If Chinese hospitality is not famous, it ought to be.
 
A Chinese host cares for a guest with a psychotic hospitality that can overwhelm and bewilder the unsuspecting westerner. After nearly two years in China, I still get caught off guard.
A couple of nights ago I met Fu Zhilan at the movie theatre. I had nothing to do for the evening, so I went to see Tron. Like eating oreos, going to the movies is something I do in China to remind me of Canada even though I never actually do it at home.
Fu is a fourth year law student in Guiyang; she comes from a smaller town a few hours away. We went out to eat after the movie, and she beat me to the bill with the infuriating skill that all Chinese people seem to possess. Oh well, I thought, I'll get it next time.
But it was not to be. Every time we have bought so much as a bottle of water together she has pushed me aside, declaring firmly "You mustn't do that; you are a guest!" All of my usual tricks are no use.

To a Canadian, all of this can get embarrassing and awkward. I am not used to watching someone I have hardly met slap down money for me over and over again. Like so many other things in China, however, it is something I may just have to swallow. I have noticed that the more remote and traditional a region of China, the more this attitude prevails. My friends in relatively modernized Nanjing will split a bill, but in Guiyang no such thing exists. 

The Chinese have a commonly used phrase meaning "to pull tight connections." This is everything that the Chinese do to strengthen their social bonds: asking people out to eat, giving gifts, drinking together, sharing cigarettes, and so on. All of these things slowly build up social capital, a substance that is at least as valuable here as money or property. That is not to say that Fu's kindness has ulterior motives. This kind of behavior is rather a kind of instinct that the Chinese possess, a faith that the money and effort spent making friends will all come back in the end. And one way or the other, it usually does.
This is one of the most fascinating, beautiful, frustrating and mind-bending elements of the Chinese world.

As usual, however, I really actually want to talk about food. Fu took me to eat at a friend's house this evening. Her friend is in his late 20s and from Guangdong province. He, his wife, two other friends, Fu and I were gathering for a meal before everyone left Guiyang to spend the new year in their respective hometowns. He made hot pot.

If you don't know what hot pot is, you should. It is one of the great foods of the world. Hot pot is made by stewing a soup base with oil, vast amounts of chili peppers, spices and herbs in a large pot with a steady flame under it. Everyone sits around the pot, and dumps in any kind of food imaginable. As soon as the ingredients are cooked, everyone fishes them out with chopsticks and eats them. Simple, but brilliant.
Tonight's hot pot was served with a curious drink: mulled beer. Our host took a large pot of beer and boiled it, covered, with lemon, ginger, rock sugar, Chinese dates, and some medicinal herbs. The result was completely flat, but retained a surprising amount of its alcohol content, and had a quite complimentary flavour.

Guangdong people are known for their extreme tastes in food, even by Chinese standards. Some of the ingredients of this hot pot are as follows:

Sliced lotus root
Freshly killed and gutted trout (our host had to hold them down in the pot with chopsticks to stop them from flopping about).
Sliced pork kidneys
Shaved mutton
Bullfrogs
Mushrooms
Wood fungus
Spam
Sliced potatoes
Tofu skin
Chinese broccoli
Pork brains
Glutinous rice cubes

I know what you're thinking. Spam? Weird.

Regards,

Niko

So here I am.

The streets are still a mess today. Nobody is driving anywhere without chains. The weather report changes all the time, but even if I could get passed Yuping, there would be more snow, hail, freezing rain and sleet ahead. All of southern China is blanketed under a shifting mess of winter storm.

On top of it all, I've got a bit of "spicy stomach," the Chinese term for what is not quite food poisoning but just ones body rejecting something that aught not to have gained admittance.

So after all, my trip will end here. The last few days have been a bit of a roller coaster. Three days ago I was worried I wouldn't be able to continue because of fatigue. 

Two days ago I was feeling better and planning my last week to Guiyang. Now here I am again, stuck behind an impassable 300 kilometres of slush and ice. Today I will head over to the railway station and buy a ticket to Guiyang. It feels like an enormous defeat. I suppose I always knew this could happen, but the first week was so promising that I became optimistic.

Though unsuccessful, the past week has not been a waste. I have biked 550 kilometres of countryside, and seen a face of China I could perhaps never have seen another way. I have met a lot of amazing people, and learned a little about how they speak and think and live their lives. For the past four years I have only really spent time in half of China, and I am glad I have finally seen the other half.

Sometime in the not too distant future I hope to do this again. Next time I will be better prepared. Maybe I will find ways to pack lighter. Maybe I'll pick a different season, find a multi-speed bike, give myself a couple of months, or find a travelling companion or two. There is much more out there to see, I have no doubt.

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog, everyone who has emailed in support, and every Chinese farmer who has invited me to warm my feet by the fire over the last week. 

But don't stop reading yet. 
This blog will continue to be an outlet for all my stories, photos, observations and articles about my time in China, even when I'm off the bike. So check back once and a while and see what I've been up to. 

Regards,

Niko

So I woke up this morning, looked out my window, and saw this. There was a bit more snow, but I couldn't see the road so I had to haul on some clothes, put on my slippers, and pad down to the door to look outside. After all, there was snow on the rooftops yesterday. Maybe the street would look a little more friendly.

Nope. It was snowing like crazy. I went back to my room, organized my bag, went out and got breakfast and some hot soymilk, and took a walk. It was still snowing, and getting harder.
I'm not going anywhere today.

Instead, I spent the morning on one of my favorite activities: wandering around a street market. I have never been to Guizhou before, so there were all sorts of things I have never seen. They sell big vats of premade stew and pickled peppers, bright crimson blocks of pigs blood, and all sorts of other things I had never seen.
I was fascinated by piles of golden yellow lumps that looked like old-fashioned cheeses. I bought some sliced just to see what it was. The woman offered to sell me four yuan worth, which seemed reasonable. She gave me a bag that must have been about a kilogram. It turned out to be some kind of hard, aged tofu.
I had nothing to do with a kilogram of aged tofu, so I stopped an ancient looking peasant woman with a wicker basket on her back who was out buying vegetables.
"Grandma," I said, "I bought this tofu but I can't use it. Would you like it?"
"What are you talking about?" she said.
"Can I give this to you?" I said, gestering to the tofu.
She stared at me blankly.
"Here, I'll put it in your basket, is that ok?" I said.
"How much money do you want?" she asked suspiciously.
"None! I don't want anything!" I said, and fled, leaving her confused and a kilogram of tofu the richer.

Here are some pictures from the market.

I am writing from Yuping, an official Dong minority administrative region, in Guizhou province. Despite bearing the name "rich province" (named after a range of mountains, not for its literal meaning), Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in China. It is home to the Miao minority, as well as some Dong and a few others.

It snowed all night.

When I got on the road this morning, much to the protest of my host, there were three inches of slush and snow everywhere. There are no ploughs here, and no salt. It took me three and a half hours to struggle the 30 kilometres to Xinhuang, what should have been an hour and a half ride.

I was resigned to being stuck in Xinhuang, but by the time I had finished lunch, the weather had warmed slightly and the road cleared enough to bike properly. I got back on the road, and biked past the Guizhou border to Yuping. The afternoon was damp and cold, but at least bikeable.

The first thing I noticed about Guizhou was the food, which changed the instant I crossed the border. The favorite of street sellers seems to be parsley dipped in batter and deep fried.

There is little difference between a minority region and anywhere else. Minorities are allowed extra children, so I saw frequent PSA signs encouraging the voluntary one-child lifestyle.

I slept almost 11 hours last night. I always thought electric blankets were kind of silly, but in a land without much heating I have learned to respect them deeply.

My body felt a good deal better today, but I still have some major problems facing me. I cannot keep biking in weather like this morning. In addition to being painfully slow, it is also dangerous. I fell off my bike twice this morning, and although I was fine, I know from experience how easy it is to break an arm or a foot. This is not the time or place to take that risk.

The weather report calls for snow, snow, and more snow. If the roads are bad tomorrow morning, I will wait and see if it melts by late morning. If it does not, then I am stuck here for now.

Regards,

Niko

I am writing from an internet cafe in Xindianping. This place feels a little like what an internet cafe would be like in the old west. The whole building is rough wood, with wooden dividers between the computers, and a dim yellow light.

My body complained at me a lot today. It can't do this too much more, it said, not at this pace, not for this long, not if it gets much harder. My legs and body I can handle; with enough rest they will revive. My knees, though, I am worried about. My knees were complaining a lot, and they are things that can just give up on a person.

Well, here is where I stand. I have seven days left before I meet my parents in Guiyang, and 390 kilometres of road in front of me. On the upside, that means that I don't have to keep this pace up, I can slow down a little and let myself recover. That being said, there is going to be some tough biking ahead. I want to ride all the way into Guiyang, but I am becoming aware that my body's ability to endure this life, not just its ability to cross certain obstacles, is becoming an issue.

I left this morning in a light sprinkling of snow, west along the Wu River. The highway was mostly even, with a few small rises and falls and one small mountain around noon. Despite the size of the road, the country was fairly empty. I passed a few small villages, but mostly just scattered houses, snow dusted cabbage beds, and quiet silver river along my left side.

I am in Dong country now. The Dong are sharp featured, long nosed people. When I catch one out of the corner of my eye, I often think I am seeing a westerner until I turn to look. They speak in a heavy accent, but with a slow drawl that actually aids comprehension.

At 4pm, the light snow built up into a howling snowstorm. Despite hopes of reaching Xinhuang, I was forced to stop over in a small village 30 kilometres short. The Dong woman running my guesthouse is 63, she told me proudly. She says at this age, she can't handle the cold anymore. Here they have a slightly different mechanism for keeping the family warm. A large wooden box the size of a hot tub sits on the floor, with a rim along the inside for sitting. On the bottom are wooden slats, covering clay bricks that have been heated over the gas stove. The family sits in the box, covering their laps with a quilt to keep the heat in.
My host asks me if my family sits around the fire in Canada. Yes, I answer, but not quite like this. I try to explain, but I'm not sure how much she understands.

Regards,

Niko

First of all, I feel a good deal proud of being here tonight. There have been not a few times over the past two days when I have doubted whether I could get to Huaihua by tonight, and a couple of people I have met along the way have doubted it to. I put in at least 8 solid hours of biking today, and rode over 100 kilometres of mountains to be here. And here I am.

I woke up this morning to the sound of roosters crowing, closely followed by the sound of a pig dying. By the time I was on the road, the pig was being chopped into pieces for sale. I admire these people's efficiency.

The road from Xiaoshajiang went up and down over a few more hills through the early morning, and then dropped as dizzyingly as it had climbed. By the time the sun was visible above the mountains, I had shot down into the green valley below and left the snow covered peaks behind.

From there on, nothing was easy. I had hoped that the mountains would slope gently down towards Huaihua, or at least drop down into flat and open valleys. I had no such luck. Each little village was in a valley, and from one to the next required climbing up a mountain, winding across a jagged ridge, and then spiralling back down again. By mid morning, I was beginning to doubt I would get to Huaihua.

The obstacle is sunlight. I have all the time in the world, and my legs can carry me a long way given enough rest. The key factor is the meagre ten hours of winter sunlight between about 8am and 6pm. If I wanted to get to Huaihua, I had to do it before the road went dark and I could no longer tell a bend in the road from a rocky precipice. 

In the afternoon, I crossed the broad emerald green Yuan river, and headed back into the mountains beyond. Here, everything got worse. My bike handlebars came loose, I would guess from the back and forth strain of biking uphill yesterday. I had to awkwardly wedge them stable while I biked up the next hill and down into the following valley where I got the bolt tightened at an auto repair shop.
An hour later, the whole thing happened again. This time, when I finally wobbled into a repair shop, I realized what should have been obvious before and bought the tightening tool (3 yuan). Naturally, once I had the tool, my handlebars never bothered me again.

At 4pm I passed my last possible stop before Huaihua, and decided to go for it. The last two hours were an exausting climb up another ridge of mountains, but by dark I was swooping back down towards the lights of the city.

This morning I had noodles for breakfast. This afternoon I had noodles for lunch. And what did I have for dinner?

Indeed. Now, I am no big fan of KFC, but this is the first reasonably large city I have seen in a while and the last I am likely to see for a while longer. Also, KFC is better in China. It serves things like Beijing duck wraps, and spicy shrimp burgers. Ironically, it probably also treats its chickens better.
According to an online calorie estimator, I also likely expended over 4,500 calories today, so I can probably handle a little corn syrup right now.

Regards,

Niko

I cannot remember the last time I was as physically exausted as today. I am writing in my room in Xiaoshajiang Village. There is no hot water because the pipes froze, and no heating of course. There is a makeshift karaoke bar next door, filling the neighbourhood with off key pop songs. Nonetheless, I think I am going to sleep well.

Half an hour out of Xinhua this morning, I heard it for the first time: a sound utterly unfamiliar in China. It was silence. There were no honks, no beeps, no rumbles, no people talking. Just the soft whisper of the wind in the bamboo and cyprus. It has not always been quiet today, but that silence has been there in the background somewhere.

A few hours into the day these mountains appeared on the horizon. Mountains here are not like the ones I am used to in Canada. Chinese mountains have a rippling, serpentine shape, as if they bubbled out of a primordial icing pipe. 

I crossed a few pulse raising but manageable mountains, and ate lunch in Duckfield Village, which did indeed have many ducks. Something seems to be going on today. I have seen an abnormal number of firecrackers, weddings, and ceremonies of various kinds.

After lunch, I started up into a valley that never ended. Up the road would go into one fold in the mountains, and just as it looked like it was nearing an end, it would curve around a hill and head up again in another direction. This was, I would realize later, what I had seen on my map: the Snow Peak Mountains.

Every day on this trip, I have felt like the countryside is as rough and remote as it will get, but every day I have been surprised. The China that I saw up this valley was altogether surreal. The farmhouses are wooden, with some glass windows but not a hint of metal sheeting, plastic or paint. Aside from a motorcycle or three-wheel buggy here and there, there was hardly anything to suggest that the last two hundred years had passed. Through the wide, wood panelled doorways are ancestor shrines with incense and candles.
Above the immaculately terraced rice paddies, the mountains are wrapped in dense bamboo forest. I have seen bamboo before, but nothing like this. It feels like travelling through a giant bed of moss.

There is nothing I can say to describe four and half hours of bicycling up a mountain. There are certainly some bike enthusiasts or hikers who understand. Honestly, though, I am not even sure if my memory can do it justice. I may attempt such a thing again, but perhaps only if the mercy of forgetfulness wipes from my mind what it was really like.

I am writing in my notebook in my room in Xinhua. There are internet cafes here, but I cannot find one that will adequately run Weebly.

Last night, after I wrote my blog, I met Yang Xiaodong. She pulled up beside me in a silver prius and asked me who I was and where I was going. Then, of course, she asked me to dinner.
Yang has two children, a daughter my age and a son in his first year of university. Over dinner, she told me all about her children and how much she missed them. When she saw me, she said, she couldn't help but think of her son out on his own without a mother to care for him.
"What must your own mother think?" she asked with great feeling.
I ate with Yang and a friend of hers from the city government. He was a public official through and through, jolly and polite, piling my plate with food and clinking glasses every few minutes (tea, I passed on the alcohol.) The food was excellent. I absentmindedly nearly finished a dish, which would have obliged Yang by the rules of politeness to order another one.
After dinner, Yang got me to speak with her daughter on the phone in English while she listened in with delighted incomprehension. We exchanged email addresses, and I went back to my room and went to sleep.

I woke up this morning early, packed, and headed out for a morning of biking. Instead, I was greeted with pouring rain. I have raingear, but the weather report said it would let up later in the day so I decided to wait it out. I huddled in an internet cafe and watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I thought it was excellent. I know, Michael Cera is always the same. Now get over it and enjoy him. One of these days he will finally change, and then where will you be?

The rain stopped at 1pm, and I got on the road. Today was all highway, following the Cold Water River west. Rivers in China seem to attract heavy industry, probably because of convenient water and transportation. The pollution was thick all the way, and I found my right eye watering painfully. In areas as industrial as this, there is no getting away from the cloud of dust and exaust. I came across this kindergarten framed by ten story industrial cooling towers.

I want to take a moment to talk about the fantastic style of eating in these parts called the "quick meal." Instead of a menu, small restaurants just have a table of vegetables and a refrigerator full of different meats. You choose a meat and a vegetable, and they fry the two up together with however many fresh chillis you like. With this you get cabbage soup, and as much rice as you like from a giant pot, all for 10 yuan. Pure genius.

I am falling slightly behind. I rode a decent distance today, but I still lost a morning when I need to make up some time. On my map, however, the next stretch of road passes through an area called the "snow peak mountains." I hope I'm up for it.

Regards,

Niko

I am writing from an internet cafe in the centre of Liumutang Village, just outside the larger city of Lianyuan. I did not make it as far today as I would have liked. The road was hilly and the air full of ash, and by the time I got here I needed to rest for the evening.
The hotel I am staying in is 60 yuan, more expensive than the countryside, but comes with the luxury of real hot running water and its own toilet.

I followed today the realization that I had yesterday: country roads in these parts are actually better than large roads. Large roads are worn down by a river of heavy trucks and buses, but the country roads don't see much but the occational motorbike or tractor.

I took a shortcut through the countryside towards the city of Lianyuan. This area was poorer than I had seen, the red brick houses smaller and more worn down, the shops fewer and farther between. The demographic shift that I have heard about before is obvious here: the old people and children stay in the country while the parents go to cities to find work. Many of the younger men I have spoken to here have only just returned from a nearby city or as far away as Guangzhou to spend the new year with their families.


In the the marketplace of Longtang Village, this woman was selling candy for the new year. Brightly coloured sweets like these are given out to the many relatives and visitors that come around during the holidays.

I am writing this in my notebook in a guesthouse in Hutian Village (click to see a map of my progress). There is no internet access here, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to blog.

I spent 31 yuan today, only $4.60 CAD. 20 was for the guesthouse, 2.5 for breakfast, 4.5 for some emergency food to keep in my pack, and 4 on an iced tea that I just bought on my way home. Here is how I did it.

I woke up this morning seeing my breath steam in the air when I stuck my head out of the covers. As I left Ningxiang, the fish ponds were covered in ice and there were white fringes of frost on the cabbages. The sun and some steep hills soon warmed me up.

I passed through coal mining country in the morning, first through Coal Bank, then through a little village on a mountain top called Dacheng. I stopped in Dacheng for a haircut. Over a cup of tea with the hairdresser and his family, his sister joked that his nose was almost as big as mine. "The truth is, I am of mixed blood," he said solemnly. "My mother is from here but my father... he was from Coal Bank!." Despite my protests, they refused the 6 yuan payment for the haircut.

Around noon I emerged from a narrow gorge into the broad valley of Laoliangcang, or "old granary." I was hungry, and soon came by what looked like a restaurant. A group of musicians was playing loud folk music nearby a cluster of tables. I stopped and asked a young woman in white if this was a restaurant. She answered no, but asked me to sit down and eat with them.
Pretty soon, I realized something strange was going on. First, if this was not a restaurant, what were so many people doing here? Second, why were we eating so much meat? Country people usually eat mostly vegetables, but here was chicken, fish, tripe, and big slabs of pork fat. Finally, not only my host but also a number of others were wearing white clothes, scarves and headbands.
As the musicians trouped around the tables, my host saw my puzzled face and asked, "Do you know what's going on here?" I did not. 
"Well," she said, "my grandmother just died."

I had just crashed a funeral.

"Don't worry about it," she said smiling, "eat!"
In that phrase, she may have summed up the philosophy of many of the people I have met over the last couple of days.

I didn't take any pictures, but I caught this procession marching across the rice fields to crashing gongs and drums later in the day. The yellow stripe is a giant dragon puppet.

In the early afternoon, I chatted with a man on a motorbike advised me not to take the main road south because it was rough and potholed. He pointed me to a side road that would lead me through the rice fields to the east. It meant leaving the comfortable milestones of the highway behind, but as the Chinese saying goes: "Listen to advice and you'll always eat well."
Sure enough, he was right. The side road was smooth, even, and lead me straight south through tiny villages and rice paddies brown with dead cut stocks.

As the sun dropped, however, I was still in the middle of nowhere, near the ominously named "Shadow Mountain." My last hour of biking was a quadricep breaking climb up a pass, and then a spiraling drop into the next valley where at last I found a guesthouse just as the sun set.

I met Ms. Zhou as soon as I had put my things away in my room and walked out the door. She is 23, with a one year old boy. She invited me back to her house to meet her family and have dinner. Her house, like, most of the farmhouses I've passed, was big but bare. A few posters adorned the thin concrete walls.
The family sat around a wooden card table with a blanket draped over top and a heater underneath. Everyone sticks their feet and hands under the table to warm up.

Her husband gave me a nut, which further research tells me was called an areca, to chew. It tasted like a cross between a cinnamon stick, a piece of mint gum, and a shot of vodka. It also made me feel slightly like I was choking. Ms. Zhou told me it is slightly intoxicating, but I didn't chew it long enough to find out.