We pulled into the Guilin station at about 6:30 in the morning, and it was still dark. Chilly too – we’re a little north and a lot inland from HK now, and the weather feels damper and colder. I was so comfortable in my cozy top bunk that I rather wished we had a few more hours to go. When we tumbled out on the platform, I felt sleepy and unsure of myself. We didn’t have a hotel or any idea where to find one. But – lo and behold – we had scarcely looked around like lost sheep for thirty seconds when a woman bustled up to us.
“Hello, are you looking for a hotel?” she asked in passable English. “Yes, yes – we are,” I replied. “Please come with me,” she said firmly, and turned on her little high heels and tapped away down the platform. Pollo and I looked at each other for a second and followed obediently.
The woman – whose name was Lucy, we found out – took us to her office, which was a tourist agency. She asked us what kind of hotel we were looking for, and I answered quickly, “Cheap.” “How much you want to spend?” she pressed. I hazarded a guess based on our Shenzhen stay: “Under 200 a night.” She hummed and hawed, and tried to get us to spend “just a little more” for a much nicer hotel in the center of town. But I insisted on the less expensive, 160 RMB per night option, so she filled out the paperwork and collected 3 nights’ worth of rent from us. Meanwhile, she was also trying to sell us on river cruises and bus trips at what seemed like exorbitant prices. Too much for us to spend, anyway, if we were going to manage 2 weeks in China. So we politely declined the tours and Lucy said she would take us to our hotel.
She walked a few blocks with us along the lightening streets of Guilin, and I asked our guide where she had learned English (at university, she answered). We encountered a lot of stares, partly at our faces and partly at our bikes. Lucy stopped in front of what appeared to be a construction site; she seemed momentarily hesitant, but then her high heels tapped resolutely forward into what we then saw was – or had been - a hotel lobby, stepping delicately over piles of plaster debris. She spoke for a few seconds with a girl in a winter jacket sitting at a stool behind what appeared to be – goodness gracious, it was – the reception desk. Then she motioned to the elevator. “We go to leave your bags in your room, then you come down and show passport, pay key deposit,” Lucy stated.
“Umm,” I started timidly. “Do you think they will give us a discount on the room since it’s under construction?” “Ah, no,” replied Lucy quickly. “This room is much better than the one you pay 160 for.” By that time we had exited the elevator on the second floor, and she was opening the door to the room. It seemed to be a pretty nice room – spacious and clean – so I didn’t argue any more. Plus, I figured, they were letting us check in pretty early, which had to count for something.
So Lucy took her leave of us, after giving us her card and suggesting several times that we call her to arrange a tour. Pollo and I fell into the queen bed and had a nice little nap. We were woken by the sound of construction coming from the lot behind the hotel. We looked at each other and just laughed. Here we were in Guilin, with three days to explore. After a 13-hour train trip, the first day was going to be all about riding our bikes.
We wheeled our bikes out of the elevator and through the lobby, which seemed to have been further demolished in the few hours we’d been sleeping upstairs. Our exit elicited many stares from passersby on the street, whether because of the bikes, the maelstrom of dust and jackhammers from which we’d appeared, or what, I don’t know.
We rode south out of the city, toward the town of Yangshuo according to the map I’d purchased from Lucy at the tour office. Riding in China is like two-wheeling in New York City, only more so; besides taxicabs and trucks to watch out for, there are scooters, bikes, and pedestrians on the road. The roads seem to be divided everywhere into the vehicle lanes on the left, and the bicycle/pedestrian lanes on the right (with a raised curb in between with frequent entrance/exit breaks). This would be quite orderly if the intended users would only occupy the lanes delineated for their use…however, as it is, scooters weave around bikes and trikes in the bike/ped lane, honking their alerts; and slow-moving cargo trikes loaded high with heavy stuff wobble ponderously in the main road, being dodged by zooming motorscooters and diesel-spewing three-wheeled trucks. As a whole, it is utter chaos – the type of obstacle-laden course that would normally thrill me to high-alert mode.
However, my lungs were being seared by the exhaust, and every breath was a burning effort. I couldn’t wait to get out of the traffic. Finally, the flow of vehicle thinned, and we were out of the city on a wide main road. We rode on the wide shoulder, looking at the farms and small buildings to each side. This looked like what I’d imagined China to be: open land planted neatly with vegetables, old buildings with tiled roofs, cows and water buffalo being led to pasture. Fairly frequently we’d pass someone on a bike or trike; usually pedaling a heavy load. I marveled at the strength and toughness of these people. A lot of them were old – even maybe in their eighties – and they were hauling really huge loads. We saw one old man pedaling a tricycle creakily, and in the wooden box on the back was his equally ancient wife. I held out my camera to ask if I could take a picture, and both their faces broke into wide grins.
We saw an old, old woman bent under an enormous load of firewood. It was tied in a bundle far larger than she was, and she was dragging it along the verge of the road. It occurred to me that 1) I bet two thirds of the folks over 65 in this country – both men and women - could probably bench press more than I can, and 2) as difficult as life must be, to have to work so hard at such an advanced age, there is something to be said for continuing to work and produce useful labor, both for physical and mental health.
(At any rate, I resolved to remember these haulers and riders of cargo bicycles anytime in the future I should feel tired and weak and overwhelmed by the road ahead of me on my bike. I used to consider myself to be fairly tough (“Whew – look at me riding up River Road from Trader Joe’s with $150 of groceries!”) but realize that I’m a whining baby compared with these people, who perform their labor without any silly self-congratulation. They perform feats of physical labor every day that soft Americans would consider literally impossible.)
Some way along our route to Yangshuo (65 kilometers away), I saw a farm with a collection of buildings quite near the road; there was a cluster of 30-40 people gathered amongst the buildings. Pollo and I wondered together whether it was a cooperative farm, and decided it probably was.
Another item of interest I saw was a sign – in both Chinese and English – saying something to the effect of: “School for All Children: Education is Good for Families and a Better China!”
We reached Yangshuo around 2:30, and headed immediately to a small restaurant on the main street. There was a table out front with baskets of all kinds of meat and about 30 different types of vegetable and mushrooms, all raw. The proprietor explained in sign language that we were to fill a small plastic basket (like a pencil basket you might see in a primary school classroom) with our choice of food. Once we’d selected what we wanted, he took our baskets in the back and, in minutes, came back with a freshly stir-friend meal. Mine (all vegetable and mushroom) cost 7 RMB, or about a dollar. And it was absolutely scrumptious.
Meanwhile, the owner/chef was looking intently at our bikes. He picked mine up (it was leaned against Pollo’s, which was leaning against the wall) and hefted it. Then he made a gesture as if asking to ride it. I tried to explain in sign language about the fixed gear; that if he were to stop pedaling the bike would pitch him off. I’m not sure he understood my motivation in keeping him from test-riding, but I thought it was better to be seen as mistrustful than to have him fall off in the street!
There was a tourism office just across the street, and so we stopped in briefly to ask about river tours and such. The helpful young woman showed me a route on our map so that we could ride our bikes to the start-point of the boat tour of the river. She also said we could get on a boat for about 100 RMB (a lot less than our friend Lucy had quoted us).
The ride back to Guilin was long and pretty rough for me. I could play the tough girl and shrug off a 130 K round-trip on a fixed gear bike…but I’d be a liar! Besides my lungs and windpipe feeling like those of a kid who’s just inhaled his first cigarette, my legs were tiring and my butt was feeling the strain of several seated hours. But we took it nice and easy, and made it back to our hotel just as dusk was falling. By this time, the lobby was totally gutted, and the construction crew had to pause in their labor to let us pick our way across to the elevator. This story for our grandkids just keeps getting better and better, Pollo and I remarked to each other.
We went out in the evening just to look around, and were glad we had; the streets were bustling with nightlife. Instead of a real dinner, we just snacked on street food: steamed chestnuts, mandarins, lychees, and some other nuts which looked like water buffalo horns!
The next day we went out on the bikes again, with the intent to ride to the little town on the Li river where we could find a boat to take us downstream on a tour. I had misjudged the distance to the turnoff for this little town (Yangdi), and it felt like a long way that we rode on the main highway before reaching the turnoff. This little road was more poorly paved than the main highway, and buses thundered by (mostly in the opposite direction) in the middle of the road. And – in a shock to my legs unaided by shifting gears – the little road wound up and down in addition to around. By this point we were getting very hungry, so stopped briefly for a snack of candy and nuts that we’d packed along.
Here and there we passed little shacks on the side of the road made of mud bricks with corrugated metal roofs or sometimes clay tiles. The mud bricks looked like they were just stacked together with no mortar. I wonder how the occupants stay warm in the damp chilly nights here. I guess it never gets much colder than it is now in this area, but the nights must get down to the low forties Fahrenheit, and I can’t imagine that unmortared bricks offer much insulation.
We finally arrived in Yangdi, and no sooner had entered the main street than we were swarmed by people shouting “Boat, boat, boat!” No, we shook our heads, and made the universal “eating” motion of bringing imaginary spoon to mouth. “OK! OK!” a woman beckoned to us, flapping her hand and running away from us, looking back over her shoulder to make sure we were following. “OK, OK!”
We looked at each other, shrugged, and decided to follow her and see what she had in mind. I’m undecided when it comes to these hawkers: on one hand they’re annoying and aggressive, but on the other hand they can provide a valuable service of leading us to what we’re looking for. We followed the woman, who had run down the street and turned off it into a little alley leading to the courtyard of a home. Beckoning and looking behind her, she led us into the courtyard. She called out to a young woman, who came out and smiled shyly at us. She bade us be seated at a little table in the courtyard, after leaning our bikes against a low wall. This table, and the chairs beneath it, looked like they belonged in a kindergarten classroom, so tiny and low they were. Pollo and I sank gratefully into them.
Then Pollo went to work “ordering” his lunch. He pointed at one of the chickens running around the courtyard. So the older woman went over to a bamboo basket with a few little hens inside, and grabbed one of them, squawking and clucking (the hen that is, not the woman). I’ll leave out what happened next for the sensitive souls among my readership, but suffice to say that Pollo was sitting down to a garlicky fried chicken within 20 minutes. He asked for some eggs for me, and surprisingly, they were prepared scrambled, with tomatoes – they were utterly delicious and tasted more like the cuisine I eat on a daily basis at home than anything else I’ve consumed during this trip. Oh, and I’d asked for vegetables too, and the next thing we knew, an enormous head of cabbage was presented on our little kiddie table, entire. I’d thought I was hungry, but the 5 eggs with tomatoes, plus mound of white rice, plus the discarded bits of chicken off Pollo’s plate, plus the stir-fried cabbage, totally finished my hunger off.
While we were eating, the older woman was washing clothes in the courtyard nearby with a large basin and a washboard. Pollo took off his Mengoni jersey and gestured to ask her to wash it, which she did without comment, hanging it to dry on a pole hanging from the roof for this purpose.
During the meal’s preparation and consumption, our hosts were trying to convince us to hire a man for the boat trip. But the first price they named – 500 RMB, made us think we’d have to reconsider the river trip. We only had a little over 300 RMB cash, and the meal was going to cost us, plus we’d have to have enough for the bus home once we disembarked from the boat. At first they thought we were just bargaining, and with a great show of capitulation, went down to 400 RMB. Finally, to get through to them, I took out my wallet and showed them all the money that we had. Since the young woman spoke some English, we could explain that we needed to get all the way back to Guilin with this money – not just to the end of the river tour. She understood, and they began what seemed to be an animated discussion of ways and means. Ultimately, with a small reduction in the price of the meal (whole chickens are expensive, as I think they should be – after all, how many eggs can be produced over the life of a free-ranging hen?), and setting aside the bus fare we’d need, they got the boat driver (possibly another member of the household) to agree to take us for about 200 RMB. (Pollo found a few more small notes in his pocket and gave them to his laundress.)
I’d changed into street clothes to be more comfortable before we started the meal, and Pollo followed suit before we left for the boat. This was moored just a few hundred yards away, across a rocky beach. We handed our bikes through the front door of the cabin to our driver and climbed in ourselves. The boat was about 30 feet long and had a low cabin behind the foredeck, where we sat on tiny wooden stools.
The photos from this part of our day will really tell the story better than any of my words possibly could. The famous limestone formations were just as stunning as I’d imagined. And there was plenty of cultural interest as well – from the water buffalo swimming wide-eyed into the current, to what looked like itinerant camps on the water’s edge. I was fascinated by the fishermen plying their long, narrow rafts (made out of about 6 enormous bamboo “tubes” lashed together and riding just barely above the water). They stood balanced in the middle, moving the rafts with one long pole and stopping to pull nets up from the bottom. We’d thought the water cold, dipping our hands in, but we saw a few people up to their armpits bathing. Our guide pointed out the names of some of the peaks (which are fantastically creatively named – like Grandfather Watching Apple, Penholder Peak, etc.) on a minute map of the river (obtained at some point, I imagine, from a slightly bigger river tour outfit). It was incredibly peaceful, floating along with the boat’s engine at a low hum and the sun very low in the sky.
When we arrived at Xingping, our tour was over. At this little hamlet, there were a lot of school children in sweatsuit-type uniforms – apparently at a camp – hauling buckets of water from the river up to a complex that housed the biggest building in the place. We stopped for several minutes to watch a few young girls try to fix the bicycle belonging to one of them; using sticks they were trying to push the chain back onto the chainrings. Pollo would have stepped in, but they succeeded and pedaled happily off. We followed them, after pointing down the road and asking if it went to Yangshuo.
It was 16 miles to Yangshuo, and although we’d planned to take the bus, all the ones we saw in Xingping were tiny buses, so we decided to ride. Man, I was so tired of my fixed gear by that point. And I’d never changed back to spandex, so I was riding in jeans…OK, I know the messengers have that style but wow – I don’t know how they do it. Ouch. Anyway, as we rolled slowly along the tiny road among country fields, the sun set and the sky slowly purpled. Pollo was calling out the mile markers as we went: “10 to go! 9 to go!” As it got darker, I was getting a little worried about making it in the dark. When a bus thundered by, Pollo threw up his hand to get it to stop, which it did. The driver opened the “trunk”, which was quite shallow, and we put the bikes in; since my wheels don’t have quick releases, my bike didn’t quite fit, and the driver couldn’t close the trunk completely. He wasn’t worried (he charged us for the bikes), but I looked out the back window the rest of the way back to make sure the bikes didn’t fly out.
The bus was full of quite a few tourists. One of them heard Pollo say something in Spanish, and answered him, and the next thing we knew there were a few voices calling greetings in Spanish. 2 guys were French, and another one was Greek but living in Cuba. I wanted to talk with them more, but as soon as we got off the bus in Yangshuo, we heard hawkers calling that a bus to Guilin was leaving, so we hustled over there and never saw our European friends again. I was actually feeling a little lonely for more company, and it would have been really nice to eat dinner with them and hang out for a while, trading stories about our China experiences.
We sat in the bus for a long time before it began to fill up and finally left for Guilin. Luckily, we were entertained by the Kung Fu movie playing on the bus’s TV screen. It was a good one – extremely goofy but with a self-deprecating humor, with English subtitles to let us in on all the quips. However, I was tired, tired, tired…and nodded off a few times on the way home. After what seemed like a long trip back to the Guilin train station, we forewent dinner in favor of bed.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Jan 5 – Train to Guilin
I woke up definitely sick, with a mild fever and really sore throat and chest. We asked the hotel staff (with the aid of the phrase book included in my China guide, since they spoke zero English) if we could leave our bags downstairs until early afternoon. That way we could ride around and not lug our big backpacks all day. If I had been feeling more chipper, we could have gone to one of the theme parks on the outskirts of Shenzhen. (We’d read all about them the night before in a large hardcover book detailing Shenzhen’s tourist attractions; this book was very quaint in its language and had captions like “Here the happy girls show the joy of the Splashing Water Festival.”) However, as it was, I could barely pedal around the corner to look for breakfast sustenance. I was in a bad, and rapidly deteriorating, way.
We had until 5:30 p.m. before our train to Guilin would depart, and the only thing we had to do was to figure out if we needed any special packing materials to get the bikes on the train. David had recommended that we ask at the station. We did this in the morning, inquiring of a police officer stationed in the ticket sales area; however, no one at all spoke English that we could find, so we weren’t totally sure of the response we garnered to our sign language question. The policeman seemed to be saying that there was no extra charge for the bike, and that it was no problem.
We did some more wandering in the general vicinity of the train station , checking out hardware stores and buying great quantities of tiny, sweet mandarins from street vendors. Pollo ate at a little fast-fare restaurant. Time passed, slowly, and I felt more and more achy and sick.
Finally we collected our bags from the hotel and made a final trip to the train station. We entered the waiting area with at least 2 hours until departure. I don’t think I’ve ever been so early in my life. There were other people waiting there too, which was amazing to me. Who shows up two and a half hours early for a train if there’s anything else to do anywhere in a 10-mile radius? I guess a lot of them had luggage which they didn’t want to check at the station lockers. At any rate, the waiting hall got more and more crowded until about half an hour before departure, at which point suddenly everyone got up and lined up at the gates leading to the platform. (I say “lined up,” but this is a special kind of Chinese queue, that’s really no line at all; just a mass pushing against the exit point.) We decided to wait out the “line” and just exited once the mass had gone through. It’s not as if seats are first come, first served; each passenger has his own ticketed berth.
As it turns out, the bikes were no problem at all. No one even asked us about them. We put them in the hallway near the doors at the end of our car, tucked out of the way. This I love about developing countries: rules are not wasted on unimportant stuff. (The flip side is that sometimes rules aren’t even wasted on potentially important stuff, such as mandatory helmet use with motorbikes, or the enforcement of basic driving regulations.)
We had bought “hard sleeper” berths, the cheaper sleeper option. Our compartment had 6 beds, and we had the top ones (highest of 3). The mattresses were thin but pretty comfortable, and I was impressed by the accommodations for our 234 RMB fares.
The journey lasted through the night – 14 hours. Being able to sleep made all the difference, of course, and the trip passed fairly quickly. I had taken an Advil – miracle pill! – at the start, and so my fever subsided and I had that delicious feeling of freedom from aches.
We had until 5:30 p.m. before our train to Guilin would depart, and the only thing we had to do was to figure out if we needed any special packing materials to get the bikes on the train. David had recommended that we ask at the station. We did this in the morning, inquiring of a police officer stationed in the ticket sales area; however, no one at all spoke English that we could find, so we weren’t totally sure of the response we garnered to our sign language question. The policeman seemed to be saying that there was no extra charge for the bike, and that it was no problem.
We did some more wandering in the general vicinity of the train station , checking out hardware stores and buying great quantities of tiny, sweet mandarins from street vendors. Pollo ate at a little fast-fare restaurant. Time passed, slowly, and I felt more and more achy and sick.
Finally we collected our bags from the hotel and made a final trip to the train station. We entered the waiting area with at least 2 hours until departure. I don’t think I’ve ever been so early in my life. There were other people waiting there too, which was amazing to me. Who shows up two and a half hours early for a train if there’s anything else to do anywhere in a 10-mile radius? I guess a lot of them had luggage which they didn’t want to check at the station lockers. At any rate, the waiting hall got more and more crowded until about half an hour before departure, at which point suddenly everyone got up and lined up at the gates leading to the platform. (I say “lined up,” but this is a special kind of Chinese queue, that’s really no line at all; just a mass pushing against the exit point.) We decided to wait out the “line” and just exited once the mass had gone through. It’s not as if seats are first come, first served; each passenger has his own ticketed berth.
As it turns out, the bikes were no problem at all. No one even asked us about them. We put them in the hallway near the doors at the end of our car, tucked out of the way. This I love about developing countries: rules are not wasted on unimportant stuff. (The flip side is that sometimes rules aren’t even wasted on potentially important stuff, such as mandatory helmet use with motorbikes, or the enforcement of basic driving regulations.)
We had bought “hard sleeper” berths, the cheaper sleeper option. Our compartment had 6 beds, and we had the top ones (highest of 3). The mattresses were thin but pretty comfortable, and I was impressed by the accommodations for our 234 RMB fares.
The journey lasted through the night – 14 hours. Being able to sleep made all the difference, of course, and the trip passed fairly quickly. I had taken an Advil – miracle pill! – at the start, and so my fever subsided and I had that delicious feeling of freedom from aches.
Jan. 4 – Transfer to Shenzhen and Meeting a New Friend
I had intended to get an early start, but hey – we’re on vacation, right? Pollo rode, and I got going on train research. I found a great train schedule in English via Google, and looked for trains to Guilin or Kunming. The Guilin train left from both Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and I figured the Shenzhen departure would leave us enough time to get there, with push-off at 5:30 p.m. However, this failed to take into account another excellent transportation adventure from Katie and Pollo.
Yup, sarcasm: the vagaries of intercity transport from HK has driven me to it. To cut a long and complaint-ridden story a smidge shorter, the trouble began with the infrequency of the ordinary ferry service accepting “freight.” OK – this was my fault; we’d been on Lantau 4 days and I had failed to get hold of a ferry schedule. We waited until 1:30 for the ordinary ferry. Then, in Central Station, we were trudging the 2-odd kilometers to the line we needed, when suddenly Pollo (slightly behind me) was stopped by a yellow-jacketed MTR worker. His English was clear enough: “You may not bring bicycle in here. Please come with me.” We were 200 meters from the train and safety! Argh! We were taken to a customer service desk, where our purchased tickets were refunded and we were politely and firmly shown the exit. Great. Now what?
I supposed the next thing was to take the ferry across Victoria Harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui, where if we couldn’t sneak on the train, perhaps we could get a bus or taxi to Shenzhen. Pricey, but maybe our only option. However, finding the train station in Tsim Sha Tsui once we disembarked from the Star Ferry proved a major obstacle. It was right there – helpful people pointed it out to us – but how to get to it across the impassable barricades of the major highways and overpasses was beyond us for a good hour. By this point I was actually, honestly, wishing we had left our bikes behind. Never before have I cursed my favorite mode of transportation, but this was just too hard.
Anyway, looking for a public telephone from which to get online and thus research alternatives, I did enter the train station which had a clear little sign at the entrance: no bikes. Grasping at a straw, I went up to the ticket counter to ask if there was any way to get the bikes on or what the alternative might be. For goodness sakes, this is China! The capital of bike riding worldwide, right? The man said sure, but we’d have to put them in plastic bags, and pay an extra charge. Fine! Great news! As it turned out, no bags were necessary, but a fare equal to our passengers’ tickets was charged, and little “Accompanied Freight” tickets were attached to our bikes. (It turns out that the Eastern Line, which we got on once on the Kowloon side of the harbor, used to be the KCR railroad until literally a month or so ago when it and the MTR were consolidated into one operation. The KCR accepts bikes. The MTR does not. Go figure.)
Immigration out of HK and into China was fairly painless in Shenzhen, but it was totally clear that we would not make the train to Guilin that night. I was standing in line at the ticket counter in Shenzhen, planning to ask about a train to Kunming perhaps instead, when a man came up to me. “Hello, do you need help?” I melted internally. After the harrowing transportation day, and the prospect of having to stay in Shenzhen for the night, his friendly offer of assistance almost made me weep in gratitude. He waited in line with me, and when my turn came, he asked about trains to Kunming, relaying the information that there were none until the next day. So he recommended buying the tickets to Guilin for tomorrow, then spending the night in Shenzhen. I was nervous about finding a cheap hotel, but he told me he knew of a place close by that cost just 200 yuan, which seemed great to me.
He even fronted me 500 yuan to buy the train tickets (234 Y each) since I’d been misinformed when exiting the KCR/Eastern rail line station that I’d be able to use HK dollars to purchase the train tickets. Then he took me to a money changing place upstairs, where I found that the HK dollar has lost value again (along with the US dollar) in relation to the yuan. I should have changed all my cash to yuan last week!
Our new friend, whose name was David, then walked us 10 minutes or so to the hotel he’d mentioned. I admit I was wondering, slightly suspicious of his extreme generosity, what he wanted from us. But during the walk, he told us he’s a businessman, and works with a company that produces mostly T-shirts (custom, minimum order 1,000 pieces). He hastened to add, though, that he has friends in many aspects of manufacturing, including furniture, fashion accessories, and more. He says that he likes to help foreign people because sometimes he can discover business contacts. So I gladly took a few of his business cards. Anyone needing a Chinese manufacturing contact, please let me know1 (He also mentioned that he knows people who have access to top-quality fake brand name goods. These aren’t available on the street, but are sequestered away in warehouses to avoid prosecution by the anti-piracy people, I suppose.)
I was momentarily affronted when David asked me not only where I work, but also what my salary is; but then I remembered a snippet I’d read in my China guidebook; that this sort of question is normal and not to be considered rude. He kept saying something that was funny to me, “But your company should pay for your hotel, right?” I replied that since I was on vacation, that didn’t really apply. Seems he has a concept of American businesspeople as being bottomless pits of (company) wealth.
Anyway, he was solicitous almost to the point of annoyance once we arrived at the hotel, coaching us to lock all windows and close the drapes when we left. “You don’t want anyone to know you have bicycles in here!” he chastened. He had been shocked when I’d told him in response to his question that my bike cost around $600. (Of course I didn’t jump to tell him how much Pollo’s carbon racing bike is worth!) He said that bikes in China are around $15 or perhaps $20 for a new model, and under $10 for a used model. Of course, this represents somewhere on the order, I think, of a tenth of a month’s paycheck for the average Chinese.
We asked David to come to dinner with us to thank him for his generous help, and he took us to a Szechuan style restaurant several blocks away (he’s from Chengdu, so the southwestern Chinese style of food is his preference). He ordered for us, and we had some fish stew, cauliflower with smoked pork, and lots of plain silken tofu. A very good meal, but I was drooping with exhaustion by the end and very much ready for bed. The cigarette smoke here, impossible to escape in every restaurant and public space, is really bothering my throat. It was stinging tonight and I went to bed hoping it’d be better in the morning…
Yup, sarcasm: the vagaries of intercity transport from HK has driven me to it. To cut a long and complaint-ridden story a smidge shorter, the trouble began with the infrequency of the ordinary ferry service accepting “freight.” OK – this was my fault; we’d been on Lantau 4 days and I had failed to get hold of a ferry schedule. We waited until 1:30 for the ordinary ferry. Then, in Central Station, we were trudging the 2-odd kilometers to the line we needed, when suddenly Pollo (slightly behind me) was stopped by a yellow-jacketed MTR worker. His English was clear enough: “You may not bring bicycle in here. Please come with me.” We were 200 meters from the train and safety! Argh! We were taken to a customer service desk, where our purchased tickets were refunded and we were politely and firmly shown the exit. Great. Now what?
I supposed the next thing was to take the ferry across Victoria Harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui, where if we couldn’t sneak on the train, perhaps we could get a bus or taxi to Shenzhen. Pricey, but maybe our only option. However, finding the train station in Tsim Sha Tsui once we disembarked from the Star Ferry proved a major obstacle. It was right there – helpful people pointed it out to us – but how to get to it across the impassable barricades of the major highways and overpasses was beyond us for a good hour. By this point I was actually, honestly, wishing we had left our bikes behind. Never before have I cursed my favorite mode of transportation, but this was just too hard.
Anyway, looking for a public telephone from which to get online and thus research alternatives, I did enter the train station which had a clear little sign at the entrance: no bikes. Grasping at a straw, I went up to the ticket counter to ask if there was any way to get the bikes on or what the alternative might be. For goodness sakes, this is China! The capital of bike riding worldwide, right? The man said sure, but we’d have to put them in plastic bags, and pay an extra charge. Fine! Great news! As it turned out, no bags were necessary, but a fare equal to our passengers’ tickets was charged, and little “Accompanied Freight” tickets were attached to our bikes. (It turns out that the Eastern Line, which we got on once on the Kowloon side of the harbor, used to be the KCR railroad until literally a month or so ago when it and the MTR were consolidated into one operation. The KCR accepts bikes. The MTR does not. Go figure.)
Immigration out of HK and into China was fairly painless in Shenzhen, but it was totally clear that we would not make the train to Guilin that night. I was standing in line at the ticket counter in Shenzhen, planning to ask about a train to Kunming perhaps instead, when a man came up to me. “Hello, do you need help?” I melted internally. After the harrowing transportation day, and the prospect of having to stay in Shenzhen for the night, his friendly offer of assistance almost made me weep in gratitude. He waited in line with me, and when my turn came, he asked about trains to Kunming, relaying the information that there were none until the next day. So he recommended buying the tickets to Guilin for tomorrow, then spending the night in Shenzhen. I was nervous about finding a cheap hotel, but he told me he knew of a place close by that cost just 200 yuan, which seemed great to me.
He even fronted me 500 yuan to buy the train tickets (234 Y each) since I’d been misinformed when exiting the KCR/Eastern rail line station that I’d be able to use HK dollars to purchase the train tickets. Then he took me to a money changing place upstairs, where I found that the HK dollar has lost value again (along with the US dollar) in relation to the yuan. I should have changed all my cash to yuan last week!
Our new friend, whose name was David, then walked us 10 minutes or so to the hotel he’d mentioned. I admit I was wondering, slightly suspicious of his extreme generosity, what he wanted from us. But during the walk, he told us he’s a businessman, and works with a company that produces mostly T-shirts (custom, minimum order 1,000 pieces). He hastened to add, though, that he has friends in many aspects of manufacturing, including furniture, fashion accessories, and more. He says that he likes to help foreign people because sometimes he can discover business contacts. So I gladly took a few of his business cards. Anyone needing a Chinese manufacturing contact, please let me know1 (He also mentioned that he knows people who have access to top-quality fake brand name goods. These aren’t available on the street, but are sequestered away in warehouses to avoid prosecution by the anti-piracy people, I suppose.)
I was momentarily affronted when David asked me not only where I work, but also what my salary is; but then I remembered a snippet I’d read in my China guidebook; that this sort of question is normal and not to be considered rude. He kept saying something that was funny to me, “But your company should pay for your hotel, right?” I replied that since I was on vacation, that didn’t really apply. Seems he has a concept of American businesspeople as being bottomless pits of (company) wealth.
Anyway, he was solicitous almost to the point of annoyance once we arrived at the hotel, coaching us to lock all windows and close the drapes when we left. “You don’t want anyone to know you have bicycles in here!” he chastened. He had been shocked when I’d told him in response to his question that my bike cost around $600. (Of course I didn’t jump to tell him how much Pollo’s carbon racing bike is worth!) He said that bikes in China are around $15 or perhaps $20 for a new model, and under $10 for a used model. Of course, this represents somewhere on the order, I think, of a tenth of a month’s paycheck for the average Chinese.
We asked David to come to dinner with us to thank him for his generous help, and he took us to a Szechuan style restaurant several blocks away (he’s from Chengdu, so the southwestern Chinese style of food is his preference). He ordered for us, and we had some fish stew, cauliflower with smoked pork, and lots of plain silken tofu. A very good meal, but I was drooping with exhaustion by the end and very much ready for bed. The cigarette smoke here, impossible to escape in every restaurant and public space, is really bothering my throat. It was stinging tonight and I went to bed hoping it’d be better in the morning…
Jan. 3 – In Which We Hike a Peak and Attempt to Navigate Hong Kong’s Subway
Pollo had seen tiny figures of hikers on the slope up to the peak closest to Mui Wo (on the easternmost side of Silvermine Bay) every morning. Uncharacteristically (like most cyclists I know, he’s not much of a walker), he had suggested finding the path and following it up. So, after breakfast, we headed off on the road skirting the beach. It wasn’t hard at all to find the path up, which was actually paved. It quickly led to some steep stairs, which made my ex-athlete lungs work pretty hard! We were even passed on the way by a work crew carrying supplies to erect a sign (one had the metal stakes, another had the plywood, another carried a pickax, and the other carried a plastic tank on his back full of water.)
There was some interesting vegetation, including some flowering camellias. I looked for wild azaleas, which my mom had said flower in the late winter, and thought I saw some (no flowers, though). Alerted to their presence by signs warning against letting gravesite burnt offerings set the countryside alight, we saw some grave or shrine sites. These looked like small terraces on the hill, with a small altar made of rocks and sometimes a photo or vase set into the concrete of the base. We also saw bamboo poles with what looked like cut-up hoses attached; we finally figured out (from a sign) that they were fire beaters. So apparently it gets even drier than this here.
After lots and lots of narrow stairs, we arrived at the top of the hill to a great view. To the west was Silvermine Bay and Mui Wo, possibly even more charming in miniature. To the east was Discovery Bay, which is the more developed part of Lantau: it boasts a large golf course (visible from our vantage point) and a Disneyland (fortunately not in our view). There was also a large white building topped with a cross that I guessed (correctly) was the Trappist monastery I’d read about. We could have continued our hike down the other side, but both of us felt we’d better quit while we were ahead.
I collected some shells on the beach when we got back down, and then we stopped by our room to collect some stuff. I discovered a short cut from the eastern end of the beach, and along this small path there were several abandoned houses and shacks. We later read that it was a dangerous area for sinkage during the monsoon season, and many residents had been evacuated.
I had succeeded in getting in touch with Fasi this morning, our friend from Bici Racing, to try and connect with him to get my bike (which had been stored in the team’s storage area near Sha Tin since the beginning of the race). I was beginning to think I’d have to change the name of the blog, for all the cycling I’ve actually succeeded in doing while here. He arranged to have someone meet us at a train station in the New Territories. All we had to do – simple, right? – was to take the ferry to Central, and catch the MTR (HK’s super modern, high-tech subway) to the arranged station. Well, it turned into a major undertaking, and it’s a good thing we left as early as we did.
First, the thing with the ferries is that there are 2 different types: the ordinary (which accepts “freight,” including bicycles), and the fast (which prohibits freight and charges twice as much. Oh, and the trip takes half an hour as opposed to the ordinary’s 45 min.). Anyway, the next ferry to leave Mui Wo would be a fast one, and so Pollo’s bike, which he had with him (so that we could possibly ride together after fetching mine) was verboten. I just barely had time to ride Pollo’s bike back to our room, leave it, and run the 12 minutes or so to the pier. Whew.
Then, the MTR (modern and efficient as it may be to those who know it) was an intimidating beast to us. In Central station we couldn’t buy our tickets directly to our destination station; we had to buy them to the transfer point to the other line, at which point we had to buy the other tickets. Also, we had to walk about 2 kilometers (I swear I’m not exaggerating) underground to get to the right line. All in all, it took us green travelers about 2 hours to make a trip that’s about 10 miles as the crow flies.
Then long-suffering Lam (the Bici truck driver) took us to the storage room, where we quickly put my little track bike together. Thanking him profusely, we accepted a ride back to the train station. There, we commenced the backward journey. Pollo simply lifted the bike up and over the turnstile as he passed his ticket through, and there were no problems. We even got a ferry back to Mui Wo without too much waiting.
On this trip, the movie screen at the front of the boat was showing an informational film about the dangers of smoking. This I was very glad to see, because there are a LOT of smokers in China. We learned from the film (featuring Jackie Chan and another Chinese movie star) that smoking has been prohibited in a lot of common areas; however the ban seems poorly enforced. We’ve endured a lot of choking cigarette smoke on this trip. I guess in my limited and possibly skewed view, the practice seems more popular amongst the older (middle-aged) generation than amongst the young, which hopefully is a good sign of its diminishing appeal.
I had planned to spend some time in the evening researching trains to China from my pierside wifi base, but we arrived so tired from the MTR adventure that I allowed myself a pass and we went straight “home” to bed.
There was some interesting vegetation, including some flowering camellias. I looked for wild azaleas, which my mom had said flower in the late winter, and thought I saw some (no flowers, though). Alerted to their presence by signs warning against letting gravesite burnt offerings set the countryside alight, we saw some grave or shrine sites. These looked like small terraces on the hill, with a small altar made of rocks and sometimes a photo or vase set into the concrete of the base. We also saw bamboo poles with what looked like cut-up hoses attached; we finally figured out (from a sign) that they were fire beaters. So apparently it gets even drier than this here.
After lots and lots of narrow stairs, we arrived at the top of the hill to a great view. To the west was Silvermine Bay and Mui Wo, possibly even more charming in miniature. To the east was Discovery Bay, which is the more developed part of Lantau: it boasts a large golf course (visible from our vantage point) and a Disneyland (fortunately not in our view). There was also a large white building topped with a cross that I guessed (correctly) was the Trappist monastery I’d read about. We could have continued our hike down the other side, but both of us felt we’d better quit while we were ahead.
I collected some shells on the beach when we got back down, and then we stopped by our room to collect some stuff. I discovered a short cut from the eastern end of the beach, and along this small path there were several abandoned houses and shacks. We later read that it was a dangerous area for sinkage during the monsoon season, and many residents had been evacuated.
I had succeeded in getting in touch with Fasi this morning, our friend from Bici Racing, to try and connect with him to get my bike (which had been stored in the team’s storage area near Sha Tin since the beginning of the race). I was beginning to think I’d have to change the name of the blog, for all the cycling I’ve actually succeeded in doing while here. He arranged to have someone meet us at a train station in the New Territories. All we had to do – simple, right? – was to take the ferry to Central, and catch the MTR (HK’s super modern, high-tech subway) to the arranged station. Well, it turned into a major undertaking, and it’s a good thing we left as early as we did.
First, the thing with the ferries is that there are 2 different types: the ordinary (which accepts “freight,” including bicycles), and the fast (which prohibits freight and charges twice as much. Oh, and the trip takes half an hour as opposed to the ordinary’s 45 min.). Anyway, the next ferry to leave Mui Wo would be a fast one, and so Pollo’s bike, which he had with him (so that we could possibly ride together after fetching mine) was verboten. I just barely had time to ride Pollo’s bike back to our room, leave it, and run the 12 minutes or so to the pier. Whew.
Then, the MTR (modern and efficient as it may be to those who know it) was an intimidating beast to us. In Central station we couldn’t buy our tickets directly to our destination station; we had to buy them to the transfer point to the other line, at which point we had to buy the other tickets. Also, we had to walk about 2 kilometers (I swear I’m not exaggerating) underground to get to the right line. All in all, it took us green travelers about 2 hours to make a trip that’s about 10 miles as the crow flies.
Then long-suffering Lam (the Bici truck driver) took us to the storage room, where we quickly put my little track bike together. Thanking him profusely, we accepted a ride back to the train station. There, we commenced the backward journey. Pollo simply lifted the bike up and over the turnstile as he passed his ticket through, and there were no problems. We even got a ferry back to Mui Wo without too much waiting.
On this trip, the movie screen at the front of the boat was showing an informational film about the dangers of smoking. This I was very glad to see, because there are a LOT of smokers in China. We learned from the film (featuring Jackie Chan and another Chinese movie star) that smoking has been prohibited in a lot of common areas; however the ban seems poorly enforced. We’ve endured a lot of choking cigarette smoke on this trip. I guess in my limited and possibly skewed view, the practice seems more popular amongst the older (middle-aged) generation than amongst the young, which hopefully is a good sign of its diminishing appeal.
I had planned to spend some time in the evening researching trains to China from my pierside wifi base, but we arrived so tired from the MTR adventure that I allowed myself a pass and we went straight “home” to bed.
January 2: Exploring Paternal Haunts in Hong Kong
We liked the fish congee (rice porridge) flavored with scallions and ginger so much at our dim sum breakfast yesterday, that we skipped the fancy stuff and just stuck with a big bowl of that each today. Then Pollo went off to ride again, and I crouched by the pier with my laptop on a low wall to type some photo captions into picasaweb. I’ve been slow to accept all this technology into my life, preferring touch-and-turn-the-page paper albums, but I think it will end up being very valuable. I’ve mentioned my terrible memory, and although I rebel sometimes at the thought of all the work going into creating a record of my memories, I know that in the future I’ll be grateful for having done it.
Pollo having returned, we rallied ourselves for another ferry trip into Central (Hong Kong), with the idea of seeing some of the places on the list my dad wrote out for me. We started with a trip to HSBC headquarters, nearly unrecognizable as the location of the first stage’s race start without all the paraphernalia of the opening day festivities. I stood in a long line to cash one of my mom’s thirty-five year old cheques from her HSBC account. The relic-like nature of this specimen caused some gentle consternation in the young, polite clerk assisting me, but with a minimum of fuss, and a maximum of respectful solicitude, he got the job done.
Pollo hungry as usual, we walked up to the midlevels to find some cheap lunch. Hong Kong, a city constructed on a very hilly island, has skyscraping buildings built nearly all the way up to “The Peak” (whose green dome reigns over the city). So the main part is divided, as far as I understand, into Central, the Midlevels, and the Upper Levels. After climbing a bit, we had lunch in a midlevel alley (nameless as far as I could see). We started out in a small restaurant, which we found out later, thanks to our waitress’s quite good English, was serving Taiwanese-style food. It was decent but unextraordinary; I was satisfied with the meal, but by the time I exited the restaurant’s restroom after eating, Pollo was intently examining some very fresh fish being cleaned by a woman just outside the restaurant door. Her labor belonged to an outdoor cooking stand: from a gas-fired grill and giant bamboo steamers issued delightful odors and delicious-looking plates of food, served to diners seated on plastic stools at wobbly folding tables. He had bargained successfully to pay $40HK (about $5USD) for a filet of a very large fish, and furthermore was able to communicate his desire that it be steamed. So we sat at our wobbly table and awaited the fish. This was no porcelein-teapot establishment; the tea came in an aluminum thermos with a wooden cork, and tasted like woody water. The fish, though, was absolutely delicious, and I managed a few chopsticks-full despite my fullness from lunch #1.
We continued moving up, this time via the Escalator – the world’s largest covered moving walkway, which connects Central to the Upper Levels. We got off at Robinson Road, which is where my mom and dad met in their apartment building (in the elevator! No joke!). After a long walk, we managed to find the correct number. It was a gated building, but I thought it was possible it had been built in the 70s and therefore may be the actual building in which they’d met. It was tough to communicate with the gate guard, and I wasn’t able to find out any hard information on the building. I was pretending to be an interested buyer (there was a sign outside about units for sale/lease), and so the guard found another guard, who told me he thought (though wasn’t sure) that the building was built in 1992. Hmm. Probably not the same one, then.
I had the brilliant idea of walking up to the Peak. It didn’t look far on the map, and indeed I could look up and see the green-shrouded bulge above. The catch was finding a through way. We walked up lots and lots of steps, only to be finally stymied by “Private” roads impassable to the non-resident. At that point we were both quite exhausted, so we hailed a taxi to get to the Peak. It took quite a long time going the roundabout way there; further frustrating my inner mountaineer’s urge.
The plan was to take the Peak Tram down the 27 degree descent back to Central, which we did. However, like I suppose a lot of other transportation icons of times past (such as the San Francisco cable cars), it had the feel of an entirely tourist attraction, which spoiled it somewhat for me. Also, it was dark by that time, and although the lights of the city were brilliant, maybe it would have been more interesting to see it in daytime.
By the time we walked from the tram stop back to the pier, we were both totally exhausted, so we caught the next boat back to Lantau. I think I could even have skipped dinner, but one of the places we walked past on the way back to our room had a picture of a pigeon on one of the signs outside, and Pollo’s a sucker for pigeon. So we stopped to inquire about the price, which was reasonable, and sat down to eat. I was glad we did; I asked for “something vegetable” and was brought a delicious hot pot of eggplant with a type of green the name of which I’ve sadly forgotten. Our server had told me it is a seasonal delicacy; I’ll have to try and remember what it’s called.
Dogs’ fighting barks composed the music of the night. There are a lot of dogs here on Lantau – many, many more than I’ve seen anywhere else in Hong Kong or China. We’ve seen some pet dogs in the cities, mostly small ones of indeterminate breed, even dressed in little shirts and sweaters. Not many; and certainly no street dogs like I’ve seen elsewhere in the developing (and even developed) world. But Lantau is a dog’s paradise; few roads and cars, beaches, mountains, a small year-round population. Whether for these reasons or others, there are lots of dogs here! They mostly resemble chow-type mongrels of varying colors, around 40-60 pounds, and all with curly tails. They look well-fed, but not exactly like house-pets either. I wonder if they are street dogs that get by on generous leavings, or sort of communal pets; maybe they belong to individual dwellings or families, but wander and mingle more freely than they would be allowed in other parts of China (say those parts where dog meat is commonly consumed).
Anyway, once again, I was so tired from the day of big city sights that even the chorus of growls, barks, and squeals didn’t keep me from dreamland.
Pollo having returned, we rallied ourselves for another ferry trip into Central (Hong Kong), with the idea of seeing some of the places on the list my dad wrote out for me. We started with a trip to HSBC headquarters, nearly unrecognizable as the location of the first stage’s race start without all the paraphernalia of the opening day festivities. I stood in a long line to cash one of my mom’s thirty-five year old cheques from her HSBC account. The relic-like nature of this specimen caused some gentle consternation in the young, polite clerk assisting me, but with a minimum of fuss, and a maximum of respectful solicitude, he got the job done.
Pollo hungry as usual, we walked up to the midlevels to find some cheap lunch. Hong Kong, a city constructed on a very hilly island, has skyscraping buildings built nearly all the way up to “The Peak” (whose green dome reigns over the city). So the main part is divided, as far as I understand, into Central, the Midlevels, and the Upper Levels. After climbing a bit, we had lunch in a midlevel alley (nameless as far as I could see). We started out in a small restaurant, which we found out later, thanks to our waitress’s quite good English, was serving Taiwanese-style food. It was decent but unextraordinary; I was satisfied with the meal, but by the time I exited the restaurant’s restroom after eating, Pollo was intently examining some very fresh fish being cleaned by a woman just outside the restaurant door. Her labor belonged to an outdoor cooking stand: from a gas-fired grill and giant bamboo steamers issued delightful odors and delicious-looking plates of food, served to diners seated on plastic stools at wobbly folding tables. He had bargained successfully to pay $40HK (about $5USD) for a filet of a very large fish, and furthermore was able to communicate his desire that it be steamed. So we sat at our wobbly table and awaited the fish. This was no porcelein-teapot establishment; the tea came in an aluminum thermos with a wooden cork, and tasted like woody water. The fish, though, was absolutely delicious, and I managed a few chopsticks-full despite my fullness from lunch #1.
We continued moving up, this time via the Escalator – the world’s largest covered moving walkway, which connects Central to the Upper Levels. We got off at Robinson Road, which is where my mom and dad met in their apartment building (in the elevator! No joke!). After a long walk, we managed to find the correct number. It was a gated building, but I thought it was possible it had been built in the 70s and therefore may be the actual building in which they’d met. It was tough to communicate with the gate guard, and I wasn’t able to find out any hard information on the building. I was pretending to be an interested buyer (there was a sign outside about units for sale/lease), and so the guard found another guard, who told me he thought (though wasn’t sure) that the building was built in 1992. Hmm. Probably not the same one, then.
I had the brilliant idea of walking up to the Peak. It didn’t look far on the map, and indeed I could look up and see the green-shrouded bulge above. The catch was finding a through way. We walked up lots and lots of steps, only to be finally stymied by “Private” roads impassable to the non-resident. At that point we were both quite exhausted, so we hailed a taxi to get to the Peak. It took quite a long time going the roundabout way there; further frustrating my inner mountaineer’s urge.
The plan was to take the Peak Tram down the 27 degree descent back to Central, which we did. However, like I suppose a lot of other transportation icons of times past (such as the San Francisco cable cars), it had the feel of an entirely tourist attraction, which spoiled it somewhat for me. Also, it was dark by that time, and although the lights of the city were brilliant, maybe it would have been more interesting to see it in daytime.
By the time we walked from the tram stop back to the pier, we were both totally exhausted, so we caught the next boat back to Lantau. I think I could even have skipped dinner, but one of the places we walked past on the way back to our room had a picture of a pigeon on one of the signs outside, and Pollo’s a sucker for pigeon. So we stopped to inquire about the price, which was reasonable, and sat down to eat. I was glad we did; I asked for “something vegetable” and was brought a delicious hot pot of eggplant with a type of green the name of which I’ve sadly forgotten. Our server had told me it is a seasonal delicacy; I’ll have to try and remember what it’s called.
Dogs’ fighting barks composed the music of the night. There are a lot of dogs here on Lantau – many, many more than I’ve seen anywhere else in Hong Kong or China. We’ve seen some pet dogs in the cities, mostly small ones of indeterminate breed, even dressed in little shirts and sweaters. Not many; and certainly no street dogs like I’ve seen elsewhere in the developing (and even developed) world. But Lantau is a dog’s paradise; few roads and cars, beaches, mountains, a small year-round population. Whether for these reasons or others, there are lots of dogs here! They mostly resemble chow-type mongrels of varying colors, around 40-60 pounds, and all with curly tails. They look well-fed, but not exactly like house-pets either. I wonder if they are street dogs that get by on generous leavings, or sort of communal pets; maybe they belong to individual dwellings or families, but wander and mingle more freely than they would be allowed in other parts of China (say those parts where dog meat is commonly consumed).
Anyway, once again, I was so tired from the day of big city sights that even the chorus of growls, barks, and squeals didn’t keep me from dreamland.
New Year’s Day on Lantau
We decided to give our stomachs (inner ears) a rest from the ferry today, and spend the whole day exploring Lantau. We started with a good, very cheap dim sum breakfast at the blandly-named Mui Wo Cooked Food Market right next to the ferry pier. (It cost $56 HK, or about $7 USD, which is perhaps a third or a quarter of what it would have cost in Oakland.) Then Pollo went for a ride, and I sat in the sun on the pier and caught up on some internet stuff, posting photos to picasaweb and using Skype to call home and wish the family a (early) happy new year.
I noticed, while hanging out at the pier, that there are a lot of Filipinos, and maybe other southeast Asians, here on Lantau. There’s even a store selling “Philippine goods” on the street across from the bus terminal.
Around noon, we caught a bus from Mui Wo pier to the other (western) end of Lantau Island, where the fishing village of Tai O is found. The bus took the only road out of Mui Wo, and the scenery (steep hills and lush vegetation) was gorgeous. However, I was too sleepy to appreciate more than a few glimpses before I dropped off and was out until we arrived. Once there, we walked from the pier along the narrow little market alley, where Pollo bought some candied kumquats and some kind of syrup he’d thought was honey. He was hungry so we stopped at the first restaurant we saw. I had realized that we were running short on cash (and wasn’t sure whether I could get more in Lantau or whether I’d have to go to Hong Kong Central), so we ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, called “Garoupa Cutlets” in the English translation. What eventually arrived at the table was some fried dough. I seriously doubt there was even a sliver of fish inside; and this crud cost over $7USD! Then, when we went downstairs to pay, they tried to charge us extra for tea (which we hadn’t asked for, but had arrived at the table and summarily was drunk by us thinking it was complimentary, as it had been at every other eating establishment we’d frequented). I told the guy we had not ordered tea, and I thought it wasn’t right to charge us for it. He eventually revised the bill, but we left feeling rather disgruntled and like we’d been cheated, for the first time this trip. (Oh, and there was a service charge of 10%, which is very unusual here; I wouldn’t have begrudged it if the service had been even halfway decent or friendly.)
We left Tai O on the next bus for Ngong Ping. This plateau, just below Lantau Peak in the middle of the island, is the site of the Po Lin monastery, a Buddhist retreat. It’s best known, since 1993, for a giant bronze statue of Buddha. Possibly partly because it’s vacation time here in Hong Kong, the statue and monastery grounds were absolutely flocked with tourists. There were all kinds of people: old ones walking with patient and resolute steps up the hundreds of steps to the statue; young ones snapping photos and laughing with friends. There were certainly some devout visitors, bowing low on their knees to the statue; however, most people seemed, like us, to be standard-variety tourists.
I liked the temple building, with intricate carvings of dragons and fish, the stones worn smooth in spots from the passage of many hands. I was also fascinated by the incense sticks being lit constantly from huge braziers: handfuls of the little yellow joss sticks, and enormous sticks the size of my forearm, covered with decorations in red velvet-looking fabric.
Pollo and I walked along the “Wisdom Path” to a figure-eight of huge slabs of wood; carved with the Heart Sutra (one of the best known of the Buddhist sutras, according to the informational plaque at the site), this sculpture is, like the Bug Buddha, a relatively recent addition to Po Lin.
We waited a long time for the bus back to Mui Wo, which seeemed very expensive ($25HK, or over $3USD each) since we were running low on cash. Once we got back to Mui Wo, I went to see if I could get cash from the HSBC ATM. It was the simplest thing in the world, and I felt jubilant to a) have had the foresight, way back when I moved to NYC, to pick an international bank, and b) now have enough money to eat dinner!
After our meal, we walked slowly back in the dark across the bridge, behind the beach, and along the funky little canal path to our mini room. Tonight it seemed more homey to me, and I was glad to get there and curl up for the night. But wow – the bed is so hard! I don’t even know if what we’re sleeping on can properly be called a mattress; I tried to see what was inside it by pulling at something that was poking out, but I couldn’t pull enough of it to see what it was. It really looked like plastic-wrapped wire, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what it was. It’s so hard you could bounce a basketball on it. Sleeping on one’s side for more than a few minutes is impossible, as shoulders and hips dig relentlessly, with nowhere to sink into. However, I’ve been tired enough that it hasn’t stopped me from going to sleep…
I noticed, while hanging out at the pier, that there are a lot of Filipinos, and maybe other southeast Asians, here on Lantau. There’s even a store selling “Philippine goods” on the street across from the bus terminal.
Around noon, we caught a bus from Mui Wo pier to the other (western) end of Lantau Island, where the fishing village of Tai O is found. The bus took the only road out of Mui Wo, and the scenery (steep hills and lush vegetation) was gorgeous. However, I was too sleepy to appreciate more than a few glimpses before I dropped off and was out until we arrived. Once there, we walked from the pier along the narrow little market alley, where Pollo bought some candied kumquats and some kind of syrup he’d thought was honey. He was hungry so we stopped at the first restaurant we saw. I had realized that we were running short on cash (and wasn’t sure whether I could get more in Lantau or whether I’d have to go to Hong Kong Central), so we ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, called “Garoupa Cutlets” in the English translation. What eventually arrived at the table was some fried dough. I seriously doubt there was even a sliver of fish inside; and this crud cost over $7USD! Then, when we went downstairs to pay, they tried to charge us extra for tea (which we hadn’t asked for, but had arrived at the table and summarily was drunk by us thinking it was complimentary, as it had been at every other eating establishment we’d frequented). I told the guy we had not ordered tea, and I thought it wasn’t right to charge us for it. He eventually revised the bill, but we left feeling rather disgruntled and like we’d been cheated, for the first time this trip. (Oh, and there was a service charge of 10%, which is very unusual here; I wouldn’t have begrudged it if the service had been even halfway decent or friendly.)
We left Tai O on the next bus for Ngong Ping. This plateau, just below Lantau Peak in the middle of the island, is the site of the Po Lin monastery, a Buddhist retreat. It’s best known, since 1993, for a giant bronze statue of Buddha. Possibly partly because it’s vacation time here in Hong Kong, the statue and monastery grounds were absolutely flocked with tourists. There were all kinds of people: old ones walking with patient and resolute steps up the hundreds of steps to the statue; young ones snapping photos and laughing with friends. There were certainly some devout visitors, bowing low on their knees to the statue; however, most people seemed, like us, to be standard-variety tourists.
I liked the temple building, with intricate carvings of dragons and fish, the stones worn smooth in spots from the passage of many hands. I was also fascinated by the incense sticks being lit constantly from huge braziers: handfuls of the little yellow joss sticks, and enormous sticks the size of my forearm, covered with decorations in red velvet-looking fabric.
Pollo and I walked along the “Wisdom Path” to a figure-eight of huge slabs of wood; carved with the Heart Sutra (one of the best known of the Buddhist sutras, according to the informational plaque at the site), this sculpture is, like the Bug Buddha, a relatively recent addition to Po Lin.
We waited a long time for the bus back to Mui Wo, which seeemed very expensive ($25HK, or over $3USD each) since we were running low on cash. Once we got back to Mui Wo, I went to see if I could get cash from the HSBC ATM. It was the simplest thing in the world, and I felt jubilant to a) have had the foresight, way back when I moved to NYC, to pick an international bank, and b) now have enough money to eat dinner!
After our meal, we walked slowly back in the dark across the bridge, behind the beach, and along the funky little canal path to our mini room. Tonight it seemed more homey to me, and I was glad to get there and curl up for the night. But wow – the bed is so hard! I don’t even know if what we’re sleeping on can properly be called a mattress; I tried to see what was inside it by pulling at something that was poking out, but I couldn’t pull enough of it to see what it was. It really looked like plastic-wrapped wire, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what it was. It’s so hard you could bounce a basketball on it. Sleeping on one’s side for more than a few minutes is impossible, as shoulders and hips dig relentlessly, with nowhere to sink into. However, I’ve been tired enough that it hasn’t stopped me from going to sleep…
New Year’s Eve – A Day of Transition
All of the Mengoni crew, with the exception of Pollo and me, had flights around noon today from Hong Kong, so they left by 6 a.m. to board the ferry from Macau to H.K. We had a more leisurely start, intending to catch the 10 a.m. ferry with the Bici Racing guys, including Fassi. However, I ended up in a rush nonetheless, as I had the last-minute idea of rearranging our luggage to lighten the load. We both brought lots of stuff we haven’t needed at all (due to the weather being cooler, and washing machines less plentiful, than we’d imagined). So we packed our duffel bags with stuff we don’t need, intending to leave these bags with Fassi (to be stored with our bike bags). We’re really lucky that Champion System and Bici have been so kind to us. It’s a lot easier to travel light here.
Anyway, the ferry trip from Macau involved a lot of waiting in a huddle of bikes, bags, and sleepy Bici racers. We shared what breakfast supplies we happened to have (my contribution was Pocari Sweat and some fruit). I tasted the most delicious custard tart I’ve ever had, compliments of one of the riders – browned to blackened on top, and amazingly flaky-crusted. Yum! Apparently there wasn’t enough space for all the bikes on one ferry, so a couple of the guys (plus Pollo and I) were booted to the next sailing (just 15 min later). The trip was only about an hour, but then we had to stand in line for customs/immigration into HK for another half hour at least.
When we finally got through to the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong’s ferry terminus, the Bici truck was outside, and we were able to leave our duffel bags in there. However, my bike (which I’d left with Fassi back in Sha Tin at the start of the race) wasn’t there, so I’ll just have to find a way to get it later.
Since Pollo and I would be on our own from this point forth now that the race is over, we needed to find a place to stay in Hong Kong. Trouble was, being New Year’s Eve (a factor I foolishly hadn’t even considered), lodging would probably be scarce. Fassi had recommended staying on one of the outlying islands such as Lantau, which was crowded only in the summer, and at this time of the year should have plentiful and cheap vacancies. However, he wouldn’t dream of just letting us wander off and try to find our own way there. Poor guy, he was so used to being responsible for our clueless team, that he couldn’t just send us off!
So he planted us at the ferry building’s McDonald’s, and went to pick up some stuff (from his house nearby) for another rider. An hour later he returned for us, and led us blinking outside into the sunny, chilly day. He walked us about 15 minutes along the harbor edge to the piers for ferries to the outlying islands. There he found the ferry to Mui Wo (Lantau Island), and was about to buy 3 tickets when I stopped him. “Really, Fassi, it’s OK. Thank you so much for bringing us here, but you don’t need to come with us. We’ll be fine! I’ll call you later today to confirm that we found a room.” So, with some obvious misgivings but with some relief as well, Fassi said goodbye to his charges.
The ferry provided the 45 minute trip for less than $1.50 USD, but we had to pay extra for our “freight” (Pollo’s bike) – a little more than a regular adult fare! When we alighted on the pier at Mui Wo, Lantau Island, we stood around uncertainly for a while. I noticed a woman in a booth quite near to the ferry’s ticket office with boards showing photos of residences. I approached, and she immediately pulled out some picture albums and started showing me photos. “This one, $500 two night,” she said rapidly. “No kitchen. OK?” Whoa…I thought. Maybe I should do a little research first. I’d seen something in my guide book about a youth hostel on the island, and that had to be cheaper.
I saw a sign that said “WiFi” on the side of a phone booth, so I went to check it out. PCCW, the public phone system, offers WiFi internet on a pay-as-you-go or subscription basis. The rates were incredibly cheap ($20 HK, or $2.50 USD, per 24-hour period) – yippee! So I paid and opened my browser, searching for “Youth Hostel Lantau Hong Kong.” The right page came right up, but when I called (using Skype from my computer!), I was informed that all 168 beds were full for the night. Yikes. So I went back to the woman with the photo albums at the booth, and tried to ask if there was anything cheaper available. Her English wasn’t good enough to communicate these finer details, so she called over a friend of hers who could translate between us. With this friendly woman’s assistance, I bargained the broker down to $400 for 2 nights at the kitchenless room. She asked me to pay her directly, which I did, wondering all the time if it was some big scam. In return, she gave me a slip of paper as a receipt, as well as a crude photocopied map with arrows showing how to get to this guest house.
Pollo and I set off from the pier along the quiet road. Nosing our way across a small bridge and behind the hotel at Silvermine Bay Beach, we found ourselves on a narrow concrete path above a canal. 15 or 20 minutes later, more by luck than thanks to the “map,” we eventually found our way to Winners Holiday Guest House. The receipt I’d been given was indeed good, and we were shown by the proprietress to a small room. The bed pretty much filled the space, but there was a private bathroom and it looked very clean.
However, the thought of spending the evening in that tiny space was totally depressing me, so I convinced Pollo to go back to Hong Kong Central for New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately, we both got a bit seasick during the half hour trip (this time we were on the “fast ferry,” which costs twice as much and takes 15 minutes less for the crossing). We walked around the glitzy mall at the International Finance Center for an hour or so, trying to get rid of the woozy feeling, but to no avail. We did get to watch a brass band perform from the top of a double decker bus, which was festive and put me in a party mood; however, the mood didn’t last as our seasickness wore on. By 9 p.m. we realized there was no way we were going to be able to last until midnight, so we headed back to the ferry. I was looking everywhere for ginger candy (ubiquitous in Chinatowns I have known), thinking it would quell our queasiness. However, I couldn’t find any, and settled for some “White Flower Embrocation” – a small vial of menthol and eucalyptus-scented spirits to sniff.
We trailed tiredly back to our room after arriving in Mui Wo, and fell exhausted into bed. Even the New Year’s Eve revelers in nearby rooms and outside didn’t keep us from falling sound asleep. What party-poopers, I know – here we are in Hong Kong, and we couldn’t even watch fireworks over the harbor!
Last Stage in Macau
We had the luxury of leaving our bags in the hotel room, as we’d be returning for another night. The race start, at which we arrived by bus, was at the Macau Tower: a huge pointy structure (which reminded me of a similar one in San Antonio, Texas). It had the atmosphere of a deserted fairground; again, no spectators besides the race personnel. Some lion dancers danced (by the way, I don’t know where I got the idea that the dancers represent lions: I just think that’s what they are. Please set me straight, someone, if they’re supposed to be something else, such as, possibly, dragons). Then the horn blew and they were off.
I caught a ride to the start in a minibus, while Pollo sneaked into the neutral start of the race and just rode along with the peloton to the start of the circuits. I spent most of the race using Louis’ phone (poor guy, but he was very generous about it!) trying to change Pollo’s ticket to return to the US, in which I was finally (mostly) successful. (My ticket’s to return on 1/15, and I could only change Pollo’s to 1/22 (with waiting list status for the 15th). So Pollo may be stranded on his own in China for a week! No, if I have to change my ticket I will; but I’m not sure that we’ll want to be gone so long.)
Eugene had a rough day, and we saw him on the sidelines pretty early on. The cumulative effects of a stage race at this point in the season (that’s to say, really the off-season) must be brutal. So now it was just 2 Mengoni guys left: Alberto and Amaurys. This stage was comprised of moderately hilly circuits, followed by a heinous ascent, the last 2K of which were at grades reaching 15%. So it wasn’t really a stage for Amaurys the sprinter (especially not with the 11-21 cassette he had). Alberto was going fine, but we’d taken one look around at the legions of skinny, young Asian riders and realized that for the team, the final stage was a formality. Which was how it turned out. I’d caught another minibus to the top of the climb, and hearing the bus whine its complaining way up made me realize just how steep it was!
The guys rode back to the hotel, and I took yet another bus. We met up for lunch, which we enjoyed at a Portuguese-style restaurant (steak for Eugene and Amaurys, and soup for Alberto, who decided to start trying right away to lose the weight he’d gained during the race!). Then Alberto headed to Hong Kong to meet up with his family, who’d traveled there to do some sightseeing over the Christmas holiday. Eugene headed to bed for a nap, and Pollo, Amaurys, and I took a taxi into downtown Macau to see some sights.
Wow – the whole downtown was totally packed with people. I don’t know how many were tourists and how many natives, but the streets of the old town district were just crammed. We finally made our way to the Ruinas de São Paolo. This cathedral had been built by Japanese Jesuits, who’d fled to Macau to escape persecution in Japan. They then proceeded to be kicked out of Macau too, and their church converted to a barracks. All that stands now is the façade, which is impressively somber, especially against the twilit sky as we saw it.
We spent half an hour looking for a taxi, getting increasingly worried as 6:30 got closer and closer (we were supposed to catch buses to the awards dinner from the hotel at 6:30). We finally found one and arrived at the hotel at about 6:40, just in time to get the last bus to dinner. The dinner was in one of the casinos (a place with a fake mini volcano outside). The spread was incredible – really 5 star!! We felt spoiled and very stuffed by the end.
We shared a table with the Omnibike (Uzbeki) mechanic and director. Although the director had not so much as glanced in our direction the whole week, he got quite friendly over dinner, even asking my permission to take a photo with me. Then he asked me, in halting English, if I knew Sergei Lagutin from the Navigators team. Although I don’t really know him personally, I knew him by sight and name, and remembered a few races he’d won last year. The director told me proudly that Lagutin had signed with Unibet, a ProTour team, next year. We tossed around a few other names of Russian and Uzbeki guys that had ridden for the Navs, and I told him that I live very close to the home base of the team in New Jersey. Funny how small the world is, especially in cycling.
For me, however, the best part of the evening was hearing (from Gus) that Cacoñema had somehow read my blog mentioning his jerkiness! Apparently, his muttered comment had been, “You’d better tell that girl to watch out. I have friends all over.” Ha! I felt supremely vindicated in my effort to bring him to shame, even though I’d never suspected my blog would reach that far. Sweet!
Zhuhai to Macau (Stage 7)
I am behind with the blog, so these entries are from memories 4-5 days old. Hopefully that means the journal will get more concise!
First of all, I have to thank my sister Erinne for posting the slideshows to the last round of blog entries from China. Due to government restriction of www.blogspot.com, I had to use a proxy server to post my daily summaries, and the connection was much too slow to upload photos as well. So Erinne added the photo slideshows remotely from picasaweb.com to the blog. The genius of technology plus the willingness of sisterly help in action!
The transfer to Zhuhai in the morning was unremarkable until suddenly the sea came into view. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the maps in my guide book, and my general sense was that we had been traveling steadily north – away from the South China Sea. However, it now looked as though we’d made a loop counterclockwise around the enormous bay (or river delta – I’m not sure what to call it as it’s not named on any of my maps), at the outlet of which lies Hong Kong.
Anyway, the coastline looked faintly Mediterranean, with the narrow road winding among coves with palm trees lining the beach (OK, so that’s maybe not typically Mediterranean, but the general look was). There were some great views of boats at harbor, but we were moving too fast for my camera to pick them up.
We arrived at the race start: an empty stretch of boardwalk with the regular tents set up. Behind the boardwalk were tidal flats of mud, wafting the stench of sulfur. Amaurys improvised noseplugs out of tangerine peels. There was a brief diversion when, one by one, the soigneurs of all the teams stealthily snuck over to the media tent and stole plastic chairs for their riders to sit on; the team tents had been empty when we’d arrived and of course it wouldn’t do for the racers to have to stand!
Amaurys had great position once again as the race drew to a close, but ended up only 5th, I think, in the sprint. It had bunched up around the last U-turn and he’d lost some position. I think we were all thinking about how different the race may have been for Mengoni if that first stage hadn’t been first, and if Pollo and Wilson had still had their numbers pinned on. Just a few more men for a lead-out, and Amaurys had the goods to win a couple stages. Ah well…excuses always sound bad, and of course if everyone who felt he had a chance of winning always DID win, there wouldn’t be enough space on the podium!
Tout de suite after the race, we piled into buses again and drove all of about 200M to get off to pass through Chinese immigration and customs again in preparation for our entry into Macau. This was supposed to be easy…but for whatever reason, Macau isn’t as cooperative as Hong Kong, and a bunch of people associated with the race were detained and made to purchase special visas. Among these were Amaurys and Pollo, as well as all the Russians and Uzbekis. We ended up waiting almost 2 hours for them to get out of there, and the whole time that Eugene, Alberto, and I were sitting in a piss-smelling corner waiting, the steady stream of people shuffling across the border never stopped or, indeed, even slowed. There must have been almost 200 people per minute passing through. I wondered how many Chinese nationals work in Macau.
Finally we arrived by minibus to our Macau hotel. This place, although not egregiously horrible in any respect, was our least favorite of the lot. Even though the rooms were less than spotless, the staff stopped us from bringing bikes in (Pollo wanted to change the brake pads on Amaurys’ bike, and Alberto likes to sleep with his bike under his bed, or so Pollo teases him). I couldn’t claim my luggage (which had arrived earlier) without giving the desk staff a copy of my passport….even though I was wearing team clothing and the bags had team decals on them too. Small stuff, but annoyances that set me on edge more than they should have; probably because of the frustration of all the waiting we’d already done.
The race organization had given us money to spend on dinner (and lunch the next day) since the hotel didn’t offer a dining room. So we all went out to find food. Eugene was incensed by the street design of the area around our hotel: the street was divided by a median with a large, formidable fence in the middle to stop anyone from crossing the street except at the extreme ends of a 3-block-long stretch. And then, to cross, one had to climb stairs up to an overpass! “This is so wrong, all wrong,” he kept muttering, and I was inclined to agree that it was incredibly unfriendly to pedestrians. We found a restaurant and chose to enter based on the fact that one of the Chinese teams was already seated and eating. However, we proceeded to piss off our waitress so royally by our indecision and changing of orders that I was actually surprised we ever got our food. Eugene was about to die from mortification, and Alberto and I tried, to no avail whatsoever, to placate our seething table server with plenty of “Please” and “Thank you” (both in English and Chinese).
So far Macau has failed to impress. Hopefully tomorrow’s stage – the last – will redeem the island in our eyes.
First of all, I have to thank my sister Erinne for posting the slideshows to the last round of blog entries from China. Due to government restriction of www.blogspot.com, I had to use a proxy server to post my daily summaries, and the connection was much too slow to upload photos as well. So Erinne added the photo slideshows remotely from picasaweb.com to the blog. The genius of technology plus the willingness of sisterly help in action!
The transfer to Zhuhai in the morning was unremarkable until suddenly the sea came into view. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to the maps in my guide book, and my general sense was that we had been traveling steadily north – away from the South China Sea. However, it now looked as though we’d made a loop counterclockwise around the enormous bay (or river delta – I’m not sure what to call it as it’s not named on any of my maps), at the outlet of which lies Hong Kong.
Anyway, the coastline looked faintly Mediterranean, with the narrow road winding among coves with palm trees lining the beach (OK, so that’s maybe not typically Mediterranean, but the general look was). There were some great views of boats at harbor, but we were moving too fast for my camera to pick them up.
We arrived at the race start: an empty stretch of boardwalk with the regular tents set up. Behind the boardwalk were tidal flats of mud, wafting the stench of sulfur. Amaurys improvised noseplugs out of tangerine peels. There was a brief diversion when, one by one, the soigneurs of all the teams stealthily snuck over to the media tent and stole plastic chairs for their riders to sit on; the team tents had been empty when we’d arrived and of course it wouldn’t do for the racers to have to stand!
Amaurys had great position once again as the race drew to a close, but ended up only 5th, I think, in the sprint. It had bunched up around the last U-turn and he’d lost some position. I think we were all thinking about how different the race may have been for Mengoni if that first stage hadn’t been first, and if Pollo and Wilson had still had their numbers pinned on. Just a few more men for a lead-out, and Amaurys had the goods to win a couple stages. Ah well…excuses always sound bad, and of course if everyone who felt he had a chance of winning always DID win, there wouldn’t be enough space on the podium!
Tout de suite after the race, we piled into buses again and drove all of about 200M to get off to pass through Chinese immigration and customs again in preparation for our entry into Macau. This was supposed to be easy…but for whatever reason, Macau isn’t as cooperative as Hong Kong, and a bunch of people associated with the race were detained and made to purchase special visas. Among these were Amaurys and Pollo, as well as all the Russians and Uzbekis. We ended up waiting almost 2 hours for them to get out of there, and the whole time that Eugene, Alberto, and I were sitting in a piss-smelling corner waiting, the steady stream of people shuffling across the border never stopped or, indeed, even slowed. There must have been almost 200 people per minute passing through. I wondered how many Chinese nationals work in Macau.
Finally we arrived by minibus to our Macau hotel. This place, although not egregiously horrible in any respect, was our least favorite of the lot. Even though the rooms were less than spotless, the staff stopped us from bringing bikes in (Pollo wanted to change the brake pads on Amaurys’ bike, and Alberto likes to sleep with his bike under his bed, or so Pollo teases him). I couldn’t claim my luggage (which had arrived earlier) without giving the desk staff a copy of my passport….even though I was wearing team clothing and the bags had team decals on them too. Small stuff, but annoyances that set me on edge more than they should have; probably because of the frustration of all the waiting we’d already done.
The race organization had given us money to spend on dinner (and lunch the next day) since the hotel didn’t offer a dining room. So we all went out to find food. Eugene was incensed by the street design of the area around our hotel: the street was divided by a median with a large, formidable fence in the middle to stop anyone from crossing the street except at the extreme ends of a 3-block-long stretch. And then, to cross, one had to climb stairs up to an overpass! “This is so wrong, all wrong,” he kept muttering, and I was inclined to agree that it was incredibly unfriendly to pedestrians. We found a restaurant and chose to enter based on the fact that one of the Chinese teams was already seated and eating. However, we proceeded to piss off our waitress so royally by our indecision and changing of orders that I was actually surprised we ever got our food. Eugene was about to die from mortification, and Alberto and I tried, to no avail whatsoever, to placate our seething table server with plenty of “Please” and “Thank you” (both in English and Chinese).
So far Macau has failed to impress. Hopefully tomorrow’s stage – the last – will redeem the island in our eyes.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
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.
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…
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…
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Guanzhou University Stage
We had to leave our 5-star Dongguan hotel after just one night – very sad. I was in a big rush this morning to try and take advantage of the free, fast internet to a) update my blog, b) call home to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and c) call the airline to continue the quest to change Pollo’s ticket. However, I couldn’t access the blog website. Eugene had said that he’d tried the last couple nights and had not been able to either. It didn’t occur to me until I spoke to my parents later that blogspot.com may be restricted by the Chinese government. It’s so easy to forget, with all the industry and evidence of capitalism that we’ve seen so far, that this is still a Communist country with major restrictions of liberty and information. Of course, most of these cities are part of Special Economic Zones, where I guess more free press (and other freedom of information) may be allowed than elsewhere in the country.
Our 1.5 hour transfer today wasn’t very interesting scenery-wise, except for some great pictures of vegetable fields against a backdrop of huge industrial buildings. Sort of like bits of Watsonville transplanted to San Jose. Also, we saw orchards of fruit trees all hung with plastic bags. We imagined the bags were protecting the fruit, or hastening the ripening, perhaps? We arrived at the University in Guanzhou. There were lots of apartment buildings all around, with clothes hanging from the balconies as usual. Not many people, but a lot of big, impressive buildings. It was sunny for the first time since Sai Kung, and beautifully warm. I almost wished I had shorts on.
After the start, Pollo rode and I walked to the second pit, located halfway around the course (which was an oval of 4K on the curving university roads. On the way, I stopped and sniffed the air, trying to locate the elusive floral scent that I’ve smelled from time to time since we arrived in the country. It’s the most beautiful scent, but I can’t associate it with any particular flower. Anyway, I was standing and sniffing, and a young man on a bike stopped and said, “Hello.” I tried to ask where the smell was coming from, but he was definitely confused by my question. He asked where I was going and I pointed over to the mechanics’ area with the wheels. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you maybe lost.” I suppose I looked lost, standing there sniffing the air with a goofy smile on my face! I asked him if he was a university student, and he said that yes, he was studying at the College of Technology. After our brief conversation, he pedaled off on the very old bike he was riding, and I was left to reflect on the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Chinese people we’ve met so far.
The pit area was right next to a walled complex which was identified by a sign as a “Military Administrative Zone.” There were 3 snallish chow-dogs guarding it and barking if anyone got too close. The police here are omnipresent, but though they are stern, they are not unapproachable. Yesterday we saw them enjoying their lunch while guarding the course, after a truck delivered boxes of food.
One thing that keeps striking me about China is the cleanliness. The streets and sidewalks are absolutely spotless. Everywhere one goes, there are women (always women) sweeping up the tiniest pieces of litter into their makeshift dustpans. Despite all the problems one hears about, I imagine Beijing will be better prepared to host the Olympics than a lot of other big cities with infrastructure challenges. The level of volunteer (and paid) mobilization here is phenomenal for this cycling event.
Eugene was briefly in a break of 4 or 5 riders, and got second in an intermediate sprint…don’t tell the Danish guys, but I think he’s gunning for the points! Alberto was well-positioned to get in a break, but it didn’t look promising for one to succeed today. Everything was being brought back. For all that, when it came to the sprint, it arrived in a big bunch with no lead-outs, and Amaurys got boxed in again. However, his placing today (top 10) shows a gradual improvement…we still hope he can pull out a podium or even a win by the end of the week. Unfortunately Simon (the Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for this race) crashed with just over 2 laps to go, and bruised his knee and scraped his ear. Hopefully he won’t have any major soreness tomorrow.
The hotel was again close to the race start/finish, so the guys rode, and I walked, to the lobby. There we collected our bags (I am starting to wish I had packed much more lightly) and trooped up to the rooms. Lunch was in a canteen/dining hall (part of the university) a 5-minute walk away. Accustomed as I’d become to the delicious food at the hotels thus far, the cafeteria fare was a comedown. The only really yummy thing was the choy (I’m not sure exactly it’s name, but it’s a bright green vegetable with a few florets like broccoli, with tiny yellow flowers). That’s consistently delicious everywhere I’ve eaten it in China. Maybe that’s the secret to Chinese health. I have definitely noticed a lack of obesity here – or even chubbiness – compared to the U.S. There are 2 race organizers or officials who are fat; they wouldn’t even stand out in the U.S., but here they look absolutely enormous.
I wanted to go for a ride again, but Pollo’s agenda was a nap, and so without a riding buddy I resigned myself to catching up on internet stuff and washing some clothes (by hand in the sink). I asked in the hotel lobby about a washing machine, finally resorting to drawing a picture to get my point across, but was told there was none.
As we walked to dinner later on, I finally found the source of the elusive, lovely scent. It’s a bush with tiny white flowers. I’ll take a photo tomorrow when it’s light out, and try to find out what its name is.
We caught highlights of the race on local TV tonight, which was fun. Meanwhile, I cursed the slow speed of my internet connection as I tried to get my blog up online…but at the same time was thankful that the proxy server (showed to me by someone who shall remain nameless in case the Chinese government should find and nail him) allows me access to the blog at all.
Our 1.5 hour transfer today wasn’t very interesting scenery-wise, except for some great pictures of vegetable fields against a backdrop of huge industrial buildings. Sort of like bits of Watsonville transplanted to San Jose. Also, we saw orchards of fruit trees all hung with plastic bags. We imagined the bags were protecting the fruit, or hastening the ripening, perhaps? We arrived at the University in Guanzhou. There were lots of apartment buildings all around, with clothes hanging from the balconies as usual. Not many people, but a lot of big, impressive buildings. It was sunny for the first time since Sai Kung, and beautifully warm. I almost wished I had shorts on.
After the start, Pollo rode and I walked to the second pit, located halfway around the course (which was an oval of 4K on the curving university roads. On the way, I stopped and sniffed the air, trying to locate the elusive floral scent that I’ve smelled from time to time since we arrived in the country. It’s the most beautiful scent, but I can’t associate it with any particular flower. Anyway, I was standing and sniffing, and a young man on a bike stopped and said, “Hello.” I tried to ask where the smell was coming from, but he was definitely confused by my question. He asked where I was going and I pointed over to the mechanics’ area with the wheels. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you maybe lost.” I suppose I looked lost, standing there sniffing the air with a goofy smile on my face! I asked him if he was a university student, and he said that yes, he was studying at the College of Technology. After our brief conversation, he pedaled off on the very old bike he was riding, and I was left to reflect on the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Chinese people we’ve met so far.
The pit area was right next to a walled complex which was identified by a sign as a “Military Administrative Zone.” There were 3 snallish chow-dogs guarding it and barking if anyone got too close. The police here are omnipresent, but though they are stern, they are not unapproachable. Yesterday we saw them enjoying their lunch while guarding the course, after a truck delivered boxes of food.
One thing that keeps striking me about China is the cleanliness. The streets and sidewalks are absolutely spotless. Everywhere one goes, there are women (always women) sweeping up the tiniest pieces of litter into their makeshift dustpans. Despite all the problems one hears about, I imagine Beijing will be better prepared to host the Olympics than a lot of other big cities with infrastructure challenges. The level of volunteer (and paid) mobilization here is phenomenal for this cycling event.
Eugene was briefly in a break of 4 or 5 riders, and got second in an intermediate sprint…don’t tell the Danish guys, but I think he’s gunning for the points! Alberto was well-positioned to get in a break, but it didn’t look promising for one to succeed today. Everything was being brought back. For all that, when it came to the sprint, it arrived in a big bunch with no lead-outs, and Amaurys got boxed in again. However, his placing today (top 10) shows a gradual improvement…we still hope he can pull out a podium or even a win by the end of the week. Unfortunately Simon (the Hong Kong rider with Mengoni for this race) crashed with just over 2 laps to go, and bruised his knee and scraped his ear. Hopefully he won’t have any major soreness tomorrow.
The hotel was again close to the race start/finish, so the guys rode, and I walked, to the lobby. There we collected our bags (I am starting to wish I had packed much more lightly) and trooped up to the rooms. Lunch was in a canteen/dining hall (part of the university) a 5-minute walk away. Accustomed as I’d become to the delicious food at the hotels thus far, the cafeteria fare was a comedown. The only really yummy thing was the choy (I’m not sure exactly it’s name, but it’s a bright green vegetable with a few florets like broccoli, with tiny yellow flowers). That’s consistently delicious everywhere I’ve eaten it in China. Maybe that’s the secret to Chinese health. I have definitely noticed a lack of obesity here – or even chubbiness – compared to the U.S. There are 2 race organizers or officials who are fat; they wouldn’t even stand out in the U.S., but here they look absolutely enormous.
I wanted to go for a ride again, but Pollo’s agenda was a nap, and so without a riding buddy I resigned myself to catching up on internet stuff and washing some clothes (by hand in the sink). I asked in the hotel lobby about a washing machine, finally resorting to drawing a picture to get my point across, but was told there was none.
As we walked to dinner later on, I finally found the source of the elusive, lovely scent. It’s a bush with tiny white flowers. I’ll take a photo tomorrow when it’s light out, and try to find out what its name is.
We caught highlights of the race on local TV tonight, which was fun. Meanwhile, I cursed the slow speed of my internet connection as I tried to get my blog up online…but at the same time was thankful that the proxy server (showed to me by someone who shall remain nameless in case the Chinese government should find and nail him) allows me access to the blog at all.
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.
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.
Shenzhen (stage 2) – Christmas Eve
We were up and out of the hotel by 9, to travel by bus to the stage start in Longgua (a district of Shenzhen, I think). Wilson had decided to stay to try to change his ticket to depart.
The 4 buses carrying all the riders, plus the container truck with the bikes, had a police escort all the way to the start. The drive was interesting – we saw lots of huge apartment buildings where it appeared to be washday on Monday, as every single balcony was hung with rows of drying apparel. It’s funny how the small, common things are sometimes the most fascinating to the foreign eye! The driving (which, incidentally, is on the right side of the road as opposed to the left as in Hong Kong) is much more chaotic and aggressive here in China. Our bus driver wore our ears out with loud, prolonged honking, and had to throw the brakes on violently a few times as cars cut in front of him.
The riders’ area at the start was a barricaded area with a tent for each team. I am getting more and more impressed by the organization of this event; while it’s true that there’s a lot of “Hurry up and wait,” the race organizers are doing a tremendous job of getting people and equipment from one spot to another with a relatively small amount of hassle and almost no error. Also, the rider area was secured by police, and legions of red-jacketed workers with “Longhua volunteers” logos stitched on their caps ran around lugging water, manning the Port-A-Potties, etc. It seems that there’s a huge amount of national, regional, and local pride.
The course was a nearly flat loop of 4 kilometers on the streets of Shenzhen Longhua. Once the racers were off, I wandered around for a bit to explore. I went into a bank to try and change Hong Kong dollars into Chinese yuan. I asked someone for an English-speaking clerk, and was led graciously from one person to another until someone who could help me was found. After so much helpful effort on my behalf I felt bad to change me mind, but the pageful of information I would have had to fill out looked so daunting that I decided to forget the money changing for now. Bigger establishments (like the massage place from last night) accept HK dollars anyway, and it would only be for small stuff that it would be useful to have yuan.
I continued to a big supermarket, thinking of buying some running shoes so I could do some jogging from time to time (there’s no time to go for a ride, and my legs and back are starting to ache from lack of exercise). However, I couldn’t find anything that fit me and had enough support for running. I continued through the department store-like aisles until I found the grocery section. This was a great adventure. The bulk food section had all kinds of mysterious, fascinating things. The rice was in huge, 4-foot plywood cubes. I saw 2-gallon jugs of peanut oil and soy sauce. I saw about a dozen varieties of honey from all kinds of different flowers I’ve never heard of (Matrimony Vine, Blessed Mother something-or-other, etc.). Amazing! The grocery also had live fish, but surprisingly a rather small produce section. Maybe this means that people tend to buy their produce from outdoor markets where it’s fresher.
I bought a kind of Chinese candy apple, which was pieces of fruit on a stick, all covered with a passionfruit-y crunchy candy. Then I wandered back to the race area to see the finish. Our Mengoni guys were doing fine; I saw Eugene covering some moves, and Alberto cruising near the front. (He was trying to get in promising breaks all day, but wasn’t lucky with the ones he picked.) Amaurys won one intermediate sprint, which he went for just to test his legs. He got boxed in the finish, but 3 guys had escaped just a few seconds off the front in the last half lap, so the podium was sealed anyway.
There were huge crowd of people watching the race, which was really cool to see. They were held in place by police tape stretched between cones, but nobody tried to push in to get a better view.
There was a guy selling roasted corn, and another guy (with a wheeled cart onto which was attached a crude brazier made of a metal drum) selling roasted sweet potatoes. We bought some of each (I got charged more than Pollo when I went back a little later to buy more…an interesting phenomenon that we’d already noted in the Dominican Republic, but I was surprised to see here where Pollo’s as much a foreigner as me; maybe it’s a blue-eyed surcharge).
After the guys had recovered for 15 minutes or so and changed their clothes, we got ready to go. There were still a lot of bottles of sports drink provided by the race (it’s called Pocari Sweat, a name that would create a big obstacle to its successful sale in the US, I reckon). I offered them to the crowd, which was staring from behind the barricade in interest at the post-race happenings. At first no one held out his hand to accept the bottled drink, and I wondered if I were offending the crowd by offering it, even if it was sponsor product. But, finally, one smiling face separated itself from the crowd and its owner held out her hand; once the ice was broken, more and more hands came out to accept the sports drink. But how different from anywhere else I’ve been, where there would be shoving and pushing and yelling. The Chinese spectators were mostly silent, and rather unsmiling, but I still got the impression that they were enjoying the spectacle of the race.
Meanwhile, some women dressed in ragged clothes were collecting the empty cardboard boxes that the drinks had arrived in, and the empty bottles as well. They looked completely thrilled with this unexpected windfall, and we helped them collect up the “garbage” before we left. This country strikes me as so efficient – light years from the wantonly wasteful United States. I know there are so many negative consequences, environmental and other, of the huge economic boom in China in the last decade, but in lots of ways (at least on the surface, to my ignorant eye) the country seems to be tucking in the loose ends in a remarkably tidy way.
Waiting for the bus to pull out, I snapped photos from the window: a cobbler with his tools spread on a small tarp on the sidewalk; a woman pedaling a tricycle loaded with produce. (We also caught Cacoñema urinating on the street again, which we snapped on camera in our small act of revenge for his jerkiness.)
I was completely exhausted in the bus on the way home…I guess the jet lag works insidiously for a while after sleeping through the night is no longer a big hurdle. But when we got back to the hotel, I didn’t take a nap but instead worked on changing Pollo’s place ticket to return to the U.S. We still don’t have a real plan of what to do when the race is over, but we kind of like flying by the seat of our pants, and I’m sure we’ll work something out. I was frustrated by the slow internet connection, though…we’d been very happy to hear that the hotel offered free Ethernet, but in reality my connection was poor, and it was an exercise in patience to try and make a call on Skype, or upload my photos to the blog.
Pollo came back to the room after cleaning the bikes to tell me he’d seen a coconut stand. So we went down to walk around a bit. The area right outside the hotel was a really lively shopping center, and it was really fun to wander around at dusk when the lights were starting to come on.
There were tiny shops everywhere: really just open-fronted booths stuffed with merchandise: clothing, mostly, and beauty products, and bags, umbrellas, and belts and hair accessories. Pollo bought a “Levi Strauss” belt as he’d forgotten his and his jeans were falling down. Accustomed as I am to shopping in the U.S., I never would have thought to bargain, but to Pollo it was second nature, and he talked the proprietor of the mini-store down 50 yuan.
I went in a shoe store to see the merchandise more closely. Everything looked a lot like what you’d see in an American mall, at least from a distance of a few feet. Once you got closer, though, the extremely inexpensive prices made more sense, as it became clear that everything was a knock-off of brand name shoes. There were Vans look-alikes called “Valens” or something like that. Then there were also ones with real“Vans” labels. Once you picked them up, you could tell that the quality was not as good as the “real deal,” but the resemblance was amazing. It struck me that this is how Chinese manufacturers have become some of the most competitive in the world: start by copying the look of a known brand, and then gradually increase the quality of the copy while retaining the price-consciousness that made the first attempt so cheap.
We saw fake Oakley backpacks, fake Gucci belts…and all at prices that make the tourist with money in his pocket laugh in happy disbelief. Most of the people walking about were very stylish: what I mean is that their style is identical to what you’d see walking around New York. Boots are very big with the women here – almost all of them seem to be wearing either knee boots or smaller ones. The boots I’ve seen for sale, with plastic soles and high heels, don’t look like they’d last more than 10 minutes walking, but all the women here look very fashionable and I haven’t seen any broken heels yet.
There were a lot of people walking around, shopping, eating, and just hanging out. In fact, it struck me that this city – supposedly a rather soulless industrial and business (according to my Eyewitness Travel Guide) – is one of the most vibrant centers of urban life that I’ve ever seen. Even New York City, on a Monday evening at least, doesn’t have the bustle of this little corner of Shenzhen. (Maybe Times Square, but that’s all tourists, and we were the only non-Chinese that I saw here; I assume they live here but could be wrong.)
Even from our room when we finally returned, I could hear music coming up from the street, and see the lights of a small fair (complete with Ferris wheel) a few blocks away. I wonder if some of this extra excitement is due to its being Christmas Eve. When we went to dinner, the PA system (which here in China, thankfully, has been playing unadorned classical music instead of the synthesizer junk we endured in the Sha Tin hotel) was interrupted by a special live performance. A group of about 20 young people dressed in white robes and Santa hats sang “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Their musicality wasn’t amazing, but the intent made me smile…and even tear up a little bit. It’s hard to even remember that it’s Christmas since we’re so caught up in the race and the foreignness of China. But when we wake up tomorrow, it’ll be December 25th.
Wilson left after dinner to catch his taxi back to Hong Kong. He’d succeeded in changing his flight for tomorrow (Christmas Day), but didn’t want to risk delays at the checkpoints and so elected to leave tonight. We’ll miss him – who are we going to tease relentlessly now? Oh…and I forgot to pay up for losing the Scrabble bet…but I’m sure Wilson will remember. I can hear him now in a month, “!Oye chica! !Todavia me debe el dinero del Scrabble!”
The 4 buses carrying all the riders, plus the container truck with the bikes, had a police escort all the way to the start. The drive was interesting – we saw lots of huge apartment buildings where it appeared to be washday on Monday, as every single balcony was hung with rows of drying apparel. It’s funny how the small, common things are sometimes the most fascinating to the foreign eye! The driving (which, incidentally, is on the right side of the road as opposed to the left as in Hong Kong) is much more chaotic and aggressive here in China. Our bus driver wore our ears out with loud, prolonged honking, and had to throw the brakes on violently a few times as cars cut in front of him.
The riders’ area at the start was a barricaded area with a tent for each team. I am getting more and more impressed by the organization of this event; while it’s true that there’s a lot of “Hurry up and wait,” the race organizers are doing a tremendous job of getting people and equipment from one spot to another with a relatively small amount of hassle and almost no error. Also, the rider area was secured by police, and legions of red-jacketed workers with “Longhua volunteers” logos stitched on their caps ran around lugging water, manning the Port-A-Potties, etc. It seems that there’s a huge amount of national, regional, and local pride.
The course was a nearly flat loop of 4 kilometers on the streets of Shenzhen Longhua. Once the racers were off, I wandered around for a bit to explore. I went into a bank to try and change Hong Kong dollars into Chinese yuan. I asked someone for an English-speaking clerk, and was led graciously from one person to another until someone who could help me was found. After so much helpful effort on my behalf I felt bad to change me mind, but the pageful of information I would have had to fill out looked so daunting that I decided to forget the money changing for now. Bigger establishments (like the massage place from last night) accept HK dollars anyway, and it would only be for small stuff that it would be useful to have yuan.
I continued to a big supermarket, thinking of buying some running shoes so I could do some jogging from time to time (there’s no time to go for a ride, and my legs and back are starting to ache from lack of exercise). However, I couldn’t find anything that fit me and had enough support for running. I continued through the department store-like aisles until I found the grocery section. This was a great adventure. The bulk food section had all kinds of mysterious, fascinating things. The rice was in huge, 4-foot plywood cubes. I saw 2-gallon jugs of peanut oil and soy sauce. I saw about a dozen varieties of honey from all kinds of different flowers I’ve never heard of (Matrimony Vine, Blessed Mother something-or-other, etc.). Amazing! The grocery also had live fish, but surprisingly a rather small produce section. Maybe this means that people tend to buy their produce from outdoor markets where it’s fresher.
I bought a kind of Chinese candy apple, which was pieces of fruit on a stick, all covered with a passionfruit-y crunchy candy. Then I wandered back to the race area to see the finish. Our Mengoni guys were doing fine; I saw Eugene covering some moves, and Alberto cruising near the front. (He was trying to get in promising breaks all day, but wasn’t lucky with the ones he picked.) Amaurys won one intermediate sprint, which he went for just to test his legs. He got boxed in the finish, but 3 guys had escaped just a few seconds off the front in the last half lap, so the podium was sealed anyway.
There were huge crowd of people watching the race, which was really cool to see. They were held in place by police tape stretched between cones, but nobody tried to push in to get a better view.
There was a guy selling roasted corn, and another guy (with a wheeled cart onto which was attached a crude brazier made of a metal drum) selling roasted sweet potatoes. We bought some of each (I got charged more than Pollo when I went back a little later to buy more…an interesting phenomenon that we’d already noted in the Dominican Republic, but I was surprised to see here where Pollo’s as much a foreigner as me; maybe it’s a blue-eyed surcharge).
After the guys had recovered for 15 minutes or so and changed their clothes, we got ready to go. There were still a lot of bottles of sports drink provided by the race (it’s called Pocari Sweat, a name that would create a big obstacle to its successful sale in the US, I reckon). I offered them to the crowd, which was staring from behind the barricade in interest at the post-race happenings. At first no one held out his hand to accept the bottled drink, and I wondered if I were offending the crowd by offering it, even if it was sponsor product. But, finally, one smiling face separated itself from the crowd and its owner held out her hand; once the ice was broken, more and more hands came out to accept the sports drink. But how different from anywhere else I’ve been, where there would be shoving and pushing and yelling. The Chinese spectators were mostly silent, and rather unsmiling, but I still got the impression that they were enjoying the spectacle of the race.
Meanwhile, some women dressed in ragged clothes were collecting the empty cardboard boxes that the drinks had arrived in, and the empty bottles as well. They looked completely thrilled with this unexpected windfall, and we helped them collect up the “garbage” before we left. This country strikes me as so efficient – light years from the wantonly wasteful United States. I know there are so many negative consequences, environmental and other, of the huge economic boom in China in the last decade, but in lots of ways (at least on the surface, to my ignorant eye) the country seems to be tucking in the loose ends in a remarkably tidy way.
Waiting for the bus to pull out, I snapped photos from the window: a cobbler with his tools spread on a small tarp on the sidewalk; a woman pedaling a tricycle loaded with produce. (We also caught Cacoñema urinating on the street again, which we snapped on camera in our small act of revenge for his jerkiness.)
I was completely exhausted in the bus on the way home…I guess the jet lag works insidiously for a while after sleeping through the night is no longer a big hurdle. But when we got back to the hotel, I didn’t take a nap but instead worked on changing Pollo’s place ticket to return to the U.S. We still don’t have a real plan of what to do when the race is over, but we kind of like flying by the seat of our pants, and I’m sure we’ll work something out. I was frustrated by the slow internet connection, though…we’d been very happy to hear that the hotel offered free Ethernet, but in reality my connection was poor, and it was an exercise in patience to try and make a call on Skype, or upload my photos to the blog.
Pollo came back to the room after cleaning the bikes to tell me he’d seen a coconut stand. So we went down to walk around a bit. The area right outside the hotel was a really lively shopping center, and it was really fun to wander around at dusk when the lights were starting to come on.
There were tiny shops everywhere: really just open-fronted booths stuffed with merchandise: clothing, mostly, and beauty products, and bags, umbrellas, and belts and hair accessories. Pollo bought a “Levi Strauss” belt as he’d forgotten his and his jeans were falling down. Accustomed as I am to shopping in the U.S., I never would have thought to bargain, but to Pollo it was second nature, and he talked the proprietor of the mini-store down 50 yuan.
I went in a shoe store to see the merchandise more closely. Everything looked a lot like what you’d see in an American mall, at least from a distance of a few feet. Once you got closer, though, the extremely inexpensive prices made more sense, as it became clear that everything was a knock-off of brand name shoes. There were Vans look-alikes called “Valens” or something like that. Then there were also ones with real“Vans” labels. Once you picked them up, you could tell that the quality was not as good as the “real deal,” but the resemblance was amazing. It struck me that this is how Chinese manufacturers have become some of the most competitive in the world: start by copying the look of a known brand, and then gradually increase the quality of the copy while retaining the price-consciousness that made the first attempt so cheap.
We saw fake Oakley backpacks, fake Gucci belts…and all at prices that make the tourist with money in his pocket laugh in happy disbelief. Most of the people walking about were very stylish: what I mean is that their style is identical to what you’d see walking around New York. Boots are very big with the women here – almost all of them seem to be wearing either knee boots or smaller ones. The boots I’ve seen for sale, with plastic soles and high heels, don’t look like they’d last more than 10 minutes walking, but all the women here look very fashionable and I haven’t seen any broken heels yet.
There were a lot of people walking around, shopping, eating, and just hanging out. In fact, it struck me that this city – supposedly a rather soulless industrial and business (according to my Eyewitness Travel Guide) – is one of the most vibrant centers of urban life that I’ve ever seen. Even New York City, on a Monday evening at least, doesn’t have the bustle of this little corner of Shenzhen. (Maybe Times Square, but that’s all tourists, and we were the only non-Chinese that I saw here; I assume they live here but could be wrong.)
Even from our room when we finally returned, I could hear music coming up from the street, and see the lights of a small fair (complete with Ferris wheel) a few blocks away. I wonder if some of this extra excitement is due to its being Christmas Eve. When we went to dinner, the PA system (which here in China, thankfully, has been playing unadorned classical music instead of the synthesizer junk we endured in the Sha Tin hotel) was interrupted by a special live performance. A group of about 20 young people dressed in white robes and Santa hats sang “Jingle Bells,” “Silent Night,” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Their musicality wasn’t amazing, but the intent made me smile…and even tear up a little bit. It’s hard to even remember that it’s Christmas since we’re so caught up in the race and the foreignness of China. But when we wake up tomorrow, it’ll be December 25th.
Wilson left after dinner to catch his taxi back to Hong Kong. He’d succeeded in changing his flight for tomorrow (Christmas Day), but didn’t want to risk delays at the checkpoints and so elected to leave tonight. We’ll miss him – who are we going to tease relentlessly now? Oh…and I forgot to pay up for losing the Scrabble bet…but I’m sure Wilson will remember. I can hear him now in a month, “!Oye chica! !Todavia me debe el dinero del Scrabble!”
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