Provincial street scene – part two from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.
More scenes in a typical eastern Chinese provincial town. Tomorrow evening a glimpse of the night life…
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Around town – part two
December 13th, 2010Scones, sandwiches and degrees of separation
December 13th, 2010South of the Nanchang’s centre the marshals faded away and the bicycles drifted back onto the highway. Chaos resumed. Order restored. Soon reaching what I thought to be Fengcheng, my intended night’s stop. Far earlier than anticipated. A few hours of daylight remaining. Opportunity to gain a few more miles south. To the provincial town of Zhangshu.
Except everyone I spoke to, showed the map to, assured me I was there already. Confusing. People’s concept of distance unreliable beyond their immediate neighbourhood. But you’d think they knew where they lived. Eight different passers-by. Luckiest of numbers in China. Open questions. Same result.
Amidst the confusion, certainty. Of sorts. Between the towns about a quarter of a degree of longitude. Doesn’t sound much but it equates to about twenty miles. Placed my trust in my GPS receiver. Knew where I was on my map with sufficient accuracy to assure myself this definitely wasn’t Zhangshu. Onwards then. Besides, I was buoyed up. Fresh sandwiches. Proper ones. Tuna. And fruit scones. Little shop in Nanchang.
Rules of the road
December 12th, 2010Scant regard the norm. Few having any demonstrative grasp of good roadcraft. Even less exhibiting consideration for other road users. Traffic Police a frequent sight. Evidence of enforcement far less so. Except in Nanchang. In the centre, marshals at every junction to ensure cyclists adhere to the tracks running parallel to the main routes.
Laudable enough? If you’re an ambling Chinese rider, without a care in the world. And not a smidgen of spatial awareness. Or a home to go to. Yes. But when you’ve distance to cover. And you ride at a pace that easily keeps up with the traffic. Cars an impediment to your progress. Then no. Definitely not. It’s the old rules, fools and the wise thing.
Being a foreigner – an alien – means I probably get away with more than others. The language barrier not always a bad thing. Then there’s my urban riding style. Bold. Swift. Confident. Road presence. Allowed to ride amongst the electric bikes because they assume my substantial rear wheel hub is a motor. How else could I sustain the pace? After all, no dérailleur gears.
It’s not that I set out to deliberately flout whatever passes for the highway code here. More a case of adhering to local customs. Still stop at traffic lights. Much to the amusement of others. An old London commuting habit I can’t seem to shake off. Or really want to. Never quite understood why people seem genuinely surprised that if you jump lights or undertake lorries or buses, there’s a good chance you’ll get flattened.
Around town – part one
December 12th, 2010
Provincial street scene – part one from Ken Roberts on Vimeo.
Scenes in a typical eastern Chinese provincial town. More tomorrow night.
Roads to Nanchang
December 11th, 2010“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect” – Paul Theroux, travel writer
Deceptively straightforward start. Escape from Wuhan. City larger than London. Heading towards the city of Nanchang. Smaller. Couple of million. Next leg of my journey south to Hong Kong for Christmas. Reaching my first stop, Ezhou, with the minimum of fuss.
Beyond Ezhou I’d left the comforting familiarity of the G106 National Road for a lesser Provincial Road. Soon deteriorating into a rough, if wide, track. Enveloped in thick clouds of dust churned up by passing lorries. The occasional strip of tarmac. Evenings spent wringing the caked filth from my clothes.
Nondescript hotel rooms. Forty channels and nothing on. Friendly enough establishments. Smiling faces at reception. Cheaper than a European hostel bed. But I was beginning to tire of it all. Repetitious. Finding myself struggling to place the various stops, even from a few days previously.
Evenings. Familiar pattern. Provisions for the next day. Some from a supermarket. Fruit from street sellers. By now dark. Traffic ebbing away. A few groups of women dancing on the wide pavements. Shades of line dancing but with more expression.
Eventually reaching the city of Jiujiang. Modest by Chinese standards. Bigger than Manchester. Back onto a National Road. Progress once more. Closing in on Nanchang.
[Author’s note: Series of short films of life in a typical provincial town to follow – once I can get them on to my video hosting service – blocked in China!]
Lost in space
December 10th, 2010"Confusion now hath made his masterpiece" William Shakespeare, English playwright, been dead a while…
Seems tales of planes, trains and automobiles, first impressions of Hong Kong, and lamenting New Year’s Eve in Sydney may have caused a spot of confusion. A friendly Yorkshireman expressed it more plainly. And with a lot more brevity. Made me smile. But this is a family orientated website so forgive me if I don’t repeat it exactly. Put another way, "Where’s Ken?"
"Expert. Someone who brings confusion to simplicity" Gregory Nunn, some American chap, still breathing
South of the city of Nanchang, roughly six hundred miles north of Hong Kong. On track to reach there in time for Christmas. Planning to celebrate in style with another Yorkshireman. Then off to Australia at the end of the month. Cheap flights irresistible.
"If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius" Larry Leissner, another American chap
To be fair, I find China confusing enough at times. Roads that no longer exist, at least in a navigable form. Large provincial towns that appear unexpectedly. Not on the map. Add in a flying visit to Hong Kong a little while ago for a fresh Chinese visa. Picture easily becomes a little murky. Like the Yellow River.
Bah humbug…
December 9th, 2010New Years Eve in Sydney. Australia’s cultural Capital. And I wasn’t looking forward to it. Not a bit. Truth was, I’d be arriving early in the morning on an overnight flight from Hong Kong. Then there’d be a twelve hour wait for my connection to Cairns, the starting point for my southerly run along the east coast. Reckoned on arriving at lodgings close to midnight.
Much as I might want to see in the New Year – and my third continent – in style, the grim reality is that after being deprived of all but a modicum of sleep the previous night, a vat or two of caffeine in domestic departures… I think you get the picture. Of course, there are earlier connections. And better days to travel. But a lot more expensive. Even toyed with the idea of temporary membership of an airline lounge to take some of the pain away, but the airlines have already wised up to that scam one.
Booking the flights has been enough of an experience. Shades of colonic irrigation. Some people enjoy it. I don’t. Actually, that’s the easy bit. The real fun starts with the excess baggage rules and charges. For which possession of a bicycle appears to be viewed as something of an aggravating factor. Complicated further by using, of necessity, two separate airlines with different requirements and fees. Makes the various Central Asian visa and immigration rules look like they’d merit a Plain English award.
So. No plans to saw the handle off my toothbrush. It folds. Or fly into tropical Cairns wearing my down jacket. Far too light. But I do know exactly how much all the kit weighs. Courtesy of a set of children’s bathroom scales. About £2.50 from a Chinese Walmart.
And I’ve also worked out how to legitimately exploit the carry-on luggage rules to their fullest extent. I’ll be the one boarding with a full seven kilograms in my bag. Maps and notebooks (’reading material’) in my pockets. Netbook and cameras carried separately. Whilst wearing my iPod. Pondered – albeit briefly – what to do with one of my spare folding tyres. Ressembles a cricketer’s protective box. Sort of.
Frustrating? Yes. Time-consuming? Yes. And I’d had help. A lot. No need to shop around the various airlines. My parents had very kindly done that for me. Simply had to follow their advice. Which I’d done. To the letter. And also pleased I’d already got my Australian visa. Saved a few more hours online. And my sanity. Just needed to get across the de-facto border from mainland China into Hong Kong. But that’s another story….
[Author’s note: You may be surprised to know that the English language version of the Kazakhstan visa and immigration rules probably does merit a Plain English award. Invaluable for fending off corrupt border guards. Sadly not available in hardback]
Final crop
December 8th, 2010
This season’s final noodle crop….
The Stronger Sex?
December 7th, 2010
Pam Goodall. Ann Wilson. Anne Mustoe. Closer to home. Somerset. Astrid Molyneux. Ingrid Criddle. Household names? Celebrities, a brief foray into the limelight then gone, certainly not. Rather, they have shared in a far greater endeavour. Cycling across entire continents. Some the world. Englishwomen. Alone.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of the male species who have completed similar challenges. Faced hardship. Adversity. It’s just simply that I’m aware of more women. Not very scientific I admit. Nor is the observation it confined to those with bicycles. Louise in Dunhuang. Angela I’d met briefly in Xi’an.
I’d been intrigued by the demographics. Men mostly in their twenties. Women often quite a bit older, a good number in their second half century. Which just shows you’re never too old to chase a dream. To go out into the world. Do something bold.
[Pam Goodall’s account of her ride around the world – “Riding It Out” can be found on amazon.co.uk. You can read about Astrid Molyneaux’s exploits on her blog at www.cyclingfullcircle.com. Ingrid Criddle can be found at www.justgiving.com/cycletoistanbul. And to find out more about Ann Wilson and Anne Mustoe, just pop their names into a well known search engine]
Lie of the land
December 6th, 2010
It’d been suggested a quick refresher might be helpful. China is pretty big. Roughly the size of Europe. But a bit more populated. These days people knew where it was. But less so what lay inside its borders. I’d not been exactly sure myself until I’d arrived.
So. A quick recap. Bit of a teach-in. Divide into four quarters. Bottom left. Bordering India and Nepal. Tibet. Rarified atmosphere. Mountains. Big ones. Cold. Even in summer. Probably.
Top left. Urumqi. First city I’d visited in China after crossing from Kazakhstan. And deserts. Lots of the stuff. Very hot in summer. And bitterly cold in winter. Mostly bleak and barren. Stuff of the Silk Roads. Ancient trading routes running as far as Xi’an.
Top right. Don’t know. Haven’t visited. Too close to North Korea for my liking. Finally, bottom right. I’ll let you know. That’s where I heading next, en route to Hong Kong.
Sweeping generalisations I admit. For, beyond Lanzhou, towards Xi’an and the city of Wuhan, terraced, cultivated hillsides are more the norm. Often at deceptively high altitudes, much of the route above that of the summit of Ben Nevis. No more desert. And Wuhan itself lies on a wide flood plain. Swift riding.
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