The Shanghai-Beijing High-speed train

Getting to the train station and on to the train was a bit of a nightmare due to the cumbersome bike that I was carting around. I had to drag the bag along the floor of the train station, and by the time I got onto the train, my hands were red and sore.

The train itself was a bit of a letdown. For some odd reason, they have the TVs at high volume for the entire trip! I was so irritated by this auditory intrusion that I complained to the attendant, who did nothing. I don’t understand why they bother. No one was watching the TV. Don’t they realize that they are just irritating people? It’s best to just mute the damn TVs and have head phone inserts. That’s what they do on planes after all.

Shanghai

After three weeks on the road, I finally made it to Shanghai. Towards the end of my trip, the biking became much easier. On the final leg, I made great time (five hours for 85 km), and could have gone much further. My legs no longer hurt, and I felt fine when I got off my bike. In order to avoid the problems I had on my first leg to Tianjin, I will have to train first next time I do a long distance trip like this.

Overall this was a valuable experience. I got to experience China at its most basic level, I got exercise every day, and I didn’t have to wait around for buses/trains all the time. Biking is the way to go on trip from now on!

Instant Cities

When I looked at the map book to confirm the location of my hotel in Dezhou, it seemed to be located in the countryside. On the internet, the map indicated a grid of streets. In between the publication of the map book (a year or two ago) and now, a new city has risen in Dezhou’s economic development zone.

In Changzhou, it was the same thing. My hotel seemed to be located very far away from the center of the city. As a biked through this new area, most of the buildings were recently built or under construction. There were lots of empty lots, a few people walking around. In a year or so, it would be full of people. In fact, once reaching Changzhou, the urban area never really reverted back to countryside for the remainder of my trip. All the way to Shanghai, was constant urban sprawl. In cities, it was apartment buildings. In the areas between, there was a lot of industry and even rural apartment buildings as well. With all the construction going in, I am really wondering how all these new housing projects can expect to find owners? I don’t think that poor peasants can afford them, and there is only a finite number of people. Perhaps people are buying them to rent out? I’d really like to know. Based on first-hand experience seeing all these new buildings, I can’t help but think it is unsustainable.

Anhui (~300 km)

The cities in Anhui do not merit their own individual posts. They are unattractive, underdeveloped and unpleasant. I had been warned about Bengbu from my dental hygienist, who had spent a summer there volunteering to fix people’s teeth. She did not enjoy it. I thought that it couldn’t have been that bad. On the map it looked like there were lots of parks. It was that bad. The parks were bad and the city half under construction. Dreadful.

The highlight of my time in Anhui was actually the route between Bengbu and Chuzhou. Unexpectedly, the road went through sparsely populated countryside that was heavily forested. Even many of the trees had clearly been recently planted, the countryside was beautiful. It was a pleasant change from the usual dusty countryside with people everywhere. Chuzhou was nicer than Bengbu, but really not very interesting. To be fair, I did not have time to visit Langya Shan (a mountain), the main tourist site in town. Perhaps had I visited I would have been more impressed.

In Chuzhou I stayed in five star white tile hotel for only $40 a night! Actually the rooms were quite nice, and very good value in my opinion, in spite of the ghastly exterior. The hotel was built in 1999, at the height of the white-tile craze that grabbed ahold of China for too long.

Dezhou - Again

Articles in the June issue of National Geographic and in a recent issue of the Economist both talk about the solar-powered hotel I stayed in Dezhou. The photo in the Economist article is of the bizarre-looking structure.

Xuzhou

I had never heard of Xuzhou prior to planning my trip. It does seem to be a pretty significant city though. The airport has international flights, there is a metro in the planning stages, and it even has a Starbucks (newly opened)! When I arrived at the hotel, I asked the receptionist about whether the hotel gets a lot of foreigners. She said that they did. They often had Koreans and Japanese and had an American a few days ago. She then lowered her voice and told me breathlessly that even had a black man stay there recently. I thought that I had it bad with the amount of attention I receive! I feel really sorry for any black person that travels around China.

Xuzhou actually was more cosmopolitan than I expected. At the Starbucks the next day, another foreigner was there, and later on when I went to the Carrefour, I saw a middle-aged white couple shopping in the imported goods section. If a no-name city in China is this cosmopolitan, think of what other places will be like in a few years. Previously horrible cities (like Suzhou), may become livable. While Xuzhou is somewhat cosmopolitan, it is still a very Chinese city at heart. Many ghastly white-tile buildings dot the skyline, although I did see a few which had been condemned. Massive new developments are rising in the city center. International hotel chains are moving in (Ramada). With a little bit of work, Xuzhou could be quite pleasant. It actually reminded me of Hangzhou, as it had a lot of hills rising above the urban area, offering patches of green.

On one of these green islands is located the Terracotta warrior museum. No, this is no the Xi’an museum of the same name, rather this is a Han Dynasty tomb with its own, smaller warriors. Unlike the warriors in Xi’an, you can actually go inside the tomb in Xuzhou, which is cut directly into the rock. The warriors are not as impressive as the ones in Xi’an as they are smaller and fewer. Nevertheless, in some ways I enjoyed these Terracotta warriors more. The natural setting was pleasant. There were fewer tourists, and there was no hype. In Xi’an, I was disappointed. The hype made me believe that what I was about to see would be incredible. But it really wasn’t. Sure, seeing legions of stone warriors in a big pit was impressive, but surely if the entire thing was excavated and you could walk next to the warriors it would be even better. Xuzhou is way off the tourist circuit, but for anyone adventurous, it is a worthy destination.

Qufu – Xuzhou (175 km)

That number (175 km) loomed in my mind as I set out extra early at 5 am from Qufu. Nevertheless, I set off with naïve optimism. Things went uneventfully until around 10 am when I stopped for a rest by the side of the road. Suddenly, I saw another biker stop by me. He also had panniers on his bike. Clearly he was also travelling a long distance. It turns out we were headed for the same place: Shanghai and had both come from Beijing. He was Chinese, and was planning to bike to Tibet after going to Shanghai. We decided to cycle together for the rest of the day to Xuzhou. We stopped for lunch near Weishan Lake where we had an excellent fish dish. Afterwards we continued on and arrived at the hotel at 5:00. Taking the lunch break into account, it took 11 hours of cycling to go 175 km! Strangely, I felt pretty good afterwards. It was certainly way better than the worst day so far, still the first to Tianjin.