The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

Of course, I should not have mentioned the improvement in the weather last time. Immediately afterwards, there followed three days of rain. Indeed it rained once again yesterday, although it is not at all cold.

Our nose-dive southwards has resulted in continuous changes not only the weather, but also in the landscape, food, and habits of the people we have met. About a week ago, we began to see bamboo growing and being used for all sorts of purposes, then today sugar cane, and a few days ago saw for the first time something even more tropical – banana trees. All my life I have been eating bananas and assuming that they grown downwards in bunches on the tree. In fact they grow upwards, or at least the ones I saw do.

In about three days we will cross the Tropic of Cancer. This is, I am told, the line of latitude at which the sun is directly overhead on the longest day of the year. In any case, it is a sign that things are getting warmer; I have just been cooking dinner outside, wearing a T-shirt, in a clearing under a canopy of bamboo trees. As I write, the sound of crickets drifts across the humid night sky. It is hard to believe that it is December.

We are now in Guangdong (otherwise known as Canton), the last province of mainland China. As well as the all lush greenery, we have at last encountered the famous parabola-shaped mountains which are so strongly associated with southern China and Vietnam. It is certainly the most beautiful part of China that we have travelled through, although a bit of sunshine would make it even better; it has sadly remained quite misty and overcast all week.

Since my last post, we have crossed the entirety of Hunan province, home of Mao Zedong and unsurprisingly thus archetypically Chinese. It plays host to plenty of the various recurring phenomena which are now firmly cemented in the image I have of China: little three-wheeled trucks chugging along the road at a slower speed than us, white-tiled flat-roofed houses with red-and-gold poetry above the doors, small children in special trousers which leave them naked between the legs (it is quite obvious why), huge blue-and-white painted slogans and advertisements on the sides of buildings, greasy roadside truck repair workshops, even greasier cafés with plastic toilet roll holders and throwaway chopsticks on the tables, and hordes of school children all dressed in identical shell suits. It is curious how these things are the most memorable, although none of them occur in any image of China that I had seen before. I suppose they are not so photogenic.

The further south we have travelled, the more densely populated the country has become. This is hardly surprising; there are well over a billion people in China, and since Xinjiang and Gansu are so empty, I guess they all have to live somewhere.

This has made it more and more difficult to find suitable places for camping. We had quite a shock about a week and a half ago, just before the city of Xiangfan. Having headed up a dirt track in search of a secluded spot, and then having set up the tent behind some mounds of earth, we were suddenly startled by the sound of some large piece of machinery approaching. It turned out to be a truck, which proceeded to dump its load of earth and stones alarmingly close to our tent. And it was not the only one; there followed about another eight or so other trucks at irregular intervals well into the night. Our tent survived until the morning, but we made sure not to camp again in such a dumping ground.

With an eye on the calendar, since out visa is valid only until the fourteenth of this month, we have been making quite rapid progress towards Hong Kong. We still had time to stop for a day last week in Nanyue, a town in the mountains of central Hunan renowned for its sacred mountain and enormous temple. The second of these is divided into two halves, one Buddhist and one Taoist. I can hardly imagine a half-Protestant, half-Catholic cathedral in Europe, but it seems that people here are a bit less rigid in their beliefs and can handle a bit of coexistence. It was very interesting to see the similarities and differences between the designs of the two half-temples: while both feature a series of courtyard spaces fronting a large space with an alter, the Taoist gardens were a bit rougher and more natural. In contrast, the Buddhists prefer delicate arrangements of tiny trees and rock sculptures, lovingly tended (and even dusted) by monks. There is a temple cat, which presumably keeps the place rat-free without the monks having to resort to killing anything.

The town of Nanyue is quite strange in that most of the shops there seem to sell nothing but huge incense sticks. I couldn’t work out where all the customers for these were, until we visited the temple. It turns out that believers, either out of piousness or in the hope of divine blessings upon their business, exams, or suchlike, buy large quantities of these sticks in order to throw them into a small stone building in the middle of the temple compound, in which a fire continuously rages. It is seemingly not necessary to unpack the incense sticks from their plastic wrappers, or even take them out of the plastic bag from the shop. Everything just gets hurled into the little fire-house. Now and then, someone throws in a few packs of firecrackers for extra sparks and explosive sound effects. It is a wonder that the whole place is not blasted to bits.

Late in the afternoon of the day of the banana trees, we suffered the worst bicycle-related disaster of the trip. There have been enough flat tyres, worn gears, snapped chains, and the like, but this was much worse. Out of nowhere there came a sudden horrible crunching sound, and by the time we had come to a stop, Astrid’s derailleur (the springy bit with two little wheels) had been torn in two and sat mangled and enmeshed between the rear gears and the chain. It was quite obvious that it was completely beyond repair, at least with what was available at the time. Unfortunately, we were at that point still around an hour’s cycling from Shaoguan, the next large town on our journey, and it was almost getting dark. The situation at first seemed pretty hopeless, but it proved possible to shorten the chain and fix up a temporary bracket, A-Team style, from bamboo and duct tape so that the bike could at least be used in one gear – which is a lot more than none at all. By keeping it slow, and getting off to push on the steep bits, we managed to get to Shaoguan and, exhausted, checked in to the cheapest hotel we could find.

The next morning, in the rain, we found our way via the suggestions and directions of various helpful people (a typical Chinese characteristic) to a good bike shop – one of three on the same street. They had a derailleur which would fit, but unfortunately not the bracket to hold it onto the frame. But this is China, of course, where anything and everything can be made. Myself and the guy from the bike shop popped round the corner to a small open-air workshop with the closest matching part, where a young lad with an angle grinder quickly modified it to fit. He refused all attempts at payment.

At one of the other shops, it was also possible to arrange some new gears, front and rear. In order to counteract the usual language difficulties, the owner called his American friend, Ken, who quickly arrived on the scene to assist. Ken speaks Chinese, and later invited us to dinner the same evening at the restaurant of a Hong Kong-born friend of his named Joseph. The restaurant had taken special care to arrange a variety of vegetarian treats for us, including fermented tofu (tastes like blue cheese), hundred-year-old egg (about as strange as it sounds), and a dish involving warm melon, some kind of mushroom, and some other indescribable but delicious elements. And for almost the first time in China, a decent glass of wine to go with it. It was also of course very interesting to be able to talk with two English speakers with a good knowledge of China and of Guangdong in particular.

If there are no further dramas, this should be my last post before reaching Hong Kong. It is a strange feeling to be almost, almost at the end of this long, long journey, within a week of the place which seemed like and indeed is the end of the Earth – for afterwards, of course, there is not much before the west coast of America. That country will have to wait for another trip.

I am excited, apprehensive, impatient, and at the same time regretful that the time which remains is so short. I am sure that I will soon look back with longing towards cold mornings in the tent, doing the dishes with cold water and scraping mud off everything. But there will be one or two more of those yet.