Road to Zigong

The next day was very hard. We rode 100km, going up and down, up and down. We hoped that since the road followed a river we could ride down a nice wide river valley. But the topography of this part of China resembles that of western Pennsylvania: lots of rivers and creeks have gouged countless ravines and gullies. The rivers switch back and forth from one cliff to the other, forcing the engineers to bring the road up and down the cliffs and across the steep chasms of the tributaries. it makes for a very hard day on a bicycle. we rarely even saw the river whose route we followed.

Along the hazy, hilly, ravine-sliced route, many people lived in houses made of mud with thick thatched roofs. Or should I say, made of dirt, since the mud dried and cracked decades ago and these houses looked quite old and solid. They looked surprisingly cozy, too.

We didn't just see rice drying on he road. The farmers stacked hay and corn stalks in Halloween pyramids along the side of the road, too. Ears of corn tied up by the husks hung out at every window and sometimes on strings across the front of a house like a clothes line. It looked a lot like Halloween but we were the only ones in costumes, dressed up to look like westerners.

We also saw a few places where four foot long white noodles hung out to dry on racks.

Ducks were everywhere except in ponds. Sometimes a bus would have 100 white ducks with orange beaks on the roof. People walked around towns gripping a couple of ducks by their necks. Bicycles equipped with big trays on the rear racks sometimes carried a dozen or more ducks. In towns dozens of ducks, tied in groups of five or six, huddled together waiting for transport. They looked slow moving and dazed like lobsters that had been out of water too long.

Most villages had at least one billiard table. Sometimes the tables sat outside covered by a tarp. I saw them playing eight ball at least once, though snooker had been very popular all over SE Asia.

Just about every time we stopped a huddle of people formed around us. It formed slowly at first but gradually grew, just like the no-see-ums that attacked Joan. The people studied our bicycles carefully, making note of the gears, the shifters, the helmets and my horn. I played many times for people, usually receiving a lukewarm, kind-but-not-impressed response.

The crowds were always friendly and they smiled and tried endlessly to talk to us. I really wish I could have communicated. the most common questions in English were "where are you from?" and "where are you going?" so we often answered questions we didn't understand by saying "America" or "Chongqing." It must have amused them when we answered one question with the other answer.

In the small towns almost no one ever tried to overcharge us. We learned the true prices of things that way and fought for that price in the cities where some opportunists would occasionally try to cheat us.

We often ate pear-apples. pineapples don't grow in this part of China but pear-apples made a good substitute. They contain lots of juice and we found them everywhere. One of the awkward things that makes China difficult: they always always insisted on selling pear-apples (and most fruit save pineapples) by the kilo. We couldn't just pick up a pear-apple from a street vendor and give him or her one yuan for it. He or she always insisted on weighing it with a handheld scale. We usually bought two and the price added up to two yuan just about every time.

In one town a man tried to charge Joan three yuan for two pear-apples. Some women standing near Joan screamed at him that the price should be two. He didn't want to back down, but the women with joan kept screaming. Finally Joan started yelling "Er!" (two) too, and he backed down. It felt good to know that locals would stick up for us.

The hole-in-the-wall restaurant owners were very anxious to have us in their shops, and I don't think it was just to have rich customers. Once we sat down they continued t be very friendly, often sitting down with us and trying to talk. We showed them the three pages of the lonely Planet guidebook's phrases and tried to have conversations.

Often they grabbed huge hunks of raw meat that were tacked to the back wall or sitting on a counter and offered it to us. They might as well have offered entrails. The stuff scared us. It makes haggis look like a hot fudge sundae. We used the phrase "we're vegetarians" from the guidebook to get out of that (we're not veggies).

They were anxious to have us order the probably much more expensive meat, but they didn't pressure too much, and they were still happy when we ordered cheap (eight yuan for two).

Our second night out of Chengdu we hoped to find as good accommodation as we had the first night. We didn't. The sun blazed on us as we rode around the newer part of Zigong, towards the expressway, looking for a hotel. Hotels were pretty easy to spot even though we didn't know the Chinese characters. We just looked for glass doors, a lobby and most importantly, four clocks behind the reception desk. (They showed the time, roughly, in Beijing, Tokyo, London, and New York, with an occasional Paris or Moscow).

Joan went inside and I waited with the bikes. A small crowd of eight or 10 shirtless young men stood silently staring at me. A minute or so later a sexy young woman in a wispy, low-cut thin dress--almost transparent in the bright sunlight--walked out of the hotel. I'm proud to say that I had the presence of mind, after a few seconds, to look away from her and back at the crowd. Every single pair of eyes now stared at her, not me. Maybe they had all been waiting for her to get off work.

the place turned out to be a brothel so we moved on. After checking one more brothel we rode down the ill to the old city. A note to bike travelers in populated parts of China: always head for the city center to find a hotel. That's where the best hotels are (though they cost more) and you can find lots of places to eat. Also, the city centers of the towns were great places to walk around. They were relatively clean and busy with lots of little shops and restaurants and people to watch.

A few times we saw tempers flare in the streets. Once we saw a woman chase a man on a motorcycle, screaming something at him. After he escaped she turned and came after a woman standing nearby and gave her high volume hell.

We hear lots of general yelling. Probably mostly things that would translate: Hey Jimmy, it's time to rake the rice. But it seems just soooo loud sometimes. It's weird. I admire the vigorous way that they live but I get tired of the noise.

I don't know if the haze just came from the hot humid summer, or the high pollution that China suffers (from coal-fired power plants, rather than cars). But it's about the gloomiest Dickensian haze you can imagine. By the time we had checked out the would-be-hotels-but-really-just-brothels, the haze had dimmed the sun to the point we could look straight at it and see a perfect orange circle.

We turned away from the brothels and headed back across the town's big traffic circle and down the big hill that we had avoided earlier.

We had avoided it because it appeared to lead to a bunch of tall buildings exhibiting in hideous exaggeration humankind's worst ideas in architecture: tall dark stained concrete public housing built in large, communist-like scale. It didn't look inviting to say the least, and riding DOWN into it was even less so. But someone told us we could find a "tourist hotel" down there so we went.

The Zigong hotel assigned us our own personal secretary, a 21-year-old woman named Ning Ning who spoke a little English. She kept following us trying to translate. She wasn't very good but she was friendly. She accompanied us at dinner and again at breakfast, and helped translate the menu.

(Joan: and as usual in China, when we ordered two things, five would arrive. We'd think, What a nice gift. And the food was great. Then we'd have to pay for everything. After a few days we learned to send back what we didn't order. Ning Ning multiplied our simple breakfast into a big feast with French Toast, so we didn't mind the extra cost too much).

Ning Ning had worked for the hotel for just two months. She said we were the first foreigners to stay there in that time.

We started our morning with the Left Turn of Faith. Three of the four arteries to Zigong's traffic circle were paved. The fourth led up a short steep hill that sported the ugliest of ugly buildings in town. Joan thought it was a prison. It commanded the highest point in town. Buses and trucks crept and bounced and wobbled at crazy angles as one wheel, then another, fell into holes on the road. I wondered if a Chinese historical society had declared that the road in front of the ugliest building should never be paved, or it will reduce the ugly charm.

This was the road we had to take. We saw no signs (that we could read) but we knew it was the road, and we didn't even confer about it. We just went. The Left Turn of Faith.

It wasn't so bad. I got stuck in some mud and had to walk my bike part way. But after just 100 meters it was over and we were on our way, down a passable blacktop road. Really it was harder for the four-wheeled vehicles. It was nice to be past the mess.

Next: Rest of the ride to Chongqing

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