Blog

No, not the intergalactic spaceship, but rather the newspaper in Livingston, my hometown.  They’ve agreed to publish articles I write about the trip and I post them here so the blog readers get them as well.

(Published in The Livingston Enterprise Jan. 31, 2008)

A fever friends and a feast while biking throughVietnam

        EDITOR’S NOTE: Former Livingston resident Jim Durfey, a 2000 Park High School graduate, has been bicycling through Asia and Europe with a group of friends. Below is another update on their journey. The Enterprise is periodically posting his accounts of the trek.

By Jim Durfey
For The Enterprise

In the Vietnamese town of Thai Hoa, I awoke to a feverish heat. Sweat soaked my shirt and my skin burned. As I contemplated the prospect of a midnight visit to a hospital in the countryside of a developing nation, I took my temperature. Forty degrees Celsius: I knew it was above normal, but I don’t know the Celsius system to know just how high the fever was.
        A simple equation I used often at Park High converts Celsius to Fahrenheit. I tried to do the math. I even wrote it down, but my mind muddled the figures. Eventually, I decided to simply try to cool myself off. So long as I was conscIOUS and had friends close by, my situation wouldn’t be too dangerous.

‘Now we are all friends’
When my bike group arrived in Vietnam, we were immediately faced with many challenges. Aside from a few mispronounced phrases, we couldn’t speak Vietnamese. In China we knew prices for rooms and food. In Vietnam we were clueless. We also didn’t know what the Vietnamese would think of us. The Chinese unfailingly love foreigners, especially Americans. Relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, on the other hand, have been normalized for only a dozen years or so, and it was not so long ago we were at war with each other.
On our first night in Vietnam, we rented out the attic of a couple in their early 60s. Pictures of our male host decked the living room walls. Here he stood, chest gleaming with medals, shaking hands with an officer. There he stood in the battle dress uniform of the North Vietnamese Army. Most certainly, he had been in the army while the war ravaged his country. Yet he sat with Americans in his home, cordially serving us the strong tea he probably missed on the battle front.
Mr. Quan, a quiet young man who helped us find our attic that night, sat with us and drank tea. We discussed his job in a city far away, his effort to teach himself English, and his girlfriend. He made a passing reference to Vietnam’s history of conflict with France and the United States. He quickly laughed nervously, saying, “But it is no problem, now we are all friends. We don’t care so much about the past.” It seemed the Vietnamese didn’t want to dwell on the war any more than Americans did.
I wanted to focus only on accomplishing daily tasks. Ordering food, finding the bathroom, and getting directions at first all required creative gestures and much mental exertion. However, more difficult problems yield more fulfilling results, or sometimes more delicious ones. After a couple of days, I knew the price of a bowl of pho, or rice noodles, and how to flavor them with fresh mint and a squirt of lemon.
A friendly feast
Though still communist by name, the Vietnamese government began a policy of economic liberalization in the mid-80s. The following flurry of foreign investment and development significantly raised the Vietnamese standard of living. New houses, narrow but deep and tall with distinctly bright colors crop up everywhere. Motorbikes and scooters crowd the roads. Young Vietnamese clothe themselves stylishly in Western fashions. The development has also affected hostel standards and prices.
Eager to extend the financial life of our trip, we chose to camp more often. One afternoon we searched for a site in dreary weather under clouds that promised rain. A jovial woman in a raincoat rode up to us on her motorbike. We explained we were looking for a campsite. She shook her head and feigned a shiver. It’s too cold to camp, she seemed to be saying.

        As an alternative, she brought us to her house. We sat inside one of the cozy wooden buildings that composed her residence while she served us tea. Soon she began preparing a meal. I wound up in a boat with her husband, who trolled around his fish pond, laying nets and harvesting fish.
The Ngugom’s, as we learned the family was called, served us a feast of fish, soup, vegetables and rice. We ate sitting on the floor with them and their two children, communicating without language and laughing at our different eating styles. That night they put us up, and the next morning refused to take the money we offered.
I wondered afterwards how many Americans would do the same for foreign travelers in the U.S. Then I remembered the summer a couple dozen Latvians descended on Livingston. After the jobs they were promised fell through, the community came together to help them find host families and work. Perhaps the most significant differences between Vietnam and the U.S. are not the most important.
On the road again
With the help of a damp rag, I found that my fever came down nicely. I was out of danger. Due to other symptoms, I couldn’t begin biking immediately. About those other symptoms - well, let’s just say my toilet paper consumption increased by several hundred percent. Thankfully, I was back on the road and back to normal (in the most important sense of the word) after a short recovery period.
Biking or traveling isn’t always easy. Things break, people fall ill, and sometimes one simply cannot communicate. However, I find it’s always easier to fall into an outhouse than a rut. Every day I see the sun rise on a different horizon. The scenery, people and food all change. Perhaps the challenges make me tougher, but the sense of achievement suffices for satisfaction. If the accomplishment also results in successfully ordering some food or a smile, I’ll consider it icing on the cake.

I wrote an article for my hometown paper, The Enterprise.  You can find this article on the Media page, but I thought I might as well post it here, too.

Published Dec. 26, 2007, in The Livingston Enterprise, Livingston, Montana

Bicyclists soak up China knowledge - literally

EDITOR’S NOTE: Former Livingston resident Jim Durfey, a 2000 Park High School graduate, has been bicycling through Asia with a group of friends. Below is an un update on their journey. The Enterprise will periodically post his accounts of the trek.

By Jim Durfey
For The Enterprise

CHINA - On our third day biking out of Beijing, the rain started. We stopped to spread waterproofing over our luggage and ourselves. I was already so soaked, I forewent my raincoat. The rain only pelted down faster. It seemed to rise up out of the ground and gush out of our fenders. We couldn’t ride behind each other. Earlier we had found a road built on top of a dike. The water pooled in the road. Cars passing us created wakes over a foot high. “Gosh,” said Drew, one of my fellow riders, “for being on a dike, we sure are wet.”
When my friends and I decided to bike from Beijing, China, to Paris, France, biking on a flooded dike wasn’t what we had in mind. We were hoping for knowledge. We wanted to know of Asia and its people what you can’t get learn from a book. We counted on surprises. But what continues to surprise me is the extent to which biking forces knowledge on you, whether you like it or not. After the rainstorm, I had soaked up so much knowledge about weather in Northeast China, my hands looked like I’d swum across the Yellow River.
Until we began the trip, we were unaware of the sorts of knowledge available for those willing to bicycle across a country. As we biked south, we ignored fluctuations in crops and harvest times at our peril. Fields alive with the excitement of harvest made for great views. But farmers spread crops like rice on the road to dry. Swerving around a pile of corn forces one to note details bus or train passengers might miss.
I have also ground up the muscle-burning hills of Southern China on a bike. Only Lance Armstrong and people using motor vehicles fail to notice hills. As we drifted south, the crops tended towards rice as the landscape tended away from flat. In Guangdong Province, in the deep south, banana trees and sugar cane greeted us. We knew we had successfully escaped snow.
Foreigners in China cannot escape becoming celebrities. At least they can’t if they travel in groups of five on heavily loaded bicycles to areas rarely visited by foreigners. Last week, I stood in front of a crowd of 500-some high school students. The headmaster of the school had asked that I come and speak. I have no qualifications to address such a crowd, but merely being a foreigner in China exposes one to such opportunities. Lack of credentials withstanding, I explained our reasons for doing the trip.

“We want to increase understanding between our two and other countries,” I said in English, and then translated into Chinese when the students claimed they didn’t understand.
I threw in a bit about not merely worrying about money when it came to goals in life. And so goes my public speaking career.
Everywhere we go, large numbers of people gather around us. School children mob our tables when we eat. They follow us back to our cheap accommodations for the night. Mostly, they’re curious. I often answer the same questions over and over again. However, with celebrity comes added hospitality.
In between the north and south, one Mr. Deng invited us into his house for tea. I was tired and wanted to go bed, but he made it hard to refuse. We sat down with him and drank Wulong tea. One of the finer brands of Chinese tea, Wulong tea leaves are pressed together after harvest, aged, and form hard chunks. A unique characteristic of Wulong tea is that the flavor becomes stronger the more times you steep it. As he poured it, Mr. Deng explained how the tea we were drinking symbolized friendship.
“At first,” he said, “the flavor is very light, just like when we first met we were reserved. But with each steeping it gets stronger,” he continued, “just like we open up and connect with each other the longer we know each other.”
Long-term relationships, unfortunately, are not facilitated by living in a different city, village, or rice paddy every night. My four friends and I have other plans for our lives. We can’t bike forever. But while the trip lasts, we will bike through Southeast Asia, India, and perhaps beyond. Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we will continue trying to extract all of its flavor in whatever time we have.
We will probably run into more tea and more rain. We’ll do our best to experience both fully and report back. But for the experience itself, we have only our bikes and our hosts to thank.

Former Livingston resident Jim Durfey, right, talks with Chinese people curious about his bike trip across Asia with friends. Photo courtesy of Jim Durfey (actually taken by Peter Ehresmann).

The ’s’ in Laos, like the Statue of Liberty and deep fried potato chunks, is another example of French opulence leading to unnecessary things. Let’s ignore it, shall we?

I have never seen old-growth forest in Asia. In China and Vietnam, rows of environmentally-friendly reforested trees marched up hillsides in perfect lines. Surely jungle areas creep and crawl with all sorts of growth, but huge trees one sees not.

In Western Laos trees of unprecedented height and girth spring up dozens of feet above the canopy. At their base they prove too wide for even two tall women to encircle in their arms. The trees ooze up rock faces, forcing nubbies of stump and bark into every nook and cranny, searching for purchase. They provide shade for whole seconds, even when biking past at high speed. Thank God the French were averse to logging this far inland. Hopefully the Lao government takes the “Preservation Area” signs seriously. In other areas clear cuts and slash and burn areas are apparent.

Big trees and cut trees. Courtesy of Pete.

The people of Laos seem as honest as their trees are tall. I constantly confuse 20000s and 50000s with 2000s and 5000s. I always seem to get the correct change, though.

In the heat of midday, we bike in our own sweat, while villagers sit in the shade provided by their porches. Thatch huts raised on stilts always have significant porch space. Villagers lounging on the porches casually waft a “Sa-bai-dee” towards us. Sometimes they shake their heads and laugh afterwards. I taste the sweat dripping off my mustache, examine the ample shade provided by the big trees, realize I my idea of destinations is itself excessive opulence. I join the villagers in their laughs.

Once one gets past the screamed “Hellos!”, there is a quiet humor and ambition underlying the attitude of most Vietnamese. They always laugh. Women in colorful flower-adorned hats smile softly at my inability to say “seven”. Others hide crinkled eyes beneath their short brims. Sometimes the hats fall off. Women biking or motorcycling ahead of me swerve about in the road, chuckling on their way to retrieve their headgear.

Mr. and Mrs. Ngugom invited us into their home one evening. That day the wind blew harshly and dark skies promised rain. Mrs. Ngugom approached Nakia, who was asking about camping sites. She pointed at the sky, making a shivering motion. Nakia’s female status often causes people to view our group differently than they otherwise might. Men are impressed, women empathetic. This time we took advantage of our female connections to stay at the home of the Ngogom’s.

Adam, who almost drowned once trying to look at fish, soon had Mr. Ngugom trolling him about in the family fish pond. I finally explained to Mrs. Ngugom that I wanted to help wash dishes. She chuckled her carefree laugh. “Ah, help, help” she said correctly pronouncing the word I mispronounced, “fine, help!” She gave me a basin and a quick lesson and I was soon washing away.

Given our experiences of past Vietnamese homestays, we were nervous. How much would this cost? The couple seemed genuinely nice, but what would happen when we tried to leave?

Mr. Ngugom took me to register with the police. We went on his motorcycle, winding through dark forested trails I didn’t recognize. Coming around one corner he almost collided with another bike. “Hahaha,” he chuckled. I chuckled along.

The woman at the house we stopped at laughed when I showed her everyone’s passport. She asked if I was Peter, then gave me back all the passports. “Get up and go!” her gesture said. Allright! Too bad more registrations aren’t like this one.

That night we dined on freshly netted fish and, if I say so myself, extremely clean vegetables. In the morning when we tried to give the family some money, they wouldn’t take it.

Adam banged his head a smashing blow on the low-hanging eaves. Both Mr. and Mrs. Ngugom laughed big belly laughs. Usually I wouldn’t laugh, but their humor was infectious. I waited till I was facing away snortled into my beard. I guess when life is funny, you might as well admit it.

To make a long story short, we were in a compromised situation.  The wheel of the trailer fell off.  By fell off, I mean the trailer was here, dragging across the ground on one side, and the wheel was over there, lying on the rocky road.  Generally speaking, this is not the way it’s supposed to work.  

It was dark.  We were right next to a busy road.  We were stranded.  We couldn’t move the trailer further than walking distance.  As far as we could see in the dark, water-filled paddies stretched into the distance. 

I felt trapped.  Before, we could bike away from anything we didn’t like.  Now we were stuck.  Two kilometers back, the trailer had broken again.  At that time a family invited us into their home for dinner.  Because we were near a large tourist site, I was suspicious, but complied anyway.  One of their relatives took me to find a repairshop for the trailer axle, which had to be welded.  The family didn’t tell us they wanted money for the meal until afterward.  We ate an awkward but not unpleasant dinner with them.  The uncle did not eat with us, and afterward we left.  It was the tourist site away from which we were biking when the trailer broke.

Drew and I checked under a bridge under the busy road.  Piles of garbage and deposits from people who couldn’t wait surrounded water-filled holes.  Cars thudded along overhead.  “Well…” said Drew, “we could probably make it work if we had to.”

Drew and I climbed back to the group, empty handed.  “I would just like everyone to know I am thouroughly enjoying this,” said Pete, the perpetual optimist.  So cloudy was I, I at first thought an odd bit of sarcasm had escaped his lips.

We found a strip of land next to a dirt road  within walking distance.  People could see us from the road, but there wasn’t any traffic.  We rolled down the bikes, carried the trailer and set up the tents. No cars or motorbikes came down the road. 

We often sleep outside, but we usually find sites away from roads, hidden in the back country and viewable only by local houses, the residents of which inevitably prove welcoming.  This site was right by the road and across the water from a veritable village of houses.  We piled the gear close together and locked everything down. 

“Do you have the broken axle?” Adam asked me as he stowed his gear.  I was the last person to examine the break before we moved the trailer.  I realized I didn’t have it.  It would be difficult to have that fixed here, let alone have a new one made.  If I’d lost it we would certainly be at the prey of the tourist site indefinitely, unable to escape.  I tore through my gear and then ran up the road to where the break ocurred.  Thankfully I found it lying in the dust.   

I settled down that night by the side of the road alert but weary, oddly at peace with a night gone awry.  We had made the best of a bad situation, and it satisfied me.  Perhaps Pete’s perspective wasn’t completely ridiculous.

We awoke the next morning to propaganda blaring from a nearby village.  All of the gear sat just where we put it the night before.  Adam and I collected the axle and biked off in search of an arc welder.  The previous night the uncle guided me to a shop that only had an acetylene torch, which can’t weld as deeply as an arc welder.  We had no idea how difficult an arc welder would be to find. 

We had not even gone a kilometer on the main road when I spotted the thick coiled wires I’ve long associated with electical welders.  Eager to avoid paying the 100,000 dong we were charged the other night for the weld, we asked the man how much the weld would be.  “two something something” was what I heard.  We assumed it would be 20,000.  Great! I thought.  He welded it cleanly and ground it down. 

I tried to pay with a twenty-thousand bill, but the man wouldn’t take it.  He went into his back room and rummaged around, bringing fifteen-thousand in change and making me understand he simply didn’t have the additional three-thousand in change.  The weld had only cost two-thousand. 

Me and Mr. Bien. Photo courtesy of Adam Wolf.

At that point we realized we’d been overcharged by about fifty times.  But that was water under the bridge.  So it goes with tourist sites.  The metal worker, a man by the name of Bien, invited us to sit down in his shop and have tea.  As we drank the tea, we communicated with gestures and the little of each other’s languages we knew.  We asked how old his child was (three), he asked us what we thought of Vietnamese women (beautiful).

As foreigners, we will inevitably run into people wanting to take advantage of us.  It comes with the territory.  However, once you break down a barrier, whether through smiles or odd welding requests at seven in the morning, you stop becoming a foreigner, an other, and most people value you as a person and not as a unit of wealth. 

Later, after we had installed the repaired axle in the trailer, we happened to drive past the shop of the man who had initially welded the part, and overcharged me by fifty times.  We decided to stop.  With the help of my phrasebook, I attempted to explain the source of my unsmiling condition.

The previous day, the man had made a good impression on me.  He had a great smile and huge friendly eyes.  Now he pointed up to the sky, seeming to say it was chance and god who had broken the trailer, it was fate, beyond his control.  It was clear he didn’t understand the situation.

Eventually a high school age boy emerged from the back.  After a few attempts at explaining in English, I wrote down the situation, and upon reading it, the boy proved much more helpful than the phrase book.  The welder and his wife had a lively discussion.  We exchanged a few more notes.  The man told me to sit down, and then handed me 20,000 dong, or a fifth of what I’d given him initially. 

Through the kid, the man explained that the uncle who had originally guided me to the place, had told him to cheat me and taken 80,000 dong of the money I’d payed the welder, but he was sorry and wanted to return the money he’d taken.  I took the money, and wrote out a note which was translated simultaneously by the boy.  The man looked me in the eye as the boy translated, and nodded emphatically at the key points.  In the last line, I said I knew the man was a good man, but was still sad at the situation.  The metal worker looked down and then back up at me, and nodded.

I stood up to leave.  We shook hands, and he made me to understand the boy was his son.  He was a proud father, as he should have been.  I shook hands with the boy.  We left on good terms, me much relieved.  It’s possible he wasn’t being completely honest, but at the same time, he didn’t have to give me any money to begin with. 

Perhaps the uncle (Uncle Slick, as Adam calls him) is a lost cause.  However, it seems that engaging with people almost always proves a more successful strategy to resolve conflicts. 

Like the uncle, we become conditioned to viewing certain people in certain ways.  For him tourists are there to make money off of.  By not fully employing my prejudices against people near tourist sites, I allowed him to cheat me.  Perhaps I would do better to be more suspicious.  Yet at the same time, I would have missed out on a valuable experience.  I do not often make myself vulnerable, but perhaps more vulnerability would enrich rather than hurt.  In any case, I hope the armor I usually deploy doesn’t make me so oblivious to my fellow humans as Uncle Slicks at tourist sites.

We began the new year under clear skies in a new country. We rolled across the Vietnamese border on the first of January and biked under blue sky, for the first time in several weeks, through the border and down a long hill.

I was eager to see if the change from China to Vietnam would be subtle or drastic. The car horns definitely changed. The architecture reflected more European influence. We biked through the small border town of Ding Dong, and down a huge hill. So long was the hill, I began to suspect the entire country was downhill. The children yelled “Hello!” with American accents. People along the side of the road waved and smiled. They seemed less surprised to see foreigners. And many more spoke English.

The sun sunk in the sky and the light softened. We still sped downhill, but needed to stop soon. We pulled into a village not having any idea how to say “hotel” or “guesthouse” in Vietnamese. In fact we knew little more than how to say “Hello”, which makes for short conversations.

In the middle of the village we stumbled upon one Mr. Quan, who spoke English well. He took us to the home of stern, serious man, who offered to let us sleep on the floor of his attic for 100,000 dong, or fifty yuan, or about six dollars, or the price we normally paid in China for a regular room with a bed. We accepted the offer, and Mr. Quan stayed around to help translate. He worked in a bigger city nearby, but grew up in the town of Dong Ma, where we were staying.

FBR and Mr. Quan (in the middle).

As we sat downstairs, drinking tea served by the inn owner, we quizzed Quan on useful Vietnamese phrases. He always replied rapidly in an indistinguishable series of impossible-to-replicate sounds. We had him write some phrases down. He took my pin in his thin, sinewy fingers, and wrote “Toi co the cin o day khang?” Great. It slowly became obvious Vietnamese would not be a quick study.

Mr. Quan was very soft spoken, but had a wide smile. He told us about his girlfriend in the bigger city, and his desire to get a better job. We talked about Vietnamese history. “For a long time,” said Quan, “it was under French control, and then American.” Here he paused and laughed nervously before continuing, “but it is no problem, now we are all friends, we don’t care so much about the past.”

I looked up at the wall above Quan. Dozens of pictures featured the inn-owner, here his chest crowded with medals, there he shook hands with a high-ranking officer, here he posed in the normal battle fatigues of the North Vietnamese Army. He was about sixty years old.

I don’t know what it is that causes a man to invite his former enemies into his home as guests. Maybe it is only because we’ve forgotten the past. Maybe it’s just to make a buck, or dong. However, I’d like to believe it has more to do with one’s will towards peace and forgiveness.

Later that evening, I found that my axle had broken. That’s one of the number one things you don’t want to break on a bike. The next morning, my host pointed me in the direction of the bike fixing place. I wandered around aimlessly, pointing at my wheel and asking bemused early-morningers, “Bike, where?” When I wound up back at the inn, the inn keeper came out and guided me to the bike mechanic, then stayed around to make sure he did everything correctly. I obtained the new axle and put it on my bike. It worked much better after that.

People in China and the U.S. often tell me how incredible and great and awe-inspiring this trip is. That’s actually not what I want to hear. If they wanted to say that I was incredible or awe-inspiring, then I wouldn’t mind, and they would be correct. But this trip is not that incredible. One of the reasons we’re doing this trip, in fact, is to convince people that biking is not difficult, and that it represents a viable and often preferable method of transportation, especially compared to driving. We’ve met numerous other bike tourists along the way, many of whom are doing longer and more difficult trips than we. So read away and run out of excuses not to bike.

We ride 18 speed bikes designed long rides. We have biker shorts, comfortable handle bars, and tons of other crap. Along the way, we’ve run into several other groups of bikers along the way. Old Chinese men form the largest population of bicycle tourists in China. Some travel in groups, some individually. They do both longer and shorter trips. However, all of them travel fast and light with little regard for how sweet their gear is.

One group we met north of Shanghai. The several older men rode older single speed bikes. They had no luggage to speak of. Indeed, we might have mistaken them for commuters were it not for a couple who wore shirts emblazoned with the name of their bike club. They were biking to Beijing from Shanghai to help celebrate the Olympics. We almost joined them at their accommodation for the night, but it proved slightly too expensive for us. We biked off into the night with them assuring us that if they, native Chinese, couldn’t find a cheaper place, surely us foreigners would not be able to. But we did.

The group of bikers with whom FBR has had the longest relationship has certainly been the Koreans, Kwangsub and Suji. We met them at the end of a long, hard day of biking on a busy road. We’re both about the same age and share similar world-views, as became quickly apparent when we stopped and talked to each other on the side of the road. We biked together for the rest of the day, when we wound up at the Zhuzhou campus of South Central Forestry University, Adam’s and mine old stomping ground. The Koreans proved to be very tolerant and easy going. We decided to camp, and I led everyone down a bumpy dirt road in the dark, to where I thought there would be a site. It turned out to be a damp rice paddy. “Everything is OK,” said Kwangsub, in what would become a mantra for the easy-going Koreans, “Whatever you want is OK, don’t worry about us.” We found a dry spot in the paddy, and it seemed all right.

The Koreans are biking from northeast China to southeast Asia, north to Tibet, through India and then on to Europe. They eventually might make it to the Americas during a trip which will last over three years. We excitedly discussed our reasons for biking over our first dinner. Kwangsub pointed out how biking binds you to the land more closely than other forms of transport: “If I use motorcycle I sometimes won’t get the feel. But if everyday I eat some rice [here looking pointedly at all of us] I can get the feel on my bike.” He went on to point out additional advantages of using bicycles: “It is my own power, it is a challenge.” We couldn’t agree more. Especially the part about eating rice. We biked with the Koreans for another week. They speak English well and their added perspectives proved invaluable when it came to processing our experiences.

Mr. Wang Yajun has already cruised around China for three years. He’s used up three bikes and a couple roles of film to ride from his home in Heilongjiang, far in the northeast of China, to Tibet and most other provinces in China. He bikes 100 km a day, although he once logged 230km coming down from Qinghai to Lanzhou. Mr. Wang is a widower. As he told me very earnestly, his wife was unable to bear children. Now that he has no attachments to his home, he bikes around, gathering experiences and for his health.

He also bikes in support of the Olympics coming to China. For this long voyage he has merely two handmade saddle bags slung across the back of his bike. Inside he has a saxophone, a banner with his name and mission on it, and some pictures of him in various locations of note around China. He also has a book with city government seals stamped in it, to verify where he has gone. Mr. Wang says he would like to bike outside of China, “but I’m too old now,” he claims, “so I’ll just bike on the mainland.”

We once stumbled upon two Germans in a small restaurant on a street crowded with other restaurants. It turns out they were also biking to Hanoi. Because they didn’t have much vacation time by European standards (four weeks) they were traveling quickly. But we eagerly listened to their stories of decades of previous bike trips.

Coming out of Confucious’ home town in pouring rain we were passed by a computer programmer also on his way to Shanghai. He worked with the Olympic committee and was also biking in support of the Beijing Olympics. He carried one very small bag. In Zhejiang province members of a local bike club approached us. Soon they were escorting us to a great campsite. They biked with us the next day, passing us off to bike club in the next town like a multi-wheeled baton.

We ran into another group of bikers in northern Guangdong. They were all retired workers from a wire factory, biking to improve their health. They biked at an aerobic pace, stopping only for short cigarette breaks. “You bike really fast,” I told Mr. Zhang, next to whom I was biking. “But you have so much stuff,” he replied, eyeing the piles of bags on my front and rear racks, and the trailer I was pulling. We biked with them for 40 km until they arrived at their home town. It was the final day of their bike trip. We said goodbye and wished each other well.

As we approach Southeast Asia, where roads are fewer, the weather warmer, and the tourists more numerous, we anticipate seeing more bikers.  Maybe they’ll have more stuff than us, maybe less.  They might go faster or slower.  Regardless of languages we have in common or biking philosophies, we know we’ll be happy to see each other, and eager to share experiences.  Such is the club you can join by hopping on a bike.

The young woman wore the neat, conservative dress of a Chinese high school teacher. We spoke in English because teaching English was, in fact, her profession. Without much prompting, she told me “The BBC and the VOA [Voice of America] say that China has no freedom. But now things are getting better step by step. Now people can say what they want to say and go to many places around the world.” I agree with this statement, but not completely. Nor, apparently, does the young woman, who asked that I not associate her real name with the information she gave me. Certainly China’s civil rights situation has improved from the bad old days of the cultural revolution, but the government remains intolerant enough of what it doesn’t like to give the wise pause when having their names associated with public opinions.

Let’s call my friend Sally. She spoke English with cheerful confidence, and surely the school for which she taught, a high school in a relatively small town in a rural area of Guangdong, should have valued her services. However, she felt undervalued as a teacher. “China is an equal society,” Sally attempted to explain, “but I make 1000 yuan [about 130 USD] every month, but teachers in Shenzhen [the booming border town next to Hong Kong] make at least 6000 yuan [780 USD].” Teaching at a rural school in China often means lower pay, fewer benefits, and mediocre facilities. Sally plans to move to a different school in a bigger city where she can make more money. But due to Chinese laws, she will first have to work at the school near her hometown for a number of years before receiving a permit to work in a different location.

Cities have always been the focus of China’s economic reform. Consequently, urban areas have quickly modernized in the past thirty years, while rural areas often received only a few fringe benefits of China’s prosperity. It is unsurprising then that many people in China’s countryside want to move to the city, where the infrastructure, pay, and social systems are all superior to their countryside counterparts. As Sally told me, the government is now trying to make life for farmers easier. Children from farmer families no longer must pay tuition, and can receive additional financial help if they are really poor. Increasing agricultural prices have also helped the farmers. However, the fact remains that many people, Sally included, want nothing more than to move to a bigger city.

Sally also told me about the double books some factories use. They record hours employees are supposed to work in one to show government labor inspectors, and then keep another one to reflect the actual and illegal overtime the employees work for themselves. In complex issues like globalization and international politics, it is easy to swing between two extremes of looking at the situation. Sally often seemed to contradict herself because, while she wanted me to be aware of the problems China is experiencing, she also realizes the tendency of Westerners to focus on the negative aspects of a country. Hence her attempts to moderate all of the criticisms she leveled against it. I can’t blame her. The media often focuses on the abstract figures and concepts behind a country’s development. Perhaps it would do us all a bit of good to simply focus on the people affected by that development, and save the energy we often spend ruminating in simply getting to know the people our opinion would involve.

“I hate the government,” said the young man sitting with us at the Muslim restaurant. We all paused uncomfortably. “Well,” suggested Drew, “if you change it enough, then maybe your grandchildren will be able to say they love it.” The young man shook his head. “No,” he protested, “my grandchildren will grow up in a different country. The government here is terrible.” This time it was me who spoke up. “It has been getting better,” I ventured, “compared to the sixties aren’t things much better?”

I don’t often find myself often defending the Chinese government. Most people I talk to couldn’t place politics further from their minds. No one cares. Even when I ask them leading questions about odd or unpopular government policies, the Chinese hesitate to offer any negative appraisals of local or national politics. They read the propaganda, accept whatever it says, and leave it at that. Affairs of state and politics are for people with government salaries to worry about. So it goes with most of China. But our impassioned young man felt differently.

Let’s name him Joe. When he’s not at work he dresses, like most other hip, upper-class Chinese, in a hip, upper class style. When he first approached me in the restaurant he had his baseball cap tucked into the epaulet of his well-worn, imitation U.S. Air Force jacket, which he wore over a plain T-shirt, stone-washed jeans, and brand new work boots. “Excuse me,” he said in very passable English, “are those your bicycles outside?” Intrepid readers will already undoubtedly have guessed that the five heavily laden cycles outside to which he referred did indeed belong to the group of which I was for that evening and every other one in recent memory a part.

Upon learning of our trip, its length and our intentions, Joe was noticeably impressed. He talked about his own desire to do a long bicycle trip, and made a reference to Thoreau’s Walden, the part where Thoreau says that we all can choose how many lives we live, and emphasizes the importance of gathering as much experience as possible through living many different styles of life. Even for a college graduate, Joe demonstrated a particularly erudite sensibilities and a crisp intelligence. He also could not say a single positive thing about the Chinese government.

When he first asked us about our bikes, we had already finished eating, and he had barely ordered. We invited him over to our table, and his plate of fried noodles soon arrived in front of him, but despite our frequent encouragement, he didn’t eat any, so excited was he to discuss China with people who brought an outside perspective.

He told us about the first time he learned of the Ti@n@nmen incident (where more than 200 civilians were killed by PLC soldiers trying to break up pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing). “I was so shocked, so shocked, I really could not believe the government could do something like that,” he told us. But in fact it seems that his questioning attitude and skeptical view of the government originated from a sense of justice. “As a small child,” Joe explained, “I saw many poor people, but there were also rich men. The poor had things terrible, but the rich man just had more and more money. I thought this thing wasn’t right, so I thought about it often.” One of Joe’s childhood friends had similar views, and with each other to rely upon, they both developed attitudes that were, for usually propaganda-fed Chinese school kids, amazingly independent.

As an independent thinker in a country that is not open to all strains of thought, Joe realizes he’s at risk. “I can talk about these things here with you,” he says of his rants against the government, “but if I write it down or put it on the internet, the government will watch me.” He wrote down his email address for us. “It’s Google,” he says, “I don’t like what Google did in China, but I use it anyway.” Here he was referring undoubtedly to Google’s agreement to self-censor their China operations according to government demands. Sometimes it’s difficult, for both would-be ethical companies and individuals, to maintain completely clean hands.

“I love America,” Joe tells us as his noodles get cold, “not the government or the military, but I love the American people, and the idea of America.” We have to admit that the ideas behind the constitution, and indeed the whole of the American people, are an admirable bunch, even if the actions of its government and legislature aren’t always the most well-considered. But Joe didn’t praise the U.S. for too long before taking the Chinese government to task. “You don’t know what it’s like to live under the government. You could be killed at any moment,” he claimed. He went on to tell us about a recent college grad who was looking for work in Guangzhou, but did not have a permit to work there. He was taken in by the police, and through an unfortunate twist where the unstoppable wheels of bureaucracy turned brutal, was beaten to death.

Stunned though we all were at this tragic twist in his tale, we tried to point out that following the young man’s death, the system of local work permits was reformed, so it seemed that bad as things may be, it was still possible to change the system. “But this man’s parents and family,” Joe pointed out, “things are awful for them. But who will take responsibility? Who will pay? Noone!” “Maybe you can change the system, though,” we tried to reason with him. “No,” said Joe, “I am not brave enough.” He explained that he felt responsible for his mother, and would not want to jeopardize her retirement by putting his future at risk. Brave or not, he certainly had plenty of ideas of how to reform the system.

Joe currently works for an international company in sales. This certainly explains his great English, but it also demonstrates a quandary for people wanting to be hypercritical of the Chinese government. Whatever abuses the Chinese government continues to commit or has committed against its people, it has also lifted more people out of poverty in the last thirty years than have ever been enriched similarly in all of history. It is in part because of Chinese government policy that Joe is able to work for a company that does business over seas and get his information over the internet.

At the same time, because the Chinese government has created conditions in which people like Joe can flourish, it has also created a condition that imperils its own existence. That is, one in which folks with money and sway and independent minds have the information and reasoning to become upset by their lack of self-determination, the presence of injustice, or the state of the environment.

As you can well imagine, Joe doesn’t enjoy working for the man. Instead he would prefer pursuing a degree in international relations. He regrets the presence of war in the world. Joe tells us he could make a positive contribution to a peaceful world by helping countries get past their differences. But he realizes it will be an uphill battle. In a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost or perhaps simply to Christian theology in general, Joe mentions that before men there was no peace, even between angels. Regardless of what the angels do, I am glad to know that logic and empathy still have the ability to shed light on murky situations and speak truth to power.

Meihua lies in the mountains on the border between Guangdong and Hunan provinces. It looks like a small village, but it crawls and winds its way up valleys and around stream beds, so it balloons outward into a much larger city than you would expect. Rice fields and vegetable plots surround it wherever sharply rising hills prevent Meihua’s expansion. While wandering around these fields, Adam and I saw a woman harvesting sweet potatoes. We at Fueledbyrice have always felt a special connection with sweet potatoes, alternately known in the North and South of China as digua and hongshu respectively, and lacking many chances to speak with people other than restaurateurs and innkeepers, we decided to approach her.

The woman, who seeemed to be about 40, wore a concave woven straw hat of the the sort widely associated with Southeast Asian rice farmers, a white, long-sleeved well-worn shirt, black trousers and pink plastic shoes. She didn’t look up as we approached, but continued digging. We said hello, and she shyly smiled and returned our greeting. She slowly stood up, and politely inquired if we were here touring. “Yes,” I said, “we’re doing a bike trip. This area is quite beautiful.” “But, this area isn’t very fun,” she protested, and gesturing to the road, said “it’s dusty and dirty.”

We inquired about the tubers she was harvesting as she pryed the last few out of the ground and threw them into her shoulder-pole baskets. They were indeed hongshu. Then hesitantly, looking at us out of the corner of her eye, she queried “Are you foreigners?” We confessed that yes, we were.

She also gathered up the leaves from the sweet potato plants and threw them into her baskets. In Hunan, farmers feed these greens to their pigs, so I asked her if they did the same in Guangdong, but it didn’t translate very well. “Are you asking me how many children I have? asked the lady, whose name was Qiu. That question was in a much more interesting question, so I said yes. “I have four,” she said. “That’s great,” we rejoined. “No,” she said, laughing “it’s awful.” I couldn’t quite catch her response to my question why.

She finished gathering up the leaves and tossed them into her baskets. “Do you want some sweet potatoes?” she asked us. “Oh no,” we responded, “we’ve just eaten, we’re quite full.” “Ah, but these sweet potatoes are great, they’re very delicious,” she reached into her basket and rummaged around, bringing out 2 huge sweet potatoes. We felt we could do nothing but accept them graciously. “Here,” said Ms. Qiu, reaching again into her basket and grabbing two more huge sweet potatoes from among the many small ones, “give some to your friends too.”

Before she left, I asked if I could get a picture with her. “Eh, why do you want a picture with me?” she resisted, “I’m nothing great to look at. I’m wearing this hat. It looks terrible.” “No,” I tried to reassure her, “it’s a great hat.” “Look,” I continued, pointing at Adam’s baseball cap, “he wears a hat too. No problem.” I cajoled her into taking a picture the same way she cajoled me into taking her hongshu.

Finally it was time to go. She collected her hoe, slipped her shoulder pole underneath the handles on her baskets and hefted them up. They must have weighed about fifty pounds, but she maneuvered through the fields and back to the road easily. We walked with her a ways. She rotated the pole around her shoulders to keep the weight from resting on one spot or to make room for dump trucks full of school children trying to pass. She reached her turnoff, we bade her good-bye, and that was that.

Because of her wide smile and quiet jokes, Ms. Qiu will stand out in my mind when I reflect back on my reactions with Chinese farmers. However, she is also a good example of the huge demographic known as the “Chinese peasant”. Despite their relative lack of means, their position on the lower side of the increasingly huge wealth gap in China, and their very hard lives, Chinese farmers are some of the most friendly and hospitable people I know of.

Around China migrant laborers, who are almost always farmers trying to make more money by coming to the city and working construction, get a bad rap. City dwellers often cautioned me against interacting too much with the supposedly criminally disposed migrant workers. However, I find the people at the lower end of the income scale to be some of the most hospitable in all of China. Perhaps it’s because they don’t have much to do, or perhaps it’s because they don’t have money to worry about spending. Or perhaps it’s just because their lack of possessions leave them better able to see other people as humans. Whatever the reason, my interaction with Ms. Qiu will remind me to slow down and treat people as people with respect and not as obstacles. At least so long as I’m in the country-side.