I thought he was mad. The insane kind of mad. At the time his suggestion seemed impossible, yet the words stared at me, blazing from the computer, both challenging me and provoking my will. It turns out later that I was the crazy one, taking his suggestion and leaving my well-established barbeque stand in Beijing to head to Sanya on bike with the very man who had dared to test my will. The journey would total 6,000 kilometers and would take about 2 months. The numbers didn't scare me though, in fact they kind of electrified me. My friend and I had carefully planned out the route, making sure to hit up several large cities on the way. By no means did we take the shortest route. We all learn in geometry that the shortest route is a straight line between two points, but the one we were taking was zigzagged-- looping in and out of the vastness that is China. If we were going to do this at all though, then we had to do it right. RIGHT? We weren't taking this trip for comfort or luxury. We were going to bust our balls, so we chose the scenic route, however much longer it may take. Bikes aren't allowed on highways in China so we had to take the country roads. I was on my fixed gear yellow bike and he on his orange mountain bike. I would be the first person in China to make this trek from Beijing to Sanya on a fixed gear. This thought alone excited me, and drove me to this madness. That and my friend's suggestion of course. I had even met this friend in a peculiar way.
We had only known each other for about a week, but we became fast virtual friends in that time. Through our online conversations, I found out that he was a 30 year old reporter. It's common to meet friends online in China. After about a week of chatting, he proposed the idea of biking together from Beijing to Sanya. Ten days after his proposal, I found myself on the road, pedaling with Beijing's skyline on my back alongside my new friend. We left on April 19th. We would wake up at around 8 AM every day and bike until it became too dark to navigate, biking around 8 to 10 hours every day. We didn't stop except to eat and to rest. We would always try to set up what hotels we would be staying at for the night in whatever city we would be in. If we didn't do this, we would be roaming around the dark looking for one and this was very dangerous.
It took about 4 to 5 days to get from one city to another so I found myself sleeping in townships many of which were a lot dirtier, messier, and more dangerous and corrupt than bigger cities tended to be. I didn't carry anything to protect myself with, but my friend was strong so I felt safe with him. You'd think it would've gotten lonely with just 2 people, but we met so many new friends along the way that I never felt such loneliness.
In Chengdu, I had talked to a person living there before and had planned ahead to meet him when we arrived. He was part of a biking team, and when I arrived he welcomed me and introduced me to his favorite spots and good friends. We traveled with him for part of the way, and to this day we're still very good friends. For most of the cities, I'd try to get in contact with local biking groups. These groups aren't prevalent in big cities, but I tried to get in contact with a group in each city before we set out from Beijing.
I would be a liar if I called the journey easy; there were many bumps in the road [pun intended]. My bike had a lot of issues because the country roads can get really bumpy and a lot of foresight was needed to plan in order to avoid problems like the one we experienced in Kumming. We had been on the road for 12 hours traveling west from Guiyang to Kumming and the sun had already set, which was an issue because we hadn't found a place to sleep yet. We were already exhausted because we had been biking uphill for most of the time, which is difficult on a fixed gear. Fixed gears are much more fitting for riding through cities, not for biking cross-country like we were doing. Anyway, we kept looking but we couldn't find a hotel. We ended up stumbling upon a really poor village where there was a shitty shack someone rented out to us for the night. A lot of people think I'm crazy when I tell this story because I could've easily taken a plane and gotten to Sanya in a matter of hours. But I say fuck that! What's the fun in that? It's too easy to take other forms of transportation, you get to your destination in a couple of hours or a day. On a bike, you get to take in the sights better and so you get to experience a lot more. You get to feel every place's atmosphere, truly feel it on your skin, in your bones, but when you're in a car you just pass right on by a place and don't even notice it. Biking such a distance seemed crazy, but it also seemed right for me. Biking is not exactly a special interest for me, it's just something I wanted to experience. I'm not particularly good at it either. I mean I biked every day in Beijing since the city's so crowded and because I wanted to preserve the environment.
Doing this biking trip was just one experience I wanted to have, and there are still so many others. It was a great experience and I knew it would be, and that's why I committed myself to this 2 month 6,000 kilometer trek. I like to do things that people haven't done before. Right now I haven't done anything that other people haven't, except this bike trip on fixed gear, but I plan on continuing endeavors like this: things people haven't done. At the moment I'm planning on being a good surfer and learning how to surf here in Sanya. There aren't many good surfers in China. I think there are about 100 good surfers in all of China and considering the population, that's nothing. In 4 or 5 years, I want to be snowboarding as well. I don't do these things in hopes that surfing or snowboarding will become more popular in China, I do it for the sake of my own experience. Life is just a collection of these experiences-- the bolder the better, the newer the more exciting, the less tried the more satisfying.
I stayed in Sanya for a little when I finally made it to the tropical island some call the “Hawaii of China,” and stayed at Sunshine Hostel where I met the owner, Jason. He is, in ways, just as ambitious me – I like that. The staff was great here, really friendly, and I found out that they didn't have a permanent chef here. The cogs started turning in my head... When I returned to Beijing from Sanya, I stayed there for only 10 days, which was enough time to convince my friend (and practicing chef) Mu Rui Chen – or Old Mu for short – to return to the island with me. He had some experience cooking at an international school, and even worked at a restaurant in Beijing, and I knew he would light up at the offer to work in a quieter, cleaner, and sunnier city than Beijing. I knew he'd be a perfect fit for Sunshine Hostel. I made the arrangement with Jason before I left: I'd set them up with a new chef and Jason and I would practice surfing together.
I returned to Sanya because it was too coincidental and I took it as a sign from above that they didn't have a chef. I believe in destiny; I think it controls everything. If I hadn't come to this hostel, I wouldn't have met you guys, and if I had stayed at a different hostel, I wouldn't have been able to bring Old Mu back as the new chef. The bike trip had everything to do with who I am and where I am at this exact moment. Now I'm going to be in Sanya for 1 or 2 more years, practicing surfing every day and working at the hostel. I'm making money and saving it to do things I like to do. I really like traveling. I want to travel all around the world. I don't even know where I want to go to the most. Everywhere is beautiful. I want to go to America eventually and do a cross-country road trip. My biggest dream is to sail across the world. I read a book about a guy who did that. He set out from Shangdong, and his trip took a little bit more than 1 year. I think that's very special, but it's pretty dangerous to do it all by yourself. I really admire him because it's dangerous and there's a lot of things you can't expect. But I bet he took this trip for the very same reason I took mine: to make a lot of new friends and see a lot of new places, and most of all, for the experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment