By Jon Sims: Far from the Maddening Crowd
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- 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….;
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