Dongguan Guancheng (Stage 2)

I was sorry to leave Shenzhen so soon; I enjoyed the hotel and the bustling street life outside. But stage 2 is in Dongguan, so we boarded the buses at 8:30 and were soon en route. After a nearly 2 hour ride, during which the most notable sight was the impressive large-scale topiary in the road medians and verges, we arrived at the race start. Dongguan appears to be a very new city. The Dongguan Exhibition Center, where the race was centered, is a modern marvel of steel, glass, and concrete. At 10:30 in the morning, the very wide streets were very, very empty. The course was a short (4K) rectangle, and the streets connecting one side of the course to the other were closed to traffic, with police guards making sure the course was secure. There was something eerie about the modern aspect of the urban architecture, the perfection of the flower beds in front of the huge buildings, the emptiness of the streets, and the solemn police presence.

The race start had a different feel altogether. Although there weren’t crowds of people watching as there had been in Shenzhen, there was a company of little kids on bikes waiting their turn to lead the racers to the start line. These little tykes, about 4-5 years old, were all in matching suits and Santa hats, and had balloons tied to their matching blue bikes and Olympic ring flags attached to their handlebars. They were adorable, of course, but the most amazing thing was how well-behaved they were. They all waited stoically in their lines, hardly wiggling at all. When one little boy in the from row rolled forward about a foot, a woman came from the sidelines and spoke to him sternly for about 3 minutes. He blinked and nodded very seriously and scooted himself back to the line, and didn’t move out of place by so much as a whisker from then on.

When the starting horn blew, the racers streamed by on the sides of the children’s formation, and the race was on. Pollo and I went along one of the deserted streets to the other side of the course where the second mechanical pit was located, so we could offer a spare bike or wheels to any Mengoni rider who might need them.

I would have preferred to explore the city a bit, but everything looked so empty and lifeless, I wouldn’t have known where to walk. So instead I sat on the curb and wrote down some blog entries.

Eugene got in an early break of 4 that was eventually swallowed by the field. Then a pair of riders escaped and was away for a long time, eventually joined by one other. But this break too was consumed with just a few laps to go. When I saw Amaurys in good position with one lap to go, I got really excited because I think he can really compete with these guys in a head-to-head sprint. But unfortunately when the finish came, he was nowhere in the top 15. I guess there was no lead-out, so the sprinters in the front got swarmed by the whole peloton and Amaurys lost his good position.

The hotel was only a few blocks from the start/finish, so all the riders left on their bikes. With our friend Fasi’s help, I loaded our team cooler and all the gear on the bus and proceeded to wait for 20 minutes or so before they took off. We should’ve walked! When we got to the hotel, though, I was very impressed. This place was 5-star. The lobby had a huge aquarium with sea turtles, sharks, and fish swimming around. The elevators had beautiful stone mosaics on the floor, and rosewood panels. The rooms – wow! 12-foot ceilings, an extremely spacious and beautiful furniture. unch was ready. I decided to go easy because Pollo and I wanted to go for a ride after lunch.

We set off, first taking a picture of the hotel in case we got lost and had to ask someone how to get back! We were accompanied for the first few minutes by a couple Portuguese guys riding for the Macau team, but they were going shopping, so we parted ways at a main boulevard. A lot of the street signs have no English names at all, so we just followed our noses. The traffic here is a bit scary; many of the intersections have no traffic signals at all, so turning vehicles just push their way in. The honking and squealing brakes are intense.

We just rode around aimlessly, turning down an interesting alley here and there. We rode down a street that was all plant shops; there were orchids and poinsettias, mums and roses for sale. I liked best the bonsais, some of which were huge! I tried to ask the proprietor of one bonsai place how old one of the plants was, finally pantomiming a bent old person walking with a cane. She nodded, smiling, but couldn’t tell me how many years old it was.

When we got back to the hotel, we took in the view out of our 9th floor window. The number of construction cranes was really amazing. We could also see a plot of land – it looked a bit like a former mine, or a place that had begun to be cleared for a huge building but had been abandoned. It was planted everywhere with green crops in tidy rows. “Wherever there’s a bit of land,” murmured Pollo, “they plant something – anything.”

I had thought it would be nice to swim a bit in the hotel pool, as I haven’t had much exercise lately (and with all the great food, I fear I will be gaining quite a bit of weight!). But the water was so cold that I barely lasted 5 minutes. I couldn’t even swim crawl – the cold made it impossible for me to exhale under water!

Freezing from my cold swim, I jumped into bed to warm up, and was soon so sleepy that I didn’t even want to leave to eat dinner. Figuring it was about time to catch up on sleep (I’ve been skimping since we got here), I elected to stay in bed and enjoyed a nice, long rest. Thus ended my Christmas in China.