The China Adventure Begins
The next morning we leave the boat and clear bikes and baggage through Chinese Customs. We are meet by our local guide and the three drivers who will support us. Our Chinese guide asks us to call him Su-shades of Johnny Cash and A Boy Named Sue. He takes us on a quick city tour on one of our two busses while the bikes are being unpacked.
Our hotel is the White Swan on the man-made island where the British were first allowed to trade with the Chinese in 1715. It is a first class hotel with a great view of the river and city.
After lunch we get a chance to try the bikes, get seats adjusted and prepare for tomorrow's ride. Su gives us each a security blanket in the form of a single page with the name of each destination city and hotel written in both English and Chinese. Only one or two people will use it-even if unused, it is reassuring. The rest of the afternoon is free for sight- seeing.
We walk across a small bridge and down the street to the Quingping "free market," where farmers sell the produce they don't need to meet their state quotas. We are clear this is a different land after we have walked a block and a half with food displayed everywhere and haven't seen a single thing that we recognize.
We walk for blocks and find lots of fresh fruits, vegetables and meat. We see live chickens, fish, possums and animals usually found in pet shops. With little or no refrigeration, people shop every day. If it is alive, it is obviously fresh.
On the Bikes
At last the day we have been preparing for, our first day of riding. Guanzhou has more than 5 million people so we bus to suburban Foshan. We take time for a brief visit to a silk factory and our first serious shopping for souvenirs at the factory store.
The traffic is still heavy and it is 99 kilometers (62 miles) to tonight's hotel in Zhaoqhing. Several of us opt to leave our bikes on the truck and stay on the bus for awhile. In the traffic, two people become separated from the group. As we leave town, Su says something to a policeman and is assured that our missing two are up ahead.
After a discreet silence, I ask Su how he described us to the policeman. He replies, "I asked if he had seen any Westerners but he didn't know what I meant . . . so I said guá-low and he assured me they came by just a little while ago." Su then apologetically translates guá-low as "foreign devils." We are now the guá-low cycling to Guilin.
The first day's ride gives us a taste of Chinese traffic, mostly buses and trucks and light tractors pulling overloaded trailers. Chinese drivers deal with anything on the road by honking at it. Fortunately for us, the Chinese drive and ride on the right-hand side of the road. There is only an occasional car, and of course, lots and lots of bikes. In the U.S. we have a car for every two people. In China, at least in the cities, they have a bike for every two people; they have a lot more people and a lot more bikes. All of the bikes are one speed (no gears) and they range from sparkling new to rusted ancient.
Hello-hello
We have been taught to say knee how, the Chinese equivalent of "how are you" or "hello." However, many of the people shout hello-hello. Over the next few days we discover that even in the remotest villages the Chinese know-and correctly pronounce-hello and bye-bye. However hello, like bye-bye, is almost always a double word.
The members of our group have spread out. Throughout the trip we each ride at our own pace. Some of the women will ride by themselves for hours and say they feel quite comfortable on the road alone. Pat and I are riding at a pace that allows us to get used to the mountain bikes and observe the world that is unfolding around us.
We arrive in Zhaoqhing at about 5 p.m. and get a taste of "rush hour" on bikes. Now the horns of buses and trucks are joined by the bells of bikes. No one except us appears to be paying any attention to the noise.
Our hotel is a notch or two below the White Swan but still nice. We have clearly left the western tourist circuit. From here to Guilin we will be staying at hotels for local businessmen and "overseas Chinese." All our hotels have air conditioning, television, showers and western style toilets. There are toilets at the side of the road, but they are all Chinese style with a slit in the floor and nowhere to sit. Pat says thank goodness for lots of bushes.
During the trip we will pass many small villages and towns. However, we will stay in cities that range in size from 50,000 to 300,000 people except for Guilin which has a population of 680,000.
Backroads uses one of the two busses to move our baggage from hotel-to-hotel. In hotels for western tourists, people tip. In hotels for overseas Chinese they don't. No tips, no bellmen. We carry our bags from the lobby to our rooms. Fortunately we were forewarned in Hong Kong and left some of our luggage with the Concierge.
In the cities there are regular shops, many of which stay open late. I n addition, there are thriving night markets set up on the sidewalks with bare light bulbs strung from any convenient post or tree. Zhaoqhing has a large night market and the shoppers in the group start practicing the art of haggling over prices. The lack of a shared language simply adds to the challenge.
One brave member of our group gets a haircut and rates the shampoo and massage terrific. The price is good and so is the haircut.
Chinese Breakfast
Day five begins with our first Chinese breakfast: a selection of dim sum and gongee which is a thick rice soup with bits of onions and fish or other leftovers. Not bad, once in a while. Instant coffee and powdered creamer are provided by Backroads.
We take one of the busses to a kindergarten for three to five year olds. There are 800 students, of whom 150 live-in six days a week. The school specializes in the performing arts and the children put on a great show. The best part of the visit is playing with the kids and the sing-along. A quick city tour and then back to the bikes for a grueling four mile ride with a break in the middle for lunch.
We ride into the Seven Star Park, past pagodas and around a lake to a restaurant. This is our first view of the limestone formations we will see periodically from here to Guilin. After lunch Alan encourages us to take our bikes and explore the countryside.
Exploring
People drift off in groups of two or three. Pat and I start down a road that turns to dirt then narrows to a trail and eventually is nothing more than a path along the top of a dike between rice paddies. The people we meet are surprised-guá low with fancy bikes and yellow helmets are not seen in rice paddies. Surprised, but still friendly. We eventually work our way back to a trail and then a road and back to town. Shared stories at dinner are all about successes. We are starting to feel like "old China-hands."
After dinner, we meet three 12 year old girls in the lobby of the hotel. They say they often stop by to practice their English with tourists. English is now mandatory starting in the fourth grade and there are English lessons in the evening on educational television. There are also television programs in English with Chinese or English sub-titles.
Young people are learning the courtesies such as "How are you," but they don't yet know how to use them. One young lady asks, "How are you?" But when we ask her the same question, she had not yet learned any of the possible answers. We are often surprised by the extent to which English provides for the exchange of pleasantries but it is not yet the functional language it is in other parts of the world. The Chinese have just begun.
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