The British author James Hilton published a small novel in 1933 and set it in a Utopian kingdom in China. He was no doubt shocked at the widespread repute the location of his fictional sacred Utopian kingdom would achieve, and the misuse that would subsequently be heaped upon it. Read the rest of this article…
I stayed with Zippy and had a conversation with a Chinese man. He was middle aged, a bit soft looking, in white t-shirt, black shorts, black socks and black shoes. He asked for a light for his cigarette. I think he was testing me, because he immediately produced a lighter when I indicated I didn’t smoke. Odd to shrug my shoulders in apology for not smoking! Then he asked my age. I knew because it happened so often on our Silk Road Crossing in China. We each drew out our ages on a bench, and used finger counting. He was 53, and showed shock that I am 65. Then he wanted to see how hard my legs are, a reaction to Zippy as usual, and even went so far as to make me flex my arms for him, and he slowly traced my large veins down my biceps and forearm. I suspect he doesn’t have such good circulation. He complained about the pollution (bad) in Chengdu, between deep draws on his cigarette. He was just curious about me, and not shy about it; Chinese seem to be so shy that they pretend not to see you, or get very personal. Read the rest of this article…
What a day. My cousin pandas are big, even the babies are big, and they are always eating something called bamboo. I hear my friends P-bear, Foster and Lai Lai talk about it, but they don’t eat either. The Chinese people are proud of their pandas. There were lots of Chineese there making flashes with little cameras and getting into the pictures. I got into Bob and Claire’s pictures too. I think I’m prettier than those pandas. The old ones just laid on their backs and ate bamboo, but the young ones wrestled and pretended to bite and rolled around. One even slept in a tree. I guess they really are bears. Claire liked the babys est. I’m jealous. She coooed over me, but nothing like she did with the baby pandas! Read the rest of this article…
A video of Bob and Claire Rogers riding their tandem, Zippy in the Chinese city of Chengdu, in preparation for their journey to Shangri-la Read the rest of this article…
Claire: I’m trying to eat more adventurously on this trip and so far, the spicy Sichuan food is very tolerable. Good thing Bob has had me in training for the last few weeks. Tonight, we had mapo doufu, a regional tofu dish that is very spicy. We also actually did get green beans this time: wonderful crispy fried and salty. I’m sure our restaurant hosts thought we were out of our gourd for not wanting rice, but it was already more than we could eat and we hate wasting food, after all, there are starving children in America. Read the rest of this article…
Near a street market, we stopped for a meal of baozi, and met a nice family group and a regular customer. Lots of language issues, but lots of fun communication and laughter. The regular customer bought our dinner! We presented the family with business cards. Stopped for pastries to eat on the way back to the binguan. One was filled with sweetened squash! Wonderful.
So many things go on during our days of pedaling that we thought it would be good to post a video of what we see in an average day so far. This is combined from three days, with lots left out!
Lucky is enjoying his ride in my front pannier, though he is beginning to get gray, just like our clothes and bodies are from the pollution and dust. He is frustrated with the language as well as we are. I’ve asked him to do a post, but he says he’s not ready to pass judgement on this bicycle touring thing, or China.
We had some hills today and the locals of Ya’an make steep up angles and raise their eyebrows, sometimes exclaim loudly, when we tell them were we are going. One man went to great lengths to pantomime that we should take a bus.
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We caught them 1,000 vertical meters later at the entrance to the summit tunnel to great exclamations of pleasure and another round of picture taking, with Zippy at the center. There were police and army personnel all over the place, protecting the tunnel no doubt, and we had to show our passports to be allowed through the tunnel.