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Published: February 1st 2011
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Great Ride Forward -- See www.greatrideforward.com for more stories/pics/video.
The most amazing and frustrating part about traveling in China is that very few things go as planned. Amazing because you find yourself in situations and places that you would never expect. When a wrong turn on the streets of Kunming leads you to endless alleyways of baby grand pianos, you have to smile. Frustrating, however, because sometimes a schedule must be kept. Such is the case when shipping two motorcycles across the country…five days before Chinese New Year.
We boarded the train to Kunming at Shanghai South Station on Monday evening, excited about the journey ahead. I have to admit that the idea of our trip had never fully set in during the months prior to this moment. We’d been charting our route for months, pouring over guidebooks, testing our bikes around Shanghai, buying mountains of gear back in the States. But the reality of two months on the road and what all that entails still had not fully made its way into my mind. Too much had been going on, from the end of the Shanghai Expo to my first trip back home in 8 months to whatever
the hell happens after this trip.
But that’s the power of the here and now – it has a way of waking you up. From outside, Shanghai South looked a peaceful escape, a calm start to the great ride. Inside, the huddled masses told a different story. We had had a bit of trouble securing our train tickets – Hans and his girlfriend waited for two hours in the blistering Shanghai cold to buy hard sleeper tickets for the 40-hour trip – but we were headed out a week before the New Year, hopefully enough lead time before the largest human migration in the world. We were wrong.
Aside from the trainloads of people and 40 hours, the trek across China was uneventful. More than a few 方便面 (fangbian mian, literally “convenient noodles” i.e. instant ramen) were consumed along the way. Somehow the salt overdose and lack of mobility made for a quick trip. We met a few characters along the way. A journalism professor overly anxious to practice her English, a train attendant overly jolly about her cleaning duties, and a young boy on the top bunk overly fascinated with pornography. Yes, while China may censor YouTube
and Twitter, there is no stopping a 16-year-old with a cell phone and an interest in the fairer sex.
We arrived in Kunming early Wednesday morning. Through our grogginess, we navigated our way to a small outpost of travelers known as The Hump. If you have ready any of my stories from my study abroad years, you already know that hostels in popular backpacking destinations all share four characteristics: 1) a vastly disproportionate number of foreigners to Chinese, 2) gratuitous amounts of cheap beer, 3) at least one smelly bro carrying his guitar across the world during his college gap year, and 4) chocolate banana pancakes. The Hump, tucked neatly in the “old” alleyways of the city center, is no exception.
To this point, all was smooth. Before we left Shanghai, we put our bikes on a cargo train, expecting their arrival in Kunming on Friday. While the process was relatively painless (for me…Hans handled most of the shipping arrangements), the delivery date was crucial. Saturday, January 29th marks the official start of 春节 (Chunjie, or Spring Festival). The entire People’s Republic comes to a near standstill during this week as the better part of 1.3 billion people
make their way home to see family and celebrate the coming year. It would be impossible to get our bikes if they didn’t arrive before Saturday.
Our bike shop in Shanghai had arranged for the shipment to be delivered to the local Shineray dealership. While it may seem logical that he would have spoken directly to the Kunming dealer, explaining our plans and notifying him of the pending delivery, that was apparently the wrong way to do it. Instead, the proper channel was through the Shineray headquarters in Chongqing, where a logistics coordinator would relay the message to the Kunming shop. Indirect, but we had to trust the system.
Except we absolutely didn’t. With this tiny tidbit in the back of our mind, we decided to make our way out to the dealership on Thursday. Even if all was humming along as planned, it couldn’t hurt to get to know our local contact. At the very least, we could show him our website, meet some riders, maybe score a few new stickers for our mounting collection.
If only he hadn’t taken off early for the holiday.
In the suburbs of Kunming, an idyllic community of Mediterranean-style
houses stands in stark contrast to the dilapidated block buildings across the highway. New wealth had come to the area - foreign cars moving up and down the streets, brightly-lit restaurants at every corner, a mobile phone shop and new bank at its entrance. Behind its quiet gates, at the very end of an incredibly out-of-place strip of motorcycle shops, sits the Shineray dealership. The Shineray dealership that, two days before China’s largest national holiday, decided to lock its doors.
Apparently the local dealer didn’t get the message. While I think most who know us consider Hans and I rather cool-headed gentlemen, you can imagine that in this situation, more than a few expletives were let loose. Frustrating. The best laid plans had fallen apart faster than fangbian mian.
Yet in that same instant, amazing. As just seems to be the way in China, things always work out one way or another. Not as you planned, not as you hoped. But as they should.
At the very opposite end of that incredibly out-of-place strip of motorcycle shops sits another Shineray dealership. Not our Shineray dealership, not our local contact. But a friendly man with an open store and a willingness to help.
Zhao Feng is the smiley manager of the Yunnan Racing & Motorcycle Club. His wide grin effortlessly holds a cigarette even while his violent hand gestures reenact some obviously embellished story. Turns out Zhao Feng knows exactly who the logistics coordinator is up in Chongqing, and his hands told a story of unsurprising frustration. The coordinator had actually come from Kunming, and while Zhao’s shop was the most profitable Shineray dealership in all of China (not embellished), late shipments and poor service from Chongqing was the norm.
With a little direction from Zhao, eased along by a serious amount of cigarette offerings, we spoke to the shipping company and made a new plan. We will now meet the bikes at the train station Friday afternoon, recruit a truck driver to help us carry our rides to Zhao’s shop, and make any final preparations there before the Great Ride’s true beginning.
That’s the new plan. And I won’t be surprised when it doesn’t work out. But the beauty of our journey is exactly that. That we have no plan. Yes, we need our motorcycles, and their timely delivery is perhaps our one demand. But if we are delayed, if we are not able to ride to Laos by the New Year, who cares? We’ll just walk to Burma (cue our mothers’ shuttering). Or fly north for a few days to Yunnan’s Tibetan areas. Maybe just buy scooters and blast over to Vietnam.
We’ll get where we are going...once we figure out where that is.
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Great Ride Forward -- See www.greatrideforward.com for more stories/pics/video.
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