixed up and were smooth and blacktopped. Locals were buiding houses everywhere as the government was handing out cash to keep the economy going through the recession. This had a manifold bonus. In the first case it kept the locals from drifting into the towns and cities. With the construction happening everywhere there was all of sudden a need for supplies of building materials, and then the furnishings that go inside houses. A year ago there was nothing. Now, sadly for the views in some places the roads were built out on both sides with brand new villages and the shops and suppliers making money and spending it. With the roads also came tourists with pockets full of cash and were a very good way for the locals to sell their produce directly, helping to increase their profitability.
Chinese people will pay US$50 for a free range chicken to eat. Yes. The villagers are not stupid and I am sure they actually go into the main towns to buy live farmed chicken for $3.00 each and bring them back home, put in baskets for the gullible fools in their Audis and Lexuses, and why not?
The locals remembered me (well.. I was probably the only westerner they have ever seen in their town before!), but sadly it was the wrong time for the honey.
The same old ferryman was also pleased to see me and asked after my friends. I could see him calculating his fares had my friends been with me!
And all of a sudden I had broken the back of my journey. I had another 100km of windy (not the blustery type) roads to Chun An Town, the “capital” of Thousand island lake.
Actually there are only some 400 islands in thousand island lake but so what! Ninety Mile Beach
in New Zealand is only 50 miles long. We are all people and pretty much the same. Even our willies are pretty much the same size regardless of the fact we would always like to think the one between our legs could be a little longer.
50Km further on I stopped for another coffee in a can and two guys on suzuki 150s’ pulled up. They were from a town nearly 1,000km north of here. Heavily laden with bags on their bikes. I was the junior of the trio and we laughed and joked and compared notes for an hour, shook hands and parted without exchanging contact details.
Coffee in a can seems to bring people together!
The world is so full of people, always new folk to meet. Holding on to a chance encounter serves only to drag something that was not really anything out. There are too many “brief encounters” and people with too much memory in their mobile phones only too willing to fill them up with nothing more than memories.
In Chun An town I treated myself to a Kentucky Burger. Strictly speaking I should have written “Mis-Treated” as that would have been closer to the truth. There was an unanswered phone call from some of my biker friends staying in a rural hotel in a village I had just driven through. They asked me to drive back the 50km or so to where they were staying but I deferred as I had somewhere else to go…
One more place to go and then I’d be home. The weekend before my Russian surfing buddie and I had pulled a car out of the surf. Yes; the owner of the vehicle had parked on the sand and the tide had come in. As soon as the water hit the tyres they sank into the sand and that was that. The girl was hysterical and a crowd of people stood and watched as the waves started breaking over the roof, hazard lights flashing bravely away.
The good thing about this was each time a wave hit the car it lifted it and floated it a bit. Here was the opportunity to rescue the car. We saved it to cheering from the crowd and the girl, full of relief and gratitude demanded my number. Promising the world. The year before I had saved the life of a young man who got into trouble in the surf. His girlfriend shrugged and said “thanks”. The few people in the crowd watched as the young man coughed up the ocean in his lungs and nobody clapped.
But save a car and you’re a hero!
The girl lived in a town halfway between here and home and I though what the hell. I had another friend in this place, why not check out the chick and then catch up with my friend?
The chick was embarrassed that I had contacted her, not that that surprised me and I sort of took pleasure in dragging out the encounter as it was obvious she was only too keen to get out of my presence as soon as possible.
This really did not bother me but the day after rescuing the car I learnt a further two young men had drowned at the opposite end of the beach. Maybe if we were not wrapped up with the car we could have rescued them? The truth is we were already on our way back to the hotel. If it had not been for the car we would have already have left the
beach.
The next day two sets of parents were there by the sands, crying forlornly. Big wigs from the local government were there too trying to show they cared. If they really cared there would have been proper surf rescue teams there.
This year 5 people drowned. The year before only one. It would have been two if I had not been there.
Once the girl had gone I called up my friend. He was out of town so after a couple more beers, was back to my hotel and sleep.
The bed smelt of stale urine.
So that was it. 4 days and nearly 2,000 Kilometers. The road back to Ningbo was boring. To break the monotony the gods decided to give me a rear tire puncture in the middle of nowhere. Gods.. Please note.. I was not that bored!
At Shengzhou I headed out into the Siming Shan Mountain range to take a more scenic path home. I first ventured into this area 17 years ago on a Chinese made motorcycle and sidecar. There were only paths then. It is different now and good roads are to be found everywhere. Literally hundreds of kilometers of mountain lanes in one handy area.
The Suzuki with the 21’ front wheel handled like a dream. I don’t care what people say. A big wheel means stable and a narrower tire means more grip. I was going round corners with grit and soily coverings with barely a wobble from the front end. If I had the standard 17” wide tire I’d have been “carping” myself.
The bike is called a Motard or Pit bike.. Motard sounds like Retard and pit bike gives you impressions of riding around hairy underarm nether places, sweaty and dank.
It is much more than that. Extremely good acceleration up to 120km/hour, light and maneuverable With the boxes on the back it really did give me everything I needed for this trip and I’m looking forward to the next one.
