China Part 2: Grey skies and grim roads in Guizhou and Guangxi

There is a Chinese proverb about Guizhou: in this province, it is said, no three feet of earth are flat, no three days are sunny, and no one has three pieces of silver to rub together. In retrospect, this little aphorism should have warned us about what was to come: shrouded in permanent mist, covered in beautiful but unbelievably steep karst formations, and with a road network in desperate need of investment, Guizhou very nearly broke us.

Yet we got off to an auspicious start. Leaving Chishui on a misty day, we were greeted by the best possible sight: a fully tarmacked, signposted cycle path, entirely separated from the road and often with its own little bridges to avoid hills. We merrily followed the path all day though a beautiful landscape of red rock cliffs and tumbling waterfalls, feeling very pleased with this turn of events.

On our way, we stumbled across a bizarre Chinese phenomenon: the new “ancient” town. These are settlements that were once filled with traditional wooden houses, until the Chinese government decided that these were not the ‘right’ type of ancient, and began fanatically knocking them down and rebuilding sanitized versions. Slightly disturbed by these empty histories, we cycled on, and were delighted when our day culminated in 105km and our first (and only) campsite in China. Situated on the sight of a former Red Army camp ground, it made much of its camping credentials, but the ‘definition of camping’ signs inside should have alerted us to the newness of both the project and the camping scene in China. For this was camping at its most idiosyncratic: we pitched our tent on the wooden terrace of the hotel, and were locked out of the loos at night.

However, everyone was very friendly, if a little bemused by us, and we were delighted to be able to cook an evening meal in the open, albeit it with hotel guests staring agog and CCTV cameras overhead.

The next day we carried on along our cycle path, slightly unfinished in parts, but still a vast improvement on anything Boris Johnson ever created in London (Harriet still hasn’t forgiven his namesake for weeing on her in Turkey. And Boris himself for Brexit of course). During an exhausting uphill slog in the boiling heat, our bodies began to feel how much we had cycled recently. As we entered the city of Renhui, Harriet’s back voiced its protest by going into spasm, forcing us to spend 3 days in a rather damp hotel eating noodles and feeling sorry for ourselves.

When we set off again, albeit slowly, our route took us through a beautiful, if hilly, diversion from the highway, climbing on little concrete roads which wound their way through tiny villages and overlooked green river valleys.

When we finally dropped out of our rural idyll, we hit the ostensibly more major G210. Initially a smooth highway, this was the road that would ultimately prove to be our nemesis. In a state of construction everywhere we turned, the 210 caused us to become more and more dispirited as we ground up and down dirt tracks surrounded by bulldozers, lorries and roadworkers.

During this stretch of unpleasantness, Harriet’s volatile relationship with her bike Circe also came to a head. Rolling at a slow pace to lull Harriet into a false sense of security, Circe chose a particularly muddy section of road to slide out her front wheel and deposit her rider in the sludge. However, Harriet was not to be defeated and body slammed Circe during her dismount, sacrificing her ankle in the process and gaining a particularly large and painful bruise.

The 210 reached its apogee of grimness just outside the provincial capital of Guiyang, where it turned into an actual building site, with no through access. With our attempts to ask for directions also reaching a dead end, we ended up on the expressway, cycling past signs that explicitly indicated that no cycling was allowed. We got lost, going in circles around the three enormous cities which surround the megacity of Guiyang. As darkness began to descend, we finally found our way, whizzing downhill through two deeply satisfying tunnels on route to our hotel. Amusingly, the policemen who were meant to block our entry to these shortcuts were extremely careful not to make eye contact with us so that they didn’t have to deal with our non-existent Chinese language skills. The next day we pottered around, visiting the river, looking for maps, eating ‘stinky’ tofu, and generally trying to rest our bodies as much as possible.

Leaving Guiyang, we struck out again on the 210. We cycled each kilometre fearfully, preparing for yet more roadworks at every turn. The 210 did not fail us: the road soon turned to a potholed hell, at times ending entirely so that we had to push our bikes across ramshackle bridges built for the roadworkers.

Inevitably, in this challenging terrain, Harriet’s back went into spasm again, and we only managed 50km before grinding to a halt. The next day, however, we made up both the lost kilometres and the mental fatigue by taking a short cut through an incredible landscape of karst formations and tea plantations.

Here we found truly ancient villages and began to encounter the minority groups for which Guizhou is famous. The cycling was exhausting, but beautiful, and we managed 109 km, finishing in Danzhai in the dark. Some more troublesome hotel work ended in success, and we settled in for two nights, spending our days slowly exploring the city’s numerous rivers and eateries.

From Danzhai, we finally turned from the 210 to begin our journey on the 321, the road we would follow out of Guizhou towards the Pearl River Delta. Our high hopes for this road disintegrated almost instantly, as its tarmac turned to rubble, and mud sluiced all over us and our bags yet again. Once tarmac resumed, the road began to climb in a series of hairpins which we negotiated in the company of some Chinese cyclists, whose varying levels of fitness were reflected in the standard of their bikes and sportswear (the man at the front was riding a state-of-the art bike and was dressed in full on luminous lycra; the man at the back was riding a folding bike dressed in what looked like his work suit).

At the top of the hill, Jonathan began to feel sharp pains in his leg, and before long it became clear that we would need to stop. We found another random hotel, in another random city, and began to wonder if China was going to defeat us after all.

The next day we limped slowly towards the city of Sandu, with Jonathan climbing off his bike on every hill to try to stop the pain. On entering the town centre, Harriet also resumed her ongoing battle with her bike. While Harriet was distractedly looking for a hotel, Circe seized the moment and charged full speed at a tuk tuk which had come to an abrupt stop. Poor Harriet became aware of Circe’s intentions a second too late, and her emergency breaking only infuriated her bike and resulted in the front wheel sliding out again. Courageously, Harriet fought back and body slammed Circe once again, rebruising her ankle in the process and taking a nasty bump on her face.

We decided to mitigate the unpleasantness of our entry into Sandu by treating ourselves to a nice hotel. The staff were incredibly kind, bringing us ice for our various injuries, and giving us a discount after allowing us to stay in the only room without a T.V. Sandu was a lovely little place, populated by several different ethnic minorities and full of great places to eat: we provided the restaurant owners with amusement as we stuffed ourselves with tofu and eggs, communicating with hand gestures and pointing at the pictures of food on the walls.

We spent 3 days in the city as our bodies repaired, during which time we began to confront the real possibility that we were not going to be able to cycle to Hong Kong in time for our Christmas deadline.

Finally, it was time to set off again. We had been dreaming of this moment for a while: from Sandu onwards the 321 follows a river downstream for a significant portion of its journey to the sea and we had imagined rolling gently ever downwards towards Hong Kong. But after Harriet’s accident and Jonathan’s bad leg, our cycle along the river route was never going to be exactly what we had hoped. Initially, however, it was an incredibly beautiful cycle beside the river and, even though Jonathan was still manfully climbing off his bike on every hill, we felt pretty cheerful.

But, after 45 perfect kilometres, the 321 decided to give the 210 a run for its money. And it won. The road turned to a single muddy track, with diggers swinging back and forth dangerously, threatening to squish us. Our pace slowed to around 4km an hour, and any vague possibility of reaching Rongjiang that night faded. As did the possibility of finding anywhere at all to sleep. There were no hotels here, and potential camping spots all involved a climb down a sheer drop to reach the river bank or were full of roadworkers busily digging and flattening the ground. Around 5pm, however, we had a stroke of luck: a worksite had been abandoned for the day, and a perfect, if muddy, track led us down to the riverside. We found a spot that had obviously once been a lettuce field but was now a lovely flat patch hidden from the road, and settled down to watch the river fishermen going about their work as the sun set, their lamps bobbing up and down on the water like will-o-wisps.

Around midnight, a bulldozer rather alarmingly roared into life, turned a slow circle below us and dumped something into the river, but apart from that we were undisturbed.

The next day we carried on slowly negotiating our rubble-strewn road which meandered through several minority villages, each ethnicity identifiable by the different brightly coloured garments worn by the women.

To our surprise the demeanour of the people we were passing became a lot friendlier, and we were met with cheery waves and big smiles. Despite our inability to communicate and the appalling road conditions, these good-natured greetings were infectious and we felt much more positive than we had done for a long time. Initial thoughts that we might have to hitch gave way to a determination to push on as far as we could in the time we had, and each town we reached felt like a success.

Reaching Congjiang a couple of days later, we took a day off to visit the minority village of Basha, where the Miao tribesmen still use flintlock rifles, and the women dress in beautiful black and pink outfits.

We wandered through the tiny alleyways, past rice drying on bamboo structures, and watched a special display of traditional dancing accompanied by music from bamboo instruments.

As usual, we had failed to consider how we would get back, and in the absence of buses or taxis, began another of our classic lengthy road walks back to the hotel before we were saved by a kindly lorry driver.

From Congjiang, another long slog took us to Sanjiang, arriving yet again exhausted and in the dark. Sanjiang was our last city in Guizhou province: we feasted on cheap noodles, wandered to the wind-and-rain bridge, and hoped that the much more touristy Guangxi province might prove a little easier on our bodies and minds.

Cycling into Guangxi with some anticipation, our slightly rolling road did at least remain tarmacked if a bit potholey. Our first stop was Longsheng: from here, we took a bus out to the small town of Ping’an, where a beautiful network of rice terraces links up a series of ethnic minority villages.

In Ping’an we saw our first Western tourists since Leshan, and were relieved to find ourselves no longer an object of particular attention. We spent a relaxed day walking from village to village in the sun, receiving cheery greetings from all the locals we met, who were touchingly concerned that we had brought enough food to see us through the day. We also had quite a surreal moment when, turning a corner, we were met by hundreds of chickens blocking our path. However, the chickens were not particularly happy to see us and began launching themselves in all directions as we walked through.

From Longsheng, we made our way to Guilin, battling the heavy traffic to make our way over one last peak.

We celebrated our arrival in this touristy city with a long-awaited pizza and glass of wine (in a real wine glass!).

By this point, we had come to terms with the fact that there was no way we could make it to Hong Kong by bike for Christmas after all the delays we had had. So we formulated a new plan: leave our bikes here, and take the train to Hong Kong. Then after Christmas, we would return to Guilin, collect our bikes and head off to Vietnam. The more we thought about it the more sense this plan made – we had already discovered that there was nothing we wanted to visit in Guangdong province, and the prospect of a 550km dash in 5 days through an industrial delta with our broken bodies didn’t exactly fill us with glee.

Relieved that the pressure was off, we spent several happy days in Guilin, doing some Christmas shopping, walking around the lakes and trying and failing to cycle out into the karst formations which surround the city. Getting lost within half an hour of setting off, we ended up in a wasteland of discarded railway sleepers which proved to be one of our favourite moments of the last few weeks - we realised that, for the first time since we had entered China, we were entirely on our own.

After three days in Guilin, we said goodbye to our bikes, safely stored in the hostel, to catch the train to Guangzhou, and then on to Hong Kong for Christmas!