Zhongshan Changzhou

I was so tired this morning that I slept most of the bus ride away. I don’t think I missed much, though, as every time I blearily opened my eyes, the view was the same: more building, more dusty streets, more smoggy air. I guess I’m understanding why the race venues have been in out-of-the-way locations; not good for spectators, perhaps, but better for breathing!

The ride was really long this morning, and the caravan of buses kept stopping and idling in place for up to 15 minutes at a time. I guess there were traffic jams, although we couldn’t see what was going on from the bus windows. At last the bus stopped and the doors opened, and we jumped out to a very exciting scene. There was drumming – a loud, heart-quickening beat – and a few hundred yards away, I could see lion dancers prancing and jumping. There was also a big crowd of people, and we walked the gauntlet of their friendly stares from the bus into the race area enclosure. I stopped, entranced, to watch the lion dancers in their expressive, athletic stampings and jumpings.

This race course was like a typical American criterium, albeit a little longer (about 3K). There were several tight, fast turns; we knew our guys would be more comfortable on this course than any of the Asian riders or even the Europeans. Several of the team directors were grumbling about the danger of the roads, which made me even more confident that GS Mengoni could use its crit experience to advantage.

The team area was right next to a large pond and park area; the pond had a waterfall cascading into it from the high rocks ringing it, and at the top of the high rocks were several small buildings with tiled roofs – the typical Chinese “pagoda” style (I don’t know if this is a correct term, culturally or architecturally) with the corners sloping up like ski jumps. When I went over to a deck under another, larger “pagoda,” near some gates tiled with oyster shells, I took some pictures with some of the other race personnel hanging out there.

I decided to walk around the entire course, since it was in the midst of an interesting town. I left the enclosure, and started to follow the plastic tape cordoning off the street from the spacious sidewalk. It seems that, although this is the most picturesque spot we’ve been since Hong Kong, perhaps tourists aren’t common here; I was stared at ceaselessly as I walked along the street. I again felt a bit like I was walking a gauntlet. I can’t say whether the eyes that followed me were friendly or not. I did see some friendly looks and the occasionally smile, and a few people even called out “Hello!” I wonder if what I perceive as unfriendliness (or perhaps indifference) is really just shyness; maybe the people who have enough English to shout a greeting seem friendly simply because they have the tools to show friendliness.

I stopped at one point to time the gap between a breakaway and the pack, and a young woman standing nearby clicked a picture of me on her cell phone. I felt the tables had been fairly turned, as I’m always surreptitiously snapping photos of people here. So I smiled at her and gestured for her to join me in the picture and have her friend, holding a baby, take the photo. I made some happy faces at the baby, and the little darlin’ grasped my finger in his fist, and then held out his arms to me. So I picked him up, and they took more photos of me holding the baby. I wished my camera hadn’t been out of batteries!

There were lots of stores selling bolts of cloth, rags, yarn, and other textile goods. I never did find out whether it was the textile district of the town, or why else there may have been so many cloth vendors.

I talked for a while with a photographer taking photos along the course (for Guandong Television, I found later when he gave me his card). I tried to explain to him why I thought Amaurys had a good chance of winning today, but I’m not sure he knew enough about cycling to understand what I meant.

When it came close to the finish, I climbed a barricade near a tree and stood there leaning out to see the sprint come in. I realized I could see Pollo at about the 100M sign, and could read his body language to know whether Amaurys had a chance at the sprint. And it looked good – Pollo leaning forward, tense and excited – until maybe 10 seconds before the riders came into sight. Then Pollo’s body sagged; more seconds passed, and I saw a single rider come across the line, arms raised. Turns out there had been a crash just after the last turn. Amaurys, who was maybe in 4th or 5th position, right on the wheel of the Danish rider who’s won 2 races already, didn’t go down when the Dane crashed, but of course was thrown off and his sprint derailed. Such are the vagaries of bike racing – sometimes you do everything right and are in the exact right place…until that place suddenly becomes wrong!

Unfortunately Simon, the young Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for the Tour, didn’t finish today’s stage, so the team will be down to 3 riders tomorrow. Gee – it’s been a tougher race, attrition-wise, than I think the organizers intended.

Fassi and the other Bici Racing boys took care of our cooler and a bag with race supplies, and I borrowed the spare bike to ride to the hotel with the other guys. We wound through some narrow streets lined with old-looking buildings with tiled roofs. The tiles are like half cylinders, cut vertically, perhaps originally terra cotta colored, but now grey to black.

After finding the hotel and having lunch (more disappointing food; I keep hoping for a return to the kind of buffet we enjoyed in the Shenzhen hotel, but to no avail), Pollo and I went out for a ride. What Pollo calls this type of riding is a “paseo:” more a meander than a purposeful expedition, and definitely not any kind of real exercise. We started off down the busy street, accustomed by now to the free-for-all that is traffic in China. Within a fewblocks, we came to a small bridge over a river. There was a single lane in each direction for cars, and a wide bike and pedestrian path on each side as well. Of course, the scooters claimed the bike/ped side of the divider, but still it was nice to have a brief respite from cars. On the other side of the river was a bustling commercial zone. First we went left, cruising along a one-way street and gazing to one side at the merchandise and to the other at the river. We saw some small birds in bamboo cages, presumably for sale. I saw a bamboo child’s seat for a bicycle like one I’d admired earlier while walking around the race course, and may have bought it if I’d remembered to bring any money.

We eventually turned down a side street to get back, in a roundabout way, to the bridge. Down this side street, and the alleys off it, were a lot more old-looking buildings, and we turned into a few of them to see what we could see. Coasting along the bumpy streets, we caught glimpses of women cooking over a huge wok on top of some kind of brazier; men and women playing cards or mah-jong; women washing clothes in basins; all the little snapshots of everyday life that are so fascinating to the outsider.

Coming out into a wider street again, there was a produce market…right there on the street, literally. Vendors had spread their tarps out on the street, and laid their fresh greens right on top. I snapped a photo of one particularly vibrant corner, and the vendor smiled widely to be the object of my picture. This seemed a friendly place; sure we felt like we stuck out like sore thumbs, but somehow it wasn’t a bad kind of sticking out.

Once back on the other side of the river we went the other direction and explored a park. There was green space aplenty, with other attractions such as a big boat in the middle of a lawn, and little bridges over waterways with the odd koi fish hanging as if suspended in the murky water. We even came across a modern art museum! I would have liked to have gone in, but it was just closing.

Eventually we made our way back to the busy little bridge over the river onto the main street on which our hotel was located. We washed the team’s bikes (well, Pollo mostly did, while I fetched bikes from upstairs and cleaned the chains when he was finished with the rest of the bikes). Two other teams’ mechanics loaned Pollo detergent for the frames and WD-40 for the drivetrains. One of them even lent us his bike stand to make the work easier! I have seen a gradual softening on almost all the teams’ parts, with staff and riders alike becoming friendlier to members of other teams.

After dinner, the whole team (besides Simon) went out to get bicycle rickshaws to go to the pedestrian mall Pollo and I had seen earlier just across the river a few blocks from the hotel. With much merriment we discovered that the rickshaw “driver” of Alberto, Amaurys, and Eugene’s rig had secret assistance from a motor! Our driver was really pedaling, which was why he had wanted to take only 2 of us and the other guy had accepted 3!

We walked around a bit at this mall, peering into jewelry, clothing, and accessories stores. Eugene and I were on a mission to find T-shirts with nonsense English words on them, and we found some very good specimens. I even ended up buying two. One states boldly, with rhinestones to underline the point, “Rear Your Fair.” The other, with a small embroidered teddy bear, says: “You are my badtiul poen girl GROSSIE Starletaysownoietenresdfo FOR U broowny SUPER not sweeter your jea GIRLS.” I feel compelled to clarify that I’m not making fun of the Chinese for their occasionally tenuous grasp of the English language; after all – I can barely say “Thank you” correctly in Mandarin, and the rest of both that language and Cantonese is a complete mystery to me. It’s just downright funny to wonder where some of the nonsense words come from. Randomly computer generated, with some legitimate words thrown in? (This whole subject is also a bit illuminating with regards to the prominence English – and American culture and style more generally – has in China presently.)

Zhongshan ended up being my favorite city so far in China, not that we really deeply explored any of them. However, from the very superficial glimpses we got of the cities the race has passed through, this one seems the most complete: bustling commerce, tranquil green space (with a river to boot), lots of pedestrian-only space, and some older buildings amidst the new development.

Foshan Stage

The morning brought another long transfer to the next stage. When we arrived, it was at the parking lot of a huge, modern sports complex, and again there was no one around. Oddly, the stage’s sponsor, which appeared to be a folding bike company (Qi Le Duo), had a big booth with lots of sample bikes. I don’t know who was supposed to test ride or look at them. There were some BMX riders who were there to add some excitement (for the nonexistent spectators, I guess), and some of them got hold of the folding bikes and put them through some pretty serious paces, jumping the plywood ramps and pallet piles.

This was a longer circuit of 9K, so I got a ride in the media van to the second pit, located halfway around the course. There Pollo and I hung out and listened to scraps of information coming over the race radio. Eugene was again in an early break (with a Russian and another guy), but they were reeled in by the relentless controlling pressure of the race leader’s Hong Kong Pro Cycling team.

I even napped a little in the warm sun, but when the race had less than 2 laps to go, and mechanical support was no longer allowed (with a free lap), Pollo took off on the spare bike back to the start, and I started walking. I trotted along, passing policemen every 200 yards or so; some of them were sitting on the sidewalk or the curb, and many of them smiled in return to my nodded greeting. The course was almost entirely deserted besides them; so it was unclear what /who the police were keeping the course clear of.

I passed one group of spectators; they looked like construction workers, and there was a group of about 15 of them leaning on a barricade on one corner of the course. I was all the way on the opposite corner, and I had almost turned the corner when one of the guys shouted, “Hello!” I slowed my trot down enough to raise a hand slightly in greeting, and the whole crowd of them erupted into (what I interpreted as) happy laughter. So I raised my hand higher and waved as I disappeared around the corner, which elicited another round of merriment. I reflected on the fact that this was the first time in China that I’d been greeted in this way by a group of men, and how much more polite they seemed than their catcalling US counterparts!

I took a shortcut across a park to get back to the sports complex to watch the finish, and I was sweating by the time I jogged to the finish line banner. I was there just in time to see Amaurys sprint across the line in 3rd place! So the post-race scene was very different today as Amaurys attended the awards ceremony (as did I as semi-official team photogtrapher). The M.C. wanted to interview him about the finish, so it was a three-way translation (English to Spanish to English to Chinese) to get Amaurys’ comments to the assembled media. Unfortunately, there weren’t any spectators, even at the finish.

The hotel was a bit too far to ride, so the buses were loaded and we all piled in once again. It was about 3 p.m. when we arrived; just in time for a late lunch. Pollo and I decided to ride, and as Fassi wanted to ride as well, we waited for him so we could all go together. While we waited at the front entrance of the hotel, the bellhops stared with interest at the bikes. They shyly gestured that they’d like to pick them up (to see how much they weighed, presumably). We handed them over and made signals that they should try them out. They jumped on and did a few turns around the valet parking area, grinning like crazy. The responsiveness surprised them, but for all the differences between our bikes and the standard, heavy steel rigs they were probably used to, they rode the racing bikes with facility.

Fassi joined us, and we took off in the direction recommended by the bellhops. It was a huge, heavily-trafficked boulevard, with trucks and scooters (lots of those) screaming past with piercing honks and choking exhaust. The people riding the scooters turned their heads and stared as they went past, and I was reminded of my experience on the Autopista Duarte in the Dominican Republic. I asked Fassi why there weren’t more bikes here; although we’ve seen quite a few, carrying loads unbelievable in bulk and weight, it’s nothing like I expected after hearing Pollo’s impressions of his last trip to Shanghai and Hong Kong 2 years ago. Fassi replied that here in the South, bikes aren’t so popular anymore; partly because of the influence that Hong Kong culture has on South China, and the view that bicycles are for the poor. Now, it seems that motorized scooters are replacing bikes as the mass mode of transportation.

We rode for perhaps as hour or so through streets with incredibly heavy pollution. It was like a fog we pushed through; a haze of particulates turning everything brownish gray. We turned off onto a quieter side street, but the dust and smog was just as thick. At the end of the road, we came to a gate, with workers trickling out. The sign on the wall said it was an aluminum products factory.

The ride back to the hotel was even crazier, since dusk had fallen. Now, the scooters, bikes, and pedestrians on the cycle path paralleling the highway weaved in the same complicated ballet, but with the additional element of surprise as shapes appeared, zooming, out of the smoggy dark.

Our hotel faced this busy highway, so all night long there was the honking and braking of an L.A. freeway at rush hour. Also, our beds were incredibly hard: a Chinese phenomenon that actually agrees well with me when not taken quite to the extreme. (At the Guangzhou University hotel, the “mattresses” were actually box springs, and if I dared to turn onto my side, the springs dug into my shoulder!) Anyway, I think I slept decently, if not wonderfully. Somehow these days of bus travel and hanging around race venues make me almost as tired as if I were racing myself…