Bombay to Beijing by Bicycle

by Russell McGilton

  ‘In the museum,’ I began, ‘it said that the cause of pandas’ low reproduction rate is because the male’s penis is short. Is that the reason it’s hard to get them to mate?’

  ‘No. They need behavioural interaction. The zoos are leaving the pandas longer with their mothers so they can learn. In the wild the males reside over an area of females in what are now isolated pockets of their original habitat. There are only 1000 wild pandas that exist there. The copulation is very brief. Like giraffes. They’ve really only got one shot at it.’

  She continued writing notes.

  ‘So …’ I smiled. ‘What are you doing later? Do you want to go for a drink?’

  ‘LV,’ she said, not looking up from her clipboard.

  Back at Paul’s Oasis that night, Jason convinced me that I should go to the Jiuzhaigou National Park, some 330 kilometres north east of Chengdu, back into the cold and into the Min Shan Mountain range.

  ‘It’s like the Rockies – snow-capped mountains and incredible turquoise lakes. It’s the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. It is by far the best thing I have seen on my entire trip.’

  Fearing that I was missing out on something, I whizzed up there on the bus the next morning to see the most amazing, wonderful, beautiful thing Jason had ever seen.

  Entry into the park was expensive: a hefty 80 yuan to get through the gate, and then another 30 yuan for the gas-powered bus. Inspired by my last attempt at Tiger Leaping Gorge, I decided to sneak in.

  I looked furtively around the gate, and saw no one. I slinked past the tourist shops, down a lane next to some nondescript buildings, and up an embankment. When I got to the top, I stumbled across a barbed-wire fence. I dropped on to my back and scurried under the fence, commando-style. Once up, I found myself behind a camouflaged hut; I looked around, and saw no one, so walked on my merry way.

  Moments later, a mini-van whooshed up, and two guards jumped out and bundled me in while I bumbled at them pathetically. They walked me to the ticket office and made me buy a ticket. But, I was able to wrangle at least one thing for free: the bus.

  I snuck a ride on the next gas-powered bus, which was crammed with Chinese tourists. I was finally able to see what Jason had been crowing about; I took one look and headed straight back on the next bus back to Chengdu.

  Jason was still in the bar.

  ‘Pine trees!’ I barked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pine trees! You made me go all the way up there to see pine trees. Do you know how many pine trees I’ve seeeen on this trip?!’

  ‘Hey, don’t forget the turquoise lakes.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Man, you didn’t have to go.’

  ‘Oh, I know. But you made it sound like something I should see, something I shouldn’t miss.’

  He shoved a bottle of beer in my hand and threw a cigarette at me. ‘If I buy you another beer, will you shut up?’

  I, of course, was being facetious (I actually stayed for two days). Jiuzhaigou National Park was incredible and extraordinary, a fact not lost on UNESCO who deemed it a World Heritage Site in 1992 and a World Biosphere Reserve in 1997. Not to be outdone, the China National Tourism Administration gave it AAAAA for its scenic beauty that has also helped to attract almost 7000 people to visit the park each day.

  And you can see why.

  Apart from its tree covered mountains (a rare sight in China) now in their brilliant autumn oranges and reds, there are over one hundred turquoise lakes. Brilliant in colour and transparency, the lakes are heavily calcified due to the eons of glacial melts and this area once being under water millions of years ago.

  The air was crisp and clear, and as I watched water run through the trees between the lakes, a peculiar sight, I thought it a shame that so much of China’s environment had been lost for the sake of the economy – like everywhere else around the world.

  ***

  Recovering from a hangover, I thought the best way to soothe it would be with the soft lilts of Chinese Sichuan Opera. How wrong I was.

  As my guide, Wu, and myself locked our bikes, a piercing falsetto ricocheted out of the theatre and shot me in the head. To make sure I felt worse, we went in whereupon my senses were assaulted by garish costumes, crashing symbols and, if that wasn’t enough to induce a migraine, clappers – who sat off stage banging wooden blocks in time with the actors’ movements.

  Many of the patrons were quite old. Those at the front sat at tables with peanuts, sunflower seeds, and jars of tea. Most of the patrons wore Maoist dress: blue uniforms and caps.

  Nearly all the men smoked, in that special Chinese way. They placed the cigarette at the bottom of their index finger, and then stuffed their whole hand over their mouth and cheek, letting the cigarette lie lazily on their lip. From a distance it looked like they were smacking themselves slowly in the face.

  An old man sat next to me. Wu told me that this man was 90 years old, but he looked only 70. He reminded me of a big, fat, happy beetle. He had yellow–brown skin, sunken eyes, a plump face and long, willowy grey eyebrows that hung just above his cheeks and twitched up and down like antennae. I could only imagine the stories this old man could have told about the things China had experienced during his lifetime – the surge of communism, the Cultural Revolution, and now the razor embrace of China’s free market as it joined the World Trade Organization.

  Wu explained that the story was about a man and woman who were not allowed to see each other.

  ‘This was feudal time,’ she said. ‘Very strict.’

  Like a Shakespearean comedy, the young man hid himself in the box of his darling heart’s bedroom, only to be caught out by her mother. It was difficult to stay involved in the story, and not just because of the language barrier, but because of the techno music from the roller-skating rink next door shuddering through the performance. Techno was infesting every space in Asia, thumping and bopping its way through glass and brick. I hated it.

  Afterwards, Wu helped me check my bike into the Chengdu train station.

  It wasn’t the way I had envisioned my entry into Beijing – sailing in on a rickety train – but my Chinese visa was about to expire.

  Wu raced from counter to counter filling in forms. She seemed just as confused as me, and looked quite agitated with the process.

  ‘In China,’ she frowned, ‘always big problem!’

  32

  THE GREAT WALL – BEIJING

  Early December

  There I was on the Huánghuā Wall, one of the many derelict sections of the Great Wall of China, hiking up the crumbling steps past small bushes, plants, gravel and broken rock, sometimes stooping, sometimes clambering with my hands, when I turned around to Maria and announced, ‘You know, I will take my gear off.’

  For some time, there has been a myth that the Great Wall of China could be seen from the moon. I think what the initiator of the myth really meant to say was that on the Great Wall of China you could be seen to be mooning and right now, I was about to demonstrate this point.

  ‘Oh, I know you’ll get your gear off,’ Maria said confidently. ‘And I don’t want to be anywhere near you when you do!’

  I had met Maria at the Jinghua Hotel in Beijing. Born in Australia to parents from Hong Kong, she worked in the UK as an occupational therapist. Though she may have looked Chinese and spoke much more Mandarin than me, she could not make herself understood by the locals. Surprisingly, my tiny grasp of the language had brought better results.

  Sexual tension had been brewing between us since a brief kiss in a taxi the night before, and now we listened to each other’s heaving breaths, which was slowly driving us – and I hate to say it – up the wall.

  Mooning the Great Wall of China had seemed a good idea at the time, a streak across the peak, a funny photo to send to friends, a bizarre way of flirting with Maria (‘Look! I’ve got nads! Catch me, Maria, Catch me!’). But maybe I was stepping ove
r the line.

  I had cycled alone to the wall, some 60 kilometres north of Beijing’s metropolis, which had abruptly vanished into rolling hills and farmland after I crossed the last of the four ring roads that encircled the city. Maria took the bus and met me later in the day.

  When I first arrived in Beijing some days earlier, I was relieved to find that it was not the polluted hellhole I had envisaged. Instead, a clear blue winter sky stretched across the city, perhaps an early sign of the government’s commitment to cleaning up the city in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Factories had been closed and moved out of town and most buses and taxis were being converted to natural gas.

  Beijing appeared prosperous, rich and, as I dodged other cyclists in my cycle lane, crammed with traffic. In the past 20 years, vehicle traffic in the capital had grown from virtually nothing to a staggering 1.5 millionxxxv.

  In simpler days, bicycles were the prime mode of transportation in Beijing, as in most places in Asia. I remembered seeing documentaries of blue-pyjama-clad Chinese workers braving the cold on their single-speed Flying Pigeon bicycles en masse, overtaken by the odd solitary truck. It was hard to imagine that now.

  Having said that, during my time in Beijing, I found that it was one of the easiest and safest places for a cyclist. The roads were good, well-sealed and flat, and a fenced lane kept wayward cars at bay. Like Kunming, Beijing was being completely rebuilt and modernised. Bars and nightclubs were hiccupping up along spruced-up boulevards while old Chinese markets were being pulled down to make way for concrete shopping centres, taking the enticing aroma of Peking duck and the steam of coriander noodle soups with them.

  As I rode out of Beijing, new high-rises were sprouting up and generations of tenants were being ordered to vacate their homes in the hútòng (narrow laneways) in less than 30 days or spend time in the city’s oldest estates, the gulags. Hútòngs were old-style housing originally built by the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the 13th century after Genghis Khan had destroyed much of Beijing. Some hútòngs have been given protected status but most seemed doomed for development. Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Beijing, new living areas were mushrooming – grass lawns, sculptured ponds, three-bedroom bungalows – in a Chinese version of the ’burbs.

  I carried on up into the craggy brown mountains, following an undulating road past a quarry until I stopped at a frozen reservoir. Being from a place where a bit of light frost on your lawn was enough to draw comment from the neighbours (‘Wow! Look how your footprints leave holes!’), I had never seen a frozen lake. I began to think about slipping around on it.

  To test the ice’s thickness, I picked up a rock and threw it. It bounced, making a loud dull sound like a bird flying into a window. I grabbed a bigger rock and this time it broke through, leaving a large, horrible hole.

  There goes that idea.

  I got back on the bike and didn’t stop cycling until I reached Huanghuacheng, a town made up of a small collection of bungalows below the Great Wall.

  At a small restaurant-cum-hotel, I took a bed in a dorm room occupied by a band of Irish lads. Well, I was sharing it with their stuff, anyway. They were heading off to sleep on the wall for the night and teased me when I refused to go with them

  ‘Come on! You’ll love it. We’ll have a few beers, fawkin’ brilliant!’

  ‘Yes, a few very cold beers.’ He persisted, until I told him my windswept adventures. And so into the night the three of them went, sleeping bags and beer under their arms. I curled up under the blankets and went to sleep, warm as toast.

  The following day, I saw it. The Great Wall trailed over the mountains, looking like a dragon’s back across each ridge, bumped and curved. The hills had a brown-grey hue, and already snow sat quietly in the shadows in scattered patches. Maria pointed to the edge of the wall.

  ‘What about here?’ she said, looking for a perfect spot for my nude run. We were in a corner. I looked behind us to see if there was anyone around.

  ‘I can do this on my own; I have a tripod in my bag,’ I said. I didn’t want to seem like a complete pervert. I mean, sure, I was, but I didn’t want to advertise the fact. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

  ‘Oh, no. It’s fine. I don’t mind.’

  I gave the camera to her.

  I looked around nervously, then whipped off my clothes and … stood there.

  ‘Do something,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jump, move around … I dunno.’

  So I did. I jumped up and down, my bum to the camera, and skipped down the wall.

  ‘Right!’ I quickly put my clothes back on. As we climbed a turret, a Chinese man jumped out at me. He was there with his ladder, charging tourists the pleasure of using it.

  He pointed to where I had stripped off then grabbed me on the crotch, laughing. It was winter, you see.

  ‘He was friendly,’ said Maria.

  ‘Too friendly!’

  We continued on our way, until Maria stopped and said, ‘Hey, how about another shot from over here?’

  For someone who had been shocked by my request to streak across the Great Wall, Maria was now a happy convert to this ‘artistic and creative element of photography’.

  A bit further down the wall, I repeated the performance. But this time as I ran to camera, slipping over snow, I found myself face-to-face with a young English woman. Her partner soon turned up.

  ‘I see why you wanted to go ahead,’ he said stiffly to her.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ I said, pulling on my underwear. ‘Do this all the time, you know, in Oz. When on the Great Wall …’

  They scurried down the broken steps without looking back. Maria handed me my clothes.

  ‘So, Maria. What about you?’

  On a flight of crumbling steps stood Maria, in her topless beauty, flaunting it to the ancient bricks.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. “Move around”.’

  ‘No. I feel stupid! Pass me my shirt!’

  Soon, the novelty of streaking had worn off and we went back to the normal tourist activity of half-falling down the steep path; much of it had crumbled away under centuries of wind, snow and rain, and parts had been removed to build the rambling houses below. The wall, depending on which history book you read, was either 2400 or 6000 kilometres. It started from the Yellow Sea and went as far west as the Gobi Desert. It took a staggering 2500 years to build, and apparently during one ten-day period during the construction, over 500 000 men perished. Despite the voracity of various dynasties to complete the project, the Great Wall was only partially successful in keeping Mongolian invaders at bay. Genghis Khan was temporarily stopped but managed to break through after two months. Guards were apparently easily bribed. As recently as World War II, the wall was used to ferry troops to fight the encroaching Japanese.

  Below us, the wall fell away into pieces. It was difficult to believe that this section, the Huánghuā, was, in its heyday, supposed to be one of the better-constructed parts of the wall.

  We stopped at the top of a turret.

  ‘So … what is it going to take to get me in your book?’ Maria smiled. ‘I mean, what would I have to say or do to be in it?’

  ‘Hmm … let me see,’ I said, looking at the edge of the wall and trying to think of something acrobatic for her to do. But she surprised me completely.

  ‘Do I have to shag you or something? Well? Do I? Tell me! TELL ME!’

  33

  FORBIDDEN CITY

  Early December

  A strange thing happened to Maria and me on the way to the Forbidden City. Or, rather, I saw a strange thing in the Forbidden City. But let’s face it: the Forbidden City is a strange place. For one thing, there is its name.

  It was called thus because, like the name suggests, it was forbidden for almost 500 hundred years. No one was permitted to enter the city walls. Which would have been hard to do anyway thanks to the 22-foot high and 30-foot thick walls, not to mention the moats, and
the guards brandishing swords and arrows, which would have been enough to make you think that pretending to be a lost tourist (if they were called such things in those days) might not be such a good idea.

  To enter these days, visitors go through Tiananmen Gate, otherwise known as the Gate of Heavenly Peace. This didn’t quite work for me: Gates of Peace leading into the Forbidden City then instant death?

  Completed in the 15th century by the emperor of the day, the Forbidden City was the residence of the Ming and then Qing dynasties, until 1911 when Sun Yat-sen’s Xinhai Revolution forced the last emperor, Pu Yi, to abdicate. Prior to this, the emperor and his family were housed behind numerous high walls, and then again in an inner palace complex known as the Imperial City. The design was based on the human body – the Forbidden City represents the viscera and intestines; the outer walls serve as the head, shoulders, hands and feet; and Tiananmen Gate is the protective tissue to the heart.

  Maria and I walked through the cobblestoned squares, feeling engulfed by the enormity of the palace, the imposing walls, the sheer ‘forbidden-ness’. It was cold. A stiff, icy wind whipped up. Tourists with their camcorders shrank into their winter jackets while others hid behind statues. We took shelter past the Emperor’s quarters and, to our surprise, found ourselves warming our hands on a Brazilian. I don’t mean a Portuguese-speaking, hip-swinging South American. I mean a Brazilian latte.

  It was no pale imitation here, no Chinese hokey going on. Oh, no. We were getting the real thing. We were in Starbucks.

  Obviously those British and French Imperialists had got it all wrong when they gunned their way in here with cannons in 1861. Clearly they should have sent in an army of pushy baristas. ‘Latte anyone?’

  The café had been set up in what at one time might have been a ruling eunuch’s government office – eunuchs had held high government office during the Ming Dynasty, and ran the Empire – and, considering the cold, I could relate to their surgical fate. But I found this so odd, so bizarre. Where once intruders had been beheaded before the Grand Emperor, now camera-clicking tourists drank Grand Lattes. To have not just a coffee shop here but an American ‘Imperialist’ franchise in the heart of royal Chinese ancestry was incongruous, a carbuncle on the face of Chinese history.