We rode our bikes down a\u00a0road yesterday into a town, a pile\u00a0of red dirt\u00a0blocked\u00a0our way so that we had to ride on the shoulder to get in.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Its name was\u00a0Huang Feng, or Huang something Shan, I don’t quite\u00a0remember, nor would anyone\u00a0else.\u00a0 If I had my map right now\u00a0I could figure it out by either reading the characters, or asking a Chinese person how to pronounce them if I din’t recognize them, which would most likely be the case.\u00a0\u00a0My mind is\u00a0beginning to blend\u00a0memories together, characters, unknown pen-strokes, words, names.\u00a0 In fact I can’t remember the names of many of the places I have been over the last 51 days.\u00a0 They just exist in\u00a0a chain with no clearly defined links.\u00a0 There\u00a0are things that happened a long time ago, and things that happened a short time ago.\u00a0\u00a0 Certain things stand out, days when we rested, beautiful biking days, gifts we were given, run-ins with authority, meeting interesting people.\u00a0 But the rest just blends.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last night in particular was one of those nights, just like most of the rest.\u00a0 The middle of no-where China, a place where no other foreigner would ever dream of going, where I never knew existed, nor will particularly remember.\u00a0 I love it, and I live for it on a trip like this.\u00a0 It is why I am here.\u00a0 A look into the everyday life of the putongde ren, the common person, real China.\u00a0\u00a0You can taste it in the air, dusty, dirty, smokey.\u00a0 You can see it in the people,\u00a0wide eyed,\u00a0curious, unsure.\u00a0 You can see it in the city, regulated, communist with white tiled buildings, cement floors, low door frames,\u00a0wacky advertisements, and homemade food stalls.\u00a0 You can hear it, stupendously loud truck horns, cement mixers, jack hammers,\u00a0undecipherable syllables being amplified through megaphones attached to bicycles.\u00a0 You can feel it,\u00a0people brushing against you,\u00a0a man feeling the hair on\u00a0your arm, the firmness of the plywood you are sleeping on.\u00a0 You can taste it, the oil used in frying up the common man’s dishes, vegetables, meat, dumplings, and steamed buns.\u00a0 This is China.<\/p>\n
We biked down the one road going in and out of our town last night, turned at the intersection, and took a left.\u00a0 We stopped in front of a sign for a luguan, or travelers hotel.\u00a0 Pete went in with the laoban.\u00a0 The three of us stood outside waiting, not for Pete to emerge,\u00a0but for the inevitable masses to surround.\u00a0 People had watched us enter the town, and were aware of our presence, now it was time to feel us out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slowly and surly they approached, like a rat to a trap, timid, curious, and present.\u00a0 One man stepped forward, “Where are you from” he asked.\u00a0 “They don’t understand” said a woman in back.\u00a0 “America” said drew.\u00a0 Exclamation arose in the crowd that had now grown to about 15.\u00a0 They can speak Chinese!\u00a0 Confidence was rising, a flood of questions quickly followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To steer the conversation to a level I am able to handle I usually run through all the meaningful things that I know people will ask me.\u00a0 What we are doing and why, where we are from, where my bike is from,\u00a0where we\u00a0are\u00a0going, how many people are in the group, where Nakia is\u00a0from, where the Bahamas are, that\u00a0the Bahamas is a real place,\u00a0I then\u00a0tell them I am not cold, tired, and will eat soon.\u00a0 From there I try my hardest to pick up words, phrases, and ideas I can’t quite understand.<\/p>\n
Last night was like most other nights in China.\u00a0\u00a0People told us that we must be lost and\u00a0asked why we were in their\u00a0town.\u00a0 Sometimes I tell people\u00a0I am there because\u00a0I have heard about it being a beautiful place\u00a0so I came to look, other times I\u00a0tell them the truth, I don’t know why I am there, I just ended up there.<\/p>\n
Our luguan was two buildings next to each-other patched together like a maze, we had two rooms on the second floor.\u00a0 We had to walk through an old photo studio with\u00a0fake\u00a0landscapes hanging on the wall to get in.\u00a0 We had four beds, wooden slates with a wool quilt thrown on top, a door that kind of locked, a window that opened, a single light-bulb hanging from the center of the room, it was 6 kuai a person, less than one U.S. dollar.\u00a0 It had a toilet that actually flushed, and\u00a0cold water to wash with.\u00a0 The chickens and ducks lived under the stairs.\u00a0\u00a0Children\u00a0followed us everywhere,\u00a0screaming “hello”, and “how are you.”\u00a0The perfect place.<\/p>\n
We ate dinner at the same place we eat every night.\u00a0 We got similar dishes to those we get every night.\u00a0 We drank boiled water from the same\u00a0thermoses that we do every-night.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pete Jim and myself went for a walk\u00a0after dinner.\u00a0 There\u00a0were no\u00a0street lights in this particular town, it saves electricity and is cheaper.\u00a0 Everyone sleeps at night.\u00a0 We walked down\u00a0a road, a few hair salons remained open, a few families doors were open and\u00a0you could see people playing mahjong, drinking beer, and playing with\u00a0children.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We stopped in front of\u00a0an extremely small train station and were chatting lightly.\u00a0 A man with a flashlight\u00a0was walking towards the station with a flash light, he\u00a0froze when he noticed us and heard our language then shone his light on us.\u00a0 Jim said hello in a friendly voice, the man returned the greeting and asked\u00a0if we from Xinjiang, a region\u00a0in the far north west of China where the minority group of Uighur comes from.\u00a0 No we said, we are\u00a0American.\u00a0 “That’s\u00a0not possible” the man exclaimed.\u00a0 After we had convinced him he quickly warmed to our presence.\u00a0 He worked at the station\u00a0and was on his way to work.\u00a0 We\u00a0chatted a while\u00a0then parted ways.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We return down the road we had come, and\u00a0a family\u00a0was\u00a0standing outside their doorstep\u00a0 and initiated conversation.\u00a0\u00a0” You are the foreigners who have ridden their Bicycles here from Beijing” they said.\u00a0 “Yes” we replied, “you have heard of us.”\u00a0\u00a0One man pointed at Pete, “you are 1.98 meters” he said.\u00a0\u00a0Peter confirmed the statement.\u00a0\u00a0Like a small town anywhere in the world word travels fast.\u00a0\u00a0We talked\u00a0a while and they invited us into their home to sit and talk.\u00a0 We ended up returning to our luguan to rest however and to help Drew\u00a0re-grease the bearings in\u00a0his rear hub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We rode out of town this morning the same way\u00a0we do every morning.\u00a0 With long goodbyes, scribbling of addresses and names,\u00a0and\u00a0the snapping of pictures of quick friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slowly the landscape has changed, soon the language will also start to fade into incomprehensable\u00a0syllables.\u00a0\u00a0Hopefully by means of writing,\u00a0video, and photography and I can pick out\u00a0meaningful links in the chain of experiences to remember and share with others.\u00a0\u00a0I have not yet grown weary of our trip.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Tomorrow may be similar to today, or\u00a0it may be extraordinary, but either way I can’t wait to see how it develops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We rode our bikes down a\u00a0road yesterday into a town, a pile\u00a0of red dirt\u00a0blocked\u00a0our way so that we had to ride on the shoulder to get in.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Its name was\u00a0Huang Feng, or Huang something Shan, I don’t quite\u00a0remember, nor would anyone\u00a0else.\u00a0 If I had my map right now\u00a0I could figure it out by either reading the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adams-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}