The journey + Beijing

SEPTEMBER 8, 2007: OK so, having armed myself (ie ourselves) with a telescopic police baton (purchased from a Songyuan sports store), Boxxy and i have bid farewell to the city of Chinese pirates and set out on a rather epic adventure.

The mission is to ride bicycles from the start of the Great Wall to the end, or the end to the start, no-one really knows which. Since we just bid farewell to our adopted home, some final pictures from "Songyuarrrgh" (Songyuarr interesantes click here for more):





We only have five months, and the unabashedly cruel Chinese winter is going to do its best to stop us so there's a distinct possibility that we'll fail. And as and when we do or don't you, the consumer, will be the first to know about it.

But now we're here in this desert...my prejucided ideas compel me to call it a desert backwater but ironically this place is seriously the most advanced, poverty-free, prosperous, advanced Chinese city we've seen...

Incidentally, i've also updated the hilarious Chinese products section, for your enjoyment.

Alright we came via Beijing and judging by the overwhelming numbers of pink, sloppy, wobbling, rolling "waiguoren" (foreigners, ie white people), i don't really need to describe it further. Your mother and father/uncle and aunt have probably been there so ask them next time you're bored at a family get together.


Tiananmen Square was just a plain disappointment - way smaller than i imagined based on the now-blocked-again Wikipedia (i think the Chinese Government has blocked and un-blocked it at least 4 times now...i don't understand how that's going to increase the people's trust in them, but the claim that Tiananmen is the biggest square in the world must be pure shite, whichever location it comes from). The only aspect worth talking about was the congealing of above "waiguoren". Just look at them...


Flying the flag alright, that bunch.

Yes, and apart from the garden just before the exit, the Forbidden City (Emperor place) also pretty much sucks balls. That is, the part of it that we tourist hordes were allowed to see. Utterly overrun by tourists and tourist conveniences (which we, of course in our hypocritical tourist guise, took advantage of). The place is rebuilt/restored beyond what's believably authentic, yet in the process they haven't made it beautiful or comfortable. In fact, given X dozen emperors lived there, its lack of comfort is most likely quite inauthentic. That said, the garden at the back had plenty of interesting shit.




Unbelievably, that night we couldn't, despite our best efforts, find a taxi driver that knew where a nightclub was in Beijing.

Even more unbelievably, the next day our assigned, cocksure, certified, Bill-befriended Beijing-expert taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong train station. Now, i don't know if you know why we're so fucking late starting this trip...but the reason is there are NO train tickets at this time of year - to almost any place, let along one of the furthest-flung cities from Beijing. The university students basically render the whole system inoperable for almost 3 weeks. So we were waiting in Songyuan, waiting for tickets. Then Bill, our Mongolian trillionaire school boss, very kindly pulled some strings at the central government and we suddenly had two of the rarest tickets on the planet. So you could say this "added an X-factor into the mix" when i consulted the train information desk as to why our train was not listed on the departure board, and the reply came that our train was leaving from a different station on the other side of the city. The city, that is, with some of the worst traffic issues on the planet. In 25 minutes' time.

We trundled outside (trundled is, i believe, an appropriate approximation for the movement of the fat, pink, "waiguoren" described above, and, with our 40+kg of awkwardly shaped bicycle luggage, us at the fastest possible pace), and i yelled for someone to take us to the other station fast. Immediately an unscrupulous cunt tried to rope us in for 200RMB ($35) but his luck ran out as it dawned on me that we were completely fucked. As such, he got told.

But 30m down the taxi rank, we stumbled upon another driver whom we confronted with the idea of 50RMB ($9) to try to get us across town in time. He demanded 70RMB ($11), we agreed, and suddenly two other Chinese people appeared (maybe they had been waiting) and we were hurtling down the crowded freeway. The driver demanded my train ticket. We were heartened by his explanation that he needed it to use when the police stopped him. But we knew we were still legitimately fucked.

"We've already missed the train, and now we're risking our lives, and the lives of two other people," a manditorily seatbelt-less Boxxy commented to a manditorily seatbelt-less me (in the middle-back windscreen seat) as the driver sped towards a red light at 100+km/h. I agreed.

But we just didn't count on the genius of the driver - even despite his devious appearance. Stop at a red light? No, no need in China. Just skip the queue using the bike lanes on either side of the road. Stop for bikes? No, just hold down the horn. Take a gamble at a fork in the road on whether to take the reliably-jammed station road or take the long route around the back? No, just go straight on through the light railway and decide once the situation is clear. Just 12 amphetamine minutes after we left Beijing West station, we were trundling again at top speed through the crowded foyer of Beijing (East) Station, pushing our way though the long, bemused queues, screaming the time of our train at the top of our lungs.

We spent the first 30 minutes of the train ride just sitting there, i'm not kidding, in total disbelief that we'd actually made it. The effect wasn't quite equal to the effect of certain drugs - "i think we both know what we're talking about here" - but it was much greater than the effect of some very expensive substances.


About 6 hours into the train trip we got our first glimpse of the wall.


Here's some scenery from where we are now. Ok enough. I'm armed. I'm out.