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Published: April 10th 2010
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I read the room of " futher inspection" with amusement as we waited in line at Heiku's immigration awaiting entry to the worlds third largest country.It wasnt so funny five minutes later when I stood being interrorgated by officials explaining where the fat guy had gone from my passport photo.Stopping short of puffing out my cheeks to look more"me" they accepted several extra documents including my drivers licence and a picture of me doing a good al qaeda impression.Well these guys love a bit of extra paper work and we were soon peddaling down the streets of Heiku stopping only at the atm to stock up on the latest currency before heading off along the red river into China our home for the next ten weeks or so.
They seem to drive better here than in Vietnam (but ants drive better than Vietnamese) that fact shouldnt lead us to be complaicent,the use of the horn here seems to be well enforced.Its cheap enough to make our dwindling funds stretch that bit futher and we hope to camp a fair bit in this land of mountains, something weve missed throughout south east asia.
Following the Red river we passed several
times under a new highway built impressively on stilts just one of China's huge construction projects in a country that s experiencing a building boom that knows no bounds.We arrived at an unpronouncable town where we recieved a hand me down chinese road atlas from the police donated by a certain bikeben who had the kind foresight to drop this off to the next tourers who passed this way.Fantastic for us who were mapless and expected to get to Kunming on the strength of about six town names i'd scribbled down.Pretty useless when its all in chinese and most of the locals only know the surrounding village names,places like Kunming were visited only on special occasions, if ever.We had to "englishify" the chinese characters and bearing in mind theres about 55 000 of them we started at the bottom with things like "the threee t's" or "man carrying pitchfork" to my personal favorite "elephant eating plasma screen"(saw him alot).Its an odd feeling not knowing the names of the places youve passed through but at least we could be pointed in the right direction by the locals who understood our atlas and gave us hints of the town names through this
hard tonal language that seems more noise than actual words.Most of the older generation wouldnt help us though ,a frustrating situation at times ,I guess the shackles of old are still strong memories to people whove grown up phrohibited to speak to foreigners.Cheers Mao!Theres a definete difference to the chinese when we compare then to the more openly friendly S E asians,here in Yunnan southern reaches we were left alone,no shouts of hello(not yet anyway) just curiosity and a general air of "welcome to China,but dont speak to me, your'e too foreign" but like their neighbouring Russians once you got to know them they would do anything for you.
The road to Nansha was dusty and hot climbing away from the river on occasion only to desend again to its brown swift waters.Lots of landslide maintenance had us waiting in the heat as they blasted areas and cleaned away rubble with heavy machines.The mountains towered tall growing bananas on their steep dry slopes,flashes of red from Yunnan camellia trees added colour to the haze.
Yunnan right now is going through its worst drought in a generation, peasant farmers who live in closed off mountain areas like south west
Yunnanare struggling to find a a fresh sorce.The govenment did employ scientists to release chemicals into the clouds to induce rain,while we were there not one drop fell from the sky the drought became a national natural disater and the army were deployed to help distribute free water to the needy.
In its race to become the latest superpower China leaves huge holes in employment safety and enviromental issues are swept under the carpet.From regular mining disaters to major waterways becoming open sewers China's old doctrine of equality through conmunism has changed to every man for himself in this capatalist minefield.
Nansha one of China's ugly new towns of prostitution(an industry dealt with a bullet to the head only a few years ago) and ugly tower blocks gave us cheap accomadation to visit Yuan yang rice terraces from the comfort of a bus thus avoiding a 30km uphill detour.Well worth the visit to Bada and Duoyishi rice terraces.After haggling a 125RMB price with our taxi driver we were soon taking in the amazing vista of these huge sculpted mountain shelves filled with different kinds of muddied waters stretching off into the haze leaving us gobsmacked at work which
has taken decades.
With a new found admiration for rice we began our 42km uphil assault onto the Yunnan central plateau.On little more than pot noodles and buiscuits we did well in our climb through pines and bamboo forests getting great views of open mountain tops and deep ravines,pushing ourselves hard on the broken mountain road til late in the afternoon when ,without much fanfare we crossed the pass and desended down to a valley rich in red soils and vegetable gardens to a village where we bought noodles and innertubes.Now there a saturday night feast.Camped in a small grove of trees with ansestor tombs dotting the hillside for company.
Crossed Jianshui the following morning a typical chinese city transformed from a dot on the map to an ugly sprawling factory city with long industrial tenticles ,broken roads of workshops and towerblocks.People hurried here and there amist car horns and pollution,these places seem built only for function and never for pleasure.Jianshui did have one saving grace ,its location being at the southern end of the Kunming lakes gave the overwhelming feel we were somewhere in the Mediterranian.Having already passed countless orange orchards we were now on these azure blue waters enjoying fine sunshine and taking in the air of huge spring and red onion fields that had farmers stacking their pick in sacks along the road side.Riding around the east shoreline took us past dry barren mountain slopes,donkeys brayed,farmers worked,fishing villages hugged the waters edge ,boats with long metal hulls and fishing nets dotted the shore.The villages had cool medina like alleyways with hunched old men and kids pissing in the open sewage systems.Made good time with a tailwind along this flat section of good road ,heading up into the hills at dusk to camp overlooking the lights of fishing boats drifting along the shore.
Fell asleep in the Med and woke up in Moscow,its cold and rain is falling from the lead grey skies.Its 70km to Kunming so once again with bin bags and socks deployed to our hands we were soon scurrying over our final pass to lake Dian at an altitude of 1890m we felt everybit of the cold on the downhill to the lakeside. Tackling dirt roads and a construction site teeming with dump trucks we passed China's latest new city and ruttled our way along a washboard of pain looking for a way onto saner roads and failing miserabely.Ah yes the bountiful joys of long distance cycling throws its teargas of glamor at our feet once again.
Took us a while to find affordable salvation but it came in the very unchinese sounding Seagull hotel and at 120RMB(12 pound) we almost snapped his hand off before ours fell off due to frostbite.
Definitely out of the tropics now,no question about that.
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Lance
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China...
Great read Mudy. Keep up the good work. Lance Armstrong