For my two week summer vacation in mid August 2011, I headed towards the far south-southwestern corner of Yunnan, part of the border region with Burma. My two weeks were divided between one week spent visiting my two friends in their villages in Ximeng Wa Ethnic Autonomous County (西盟佤族自治县), and one week spent bicycling between Ximeng and neighboring Menglian Wa, Dai, and Lahu Ethnic Autonomous County (孟连佤族傣族拉祜族自治县), Lancang Lahu Ethnic Autonomous County (澜沧拉祜族自治县), and Menghai Dai Ethnic Autonomous County (勐海傣族自治县). Since those names are a mouthful, from now on I'll simply refer to them as Ximeng, Menglian, Lancang, and Menghai.
It wasn't my first time visiting Ximeng. I went there in early May to see the Wa Ethnic Wooden Drum Festival. During that brief visit I never ventured outside of Ximeng County Seat, which was where the festivities were held. I only spent a day there but I had a glorious time, witnessing thousands of Wa, Dai, and Lahu folks celebrating the festival in their traditional outfits, singing, dancing, drinking. Also at that time I met two young ladies, Ye Ping and Nana, both of the Wa Ethnicity, and exchanged contact information with them. I'd kept in touch with them over the following months, and so on this trip decided to go and visit them in their villages (both are students and August is summer vacation, when most students from rural areas return home to help their families with the agricultural work).
Ye Ping actually hadn't headed home yet. 21 years old, she just graduated from high school, and is now going to a vocational college in Simao, the prefectural capital of Pu'er (of whose many counties Ximeng is one). When I arrived in Ximeng County Seat, she was working in the Dragon Lake Hotel, the nicest hotel in Ximeng and the only building with an elevator. But she took the day off work and escorted me hiking around the beautiful Dragon Lake. The next day James, a bloke from England and my friend from Kunming, arrived, and together we mounted our bicycles and headed off towards Nana's village. But not before first stocking up on fresh fruit to offer Nana's parents (my bike panniers were already filled with English books for Nana, pens and coloring books for her nephews, and ham and dried beef for her parents).
The road descends from Ximeng County Seat down a 10 km grade to the Kuxing River (库杏河), then follows the Kuxing River for 15 km until it joins with the Nankang River (南康河). Then we followed the Nankang River for about 30 km until we hit a bridge and the road turned to mud. Up until this point, it had been a good sealed road, but now it was foot deep mud. Worse yet, it was uphill from here all the way to Nana's village. Luckily, the mud only lasted about 5 km, and then the sealed road picked up again. Nana later explained that because of excessive runoff and landslides in that 5 km section the government didn't bother to seal the road. I should probably mention that this was rainy season in a tropical environment. It would rain almost every day for the two weeks I was there, but rarely would it rain nonstop. It would come in spurts. Another 10 km uphill, broken with a rest under a shed while we waited for a rainstorm to pass. Finally made it to the pass and there was Nana waiting to escort us the final 4 km down a dirt road to her village, Little Bannong (小班弄村).
I've stayed in many Chinese villages by now and am pretty used to the conditions. In our conversations before my visit, Nana was somewhat self-conscious and worried that I would feel uncomfortable in such primitive surroundings. I knew it wouldn't be so bad. Since she played her village and family's conditions down so much, I was actually impressed when I finally arrived. The family lives in a four room brick house: parents' bedroom, kids' bedroom, TV room, and storeroom. Concrete floors, posters on the walls for decoration, musty smell, but nothing I wasn't used to. Kitchen and dining room were outside in a wooden shack. Toilets were a communal outhouse shared with the neighbors. The neighbors also have a shower house with solar hot water heater, and Nana's family pays them a nominal fee each month for use of the shower.
The village itself had about 50 households and was attractive with wooden and brick houses with tiled roofs. The Wa used to live in thatched roof houses, but the government forced them to tear them down and build new houses during the last decade. It was about seven years ago that the village was connected for the first time to the electric grid. Nana remembers when she was a child they had no TV and no electric lights and no hot water heater. The paved road the we followed most of the way from the County Seat was paved three years ago.
Nana's parents are nongmin (农民), "peasants" or farmers. They've got some rice paddies and corn fields on terraces on the mountain below. It's a good hike down to the fields and back. They also have a stand of rubber trees. As does every household in the village, and in all the villages in this region. When James asked Nana's father what the single biggest change in Ximeng was during his lifetime, he answered without hesitation "rubber". Rubber, Nana explained, is the economic lifeline here. The rice and corn in the fields, the pigs and chickens, those are all for their own consumption. Rubber is their only source of outside income.
I got an up close and personal look at the origins of rubber during my stay. On our second day in Bannong, Nana and her cousin and friends walked us down the mountain to the river at the bottom of the valley. Along the way, we passed through numerous rubber stands. I'd heard of rubber tapping before, and I'd seen the tapping of maple trees for maple syrup before, so I figured rubber tapping would look something like that. And it did. A diagonal cut on the bark of the rubber tree, and a thin white line of rubber juice bleeding down from the tree, collecting in a cup suspended by a wire. What I hadn't anticipated was that the rubber in its most natural essence is already white in color and possess the rubbery texture and properties of rubber. I know because I stuck my hand into one of the collection cups and pulled out a hockey puck-shaped hunk of coagulated rubber juice. I also learned that rubber in its bare state has a foul stench.
I was able to communicate quite easily with Nana's father. That's unusual. Usually when I visit friends in rural villages, communicating with their parents is very difficult because the parents only speak their ethnic language or regional dialect, and can't speak the standard Mandarin that I've learned. Nana's father, however, used to be a teacher, so his Chinese is better than the average villager. I really liked Nana's father. But Nana seemed to be somewhat self-conscious about her family and their current conditions. She explained proudly that her father was once one of the wealthiest, most forward-looking men in the village. He worked as an accountant. He was the first person in the village to wear pants (as opposed to the sarong traditionally worn by Wa men). He was the first to eat mantou (steamed bread common in Northern China). But unfortunately he had some psychological problems and lost most of his money and his job when he set out on his wandering, nomadic (流浪) adventure. His nomadic adventure sounded romantic and exciting to me, but I feared prying too deep because it obviously set off a nerve with Nana.
Nana's family troubles were not limited to her father. Her mother left the family at one point, and only later returned. Her grandfather was the richest man in the village. He had two wives: one was his cousin and the other a local beauty. He couldn't decide which wife he liked best, so when he died he left his fortune buried somewhere on the mountain. To this day, no one knows where the fortune is buried.
While Nana and her family can speak Mandarin well, they prefer to speak their local Wa language. I, of course, couldn't understand a word of it. It's as different from Chinese as Spanish is from Japanese. Wa belongs to the Austro-Asiatic Language Family, which includes the uncontacted tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean, the Khmer language of Cambodia, and various tribal languages in Southeast Asia. I liked the sound of the Wa language. It's musical and colorful, especially when the women speak. Their voices often swing into high pitched sounds of laughter and exclamation. Certain sounds in the Wa language reminded me of Spanish (the rolled "r"s), Swedish (a certain "glöp" sound), and even some sounds that sounded like they might have been African languages.
Nana's father explained that rubber trees first came to Ximeng about 15-20 years ago. There was a government sponsored directive to the peasants in the region to plant rubber trees. It takes many years for rubber trees to mature until they are able to produce commercially viable rubber. I didn't find out if the initial cost of planting the trees was borne by the peasants themselves, or if they had assistance from the government. I did learn, however, that the price the peasants receive for the raw rubber is volatile. It was once as high has 15 yuan ($2.30) a kg, but has since declined to 12 yuan ($1.85) a kg.
Nana's parents only have 40 rubber trees. Other families in the village have considerably more. We had dinner the first night at Nana's cousin's house. The cousin's house had two floors, the meal was larger with more dishes, and the family even has a truck (a rare luxury in Bannong Village). We also visited Nana's brother's house. He's 26 years old, married for 8 years with two kids. When he married he was 18 and his wife was 17. He's a farmer and a rubber tapper. He has a tractor.
Nana explains that marrying at 17 is nothing unusual in her village. Most of the girls her age have either been married off already, or have gone off to the cities to dagong (打工), which basically means to work in some low-paying service sector job such as waitressing or massage or karaoke bar prostitute. A few girls, she explains to my horror, have even been sold by their parents to men from other provinces who can't find wives in their own villages. Considering the fate of so many other girls from her background, Nana is pretty lucky to have parents who look after her and support her continuing her education.
Ximeng is not the only place in southern Yunnan dominated by the rubber industry. Xishuangbanna, to the south, has long been in the rubber game, and probably has a head start over Ximeng by a few decades. It also enjoys much better transportation linkages to the outside. Ximeng, in contrast, is one of the most remote and isolated counties in Yunnan. It takes 14 hours to get there on the bus from Kunming.
Rubber plantations, I have gathered, are a scourge of environmentalists. Rubber grows in tropical regions, where rainforests are the natural inhabitants. In order to plant rubber trees, old growth rainforest must be cut down. Probably one of the most classic cases of environmental degradation, one every American child learns in elementary school, and here it was before my eyes. But with a human face put on it. Nana's family and neighbors cut down rainforest to plant environment-destroying rubber trees. But in their eyes, rubber is an economic lifeline, the source of the meager income by which they can afford electricity, a TV, and their daughter's education (Nana's the bright one in the family of three children, the one who will attend college. Her brother, on the other hand, is already married with two kids and is a peasant and rubber tapper himself).
Not all the rainforest has been cut down. Riding my bike through Ximeng, and through the surrounding regions over the course of two weeks, I saw a lot of rainforest. But it was almost always just there in patches, traces of what it must have been before. One one hill slope you could see very visibly the replacement effects of rubber. On this hill slope, 80% of the forest cover was rubber trees. The remaining 20% was old growth rainforest. It was entirely concentrated on the steepest sections of the slope, where reaching the trees would have been too difficult.
Some of the accompanying environmental changes that follow deforestation are in the realm of biodiversity. Nana's father said when he was a boy tigers and other large animals were common the jungle. But he hasn't seen a tiger since the 1970s. During my time there, the only wild animals I would see were snakes (I did see quite a few).
I tried to imagine would I would have done, what I would have said had I been from an environmental NGO, trying to encourage Nana's family to shift away from dependency on rubber and towards some other, more sustainable form of livelihood, and I came up blank. To tell them point blank "your rubber trees are bad for the environment" would be so thoughtless, so in contempt of their socioeconomic situation. I remembered a professor in the Geography Department at Penn State whose research focuses on sustainable livelihoods in Ghana. Her solution to this kind of dilemma was always "turn the village into an ecotourism destination". How preposterous. Not that I'm against ecotourism, or tourism in general. I guess you could say I James and I were Bannong Villages first tourists, and if anybody who reads this decides to go there for themselves, I may be spearheading the kind of tourist colonization I studied in my Masters Thesis. But seriously, for every village out there that could viably turn into any sort of tourist destination, there are thousands of villages that may be equally beautiful but never will find their way onto tourist maps. There's nowhere near enough demand for every village to turn itself into a tourist destination.
To return to the thread of the story, our group walked down to the riverside on a very steep trail, and James and I kept slipping. When we got to the river we went swimming. I don't get to go swimming very often in China. Most rivers and lakes are badly polluted. There is no industry anywhere near this river. The river drained into Myanmar. I went walking along the narrow embankment that separated the rice paddies from the river for a while and almost stepped on a huge snake slithering right across the path. At that point I hightailed it back to the rest of the group. It started to rain and we treated into a small wooden hut which is used by the villagers during the day when they're laboring in the fields. Two of the girls caught a chicken and killed it by hand. Then they singed its feathers off in the fire, plucked them clean, and proceeded to turn that freshly killed chicken into a delicious meal of spicy mixed chicken and chicken rice porridge, a Wa speciality, called xifan (稀饭).
On the next day James, Nana, and I went back down the mountain to the bridge and then set off on a hike to the Burmese border. Based on my maps, I knew it wasn't very far away. There was a river running along the border, so I didn't know how feasible James' wish to cross into Burma would be, but I figured it was at least worth checking out. It rained all day that day, and the road was muddy for the whole 10 km to the border, following the Nanka River (南卡河). On the other side of the river the rainforest had not been converted to rubber trees. Whisps of fog draped across the jungle in graceful patterns. Just as we were nearing the border, a border police SUV showed up. The police inside wanted to know where we were going. I was sure this was the end of our hike and we would be forced to turn back. Instead, James convinced them to let us keep going all the way up to the river that forms the border. This way we were able to see Burma and get some photos. The Burmese side didn't have many signs of life, nor did it look much different than the Chinese side. I was frankly pretty surprised to find border police in such a remote place. But then we realized the reason: the Chinese are building a dam and hydroelectric station right at the border. Surely the police presence has to do with that project. The police then escorted us back to the bridge on that bumpy road. They didn't let us go scott free, though. They called their superior, a female commander in plain clothes who drove all the way from the County Seat in an SUV to meet us and ask us some questions. It was a bit like an interrogation, except that they were fairly polite. They took our pictures, took pictures of our passports, and once they were satisfied that we hadn't snuck into China from Burma, they let us go.
The next day James headed back to Kunming and I stayed behind in Nana's village, tutoring her in English. Nana's a good student, and her English reading and listening ability is surprisingly good considering the background and place she's from and the fact that I'm the first foreigner she's ever spoken to. Her spoken English not surprisingly wasn't very good, so we spent some time on that. She'll be taking the college entrance exam this year and hopes to go to Kunming to attend university, and English is an essential component of the college entrance exam. I think it's unfair that English is expected of every test taker across the country, no matter if they are from urban or rural areas. Nana's school-assigned textbooks, too, seemed so ill-adapted to the particular socioeconomic milieu in which she lived. Her teachers, however, do supplement the standard curriculum with some material specifically tailored to the ethnic minorities in Ximeng, such as the history and culture and music and dance of the Wa people. Her school also has several volunteer teachers from Shanghai, and receives money from the Chinese educational charity fund The Hope Project.
After four days in Bannong, it was time for me to hit the road. Thus began six days in a row of cycling. SInce I got my new bike a few months ago, I'd done some serious cycling, but never more than three days in a row. I held up pretty good after 6 days, but after some difficult sections on dirt roads, I did make the decision to stick to sealed roads. I knew to expect rainy conditions and muddy roads since I was heading into one of the least developed corners of rural China during the tropical rainy season. I packed a poncho to keep me dry, a waterproof bag to keep my panniers dry, and a spare mountain bike tire in case the going got really rough. I switched my hybrid tire out for the mountain tire back in Nana's village expecting rough conditions on my ride out of town. The mountain bike tire was too thick for the mudguard, which I had to remove. Then I got some good news from Nana's classmate: the road I planned to take, contrary to expectation, was a sealed road! Well, that is, for the first 20 km, which are all downhill. Then the road crosses a river at the Ximeng-Menglian county line, the classmate's good news falters, and the road reverts to dirt. It was then about 20 km of nonstop uphill on steep dirt road. It was raining. The road was pretty muddy in places, but I trudged along. I couldn't really appreciate any of the scenery because everything was so grey and foggy. It was not a heavily traveled road. If you look at the map, it's definitely the shorted road between where Nana lives and my destination - Menglian County Seat. But given the poor quality of the road, most people would opt for the much longer way around on the sealed road. Finally I crested the summit and started downhill. That's when I regretted removing the mudguard. I discovered what happens when you ride downhill through mud with no mudguard. The tires spewed mud all over my body (poncho not much good at this point, as the tires even spewed it up inside the poncho), and all over my waterproof panniers, which proved to be not so waterproof after all. Fortunately, it was just a couple km of that before I rolled into the town of Fuyan (富岩). This foreigner, drenched in mud, coming from a hardly ever traveled dirt from from Ximeng, was probably a surprising sight to the people in Fuyan town square. I headed straight for the first restaurant, and to the nearest spigot to start washing off the mud.
As I left Fuyan the sun came out and the road was sealed again, and it was a mostly downhill ride 40 km to Menglian through beautiful scenery. Having left the Wa people and rubber plantations behind on the other side of the pass, I was now in tea country, and the dominant minority was no longer Wa but Dai. Golden spires of temples and monasteries dotted the route, and I rolled into Menglian in time for dinner.
I have very little to say about Menglian County Seat. A boring town if there ever was one. I don't take this attitude about all small cities in China. I've been to numerous small cities that I quite like. Some small cities are located on a lake, or along a river, or on a mountain. They have nice restaurants and interesting shops and ethnic minorities and well designed public spaces full of activity. Menglian, by contrast, has none of those things. Half the streets in town were in the process of being torn up and replaced. I had a terribly hard time finding a place to eat dinner. Okay, the complaining stops there. One thing Menglian did have was a car wash. I took my bike there and had all the mud thoroughly cleaned off.
Next day I rode to a place called Meng'a (勐啊) in a second attempt to see how close I could get to the Burmese border. This day's ride was among the easier rides of the trip. One uphill climb over a pass, and then all downhill down a river valley towards Meng'a. If you look at Yunnan on a map, you can clearly make out Meng'a as the the point of a triangular wedge that juts into Burma. On the other side of the border is Wakang, the capital of the semi-independent Wa State in Burma. I really wanted to figure out just how China operates a port of entry with a breakaway state, not to mention one alleged by the DEA as the largest narcotics trafficking organization in Southeast Asia. China has official relations with both the central government of Myanmar, and with the breakaway Wa State on its border. Furthermore, the Wa people on the Burmese side and the Wa people on the Chinese side have familial links that predate the drawing of the official border sometime in the mid-20th century. In not-so-recent history, both sides of the current border were loosely organized tribal fiefdoms of the Wa Kingdom. Although technically lying in British Burma and Qing Dynasty China, neither the British nor the Chinese really had any control over the Wa and their territory, lyings as it was far from the main Chinese-Burmese trade routes to the south and north, infested with malaria, and with a local population, some of whom still practiced headhunting.
The road to Meng'a was entirely sealed, and passed through a green valley of rice paddies and forested mountains. Dai and Wa villages dotted the valley. The Wa village homes were largely made of wood, the Dai ones more modern materials, but with cerulean tiled roofs quite distinctive. Golden-spired Buddhist temples also dotted the valley. Highlights of the ride included a delicious meal of cold mixed rice noodles from a roadside stand that included no fewer than 20 different ingredients, and a roadside wild mushroom market, in which a dozen villagers had well over 100 types of mushrooms spread out on the ground. Mushrooms of every shape, size, and color, a remarkable sight.
Meng'a and the border crossing were a disappointment. I didn't expect they would let me cross, but I hoped to at least get a view across the bridge of the other side, maybe snap a few pictures. But the Chinese border building blocked the view of the other side. I followed the border river a couple kilometers and came to the old border crossing, where the old bridge had collapsed. Finally, I was able to see across the river to the other side. Not a whole lot to see, however. Road back to Menglian for a second night.
Next morning I threw my bike on top of a bus and traveled four hours southeast to Menghai County Seat in Xishuangbanna Prefecture. At 160 km, it was a little too long to do by bike, and I wanted to make the most of my time. I had to lift the bike onto the roof of the bus, and secure it myself. I was a little worried it might fly off, but it didn't. I barely spent any time in Menghai after I arrived at 12:30, instead setting straight off on a 80 km ride to Daluo (打洛), yet another border town next to Burma.
It would be a good day's ride, through beautiful countryside. All on good, sealed roads, but over undulating terrain, several climbs and several descents. First it was a relatively easy ride up over the first pass. Just as I got to the pass, it started raining, and I ducked into a little pavilion to put on my poncho and waterproof my bags. Riding down the other side of the mountain from the pass the rain poured down. In the valley below I ducked into a shop with a large overhang. I was surprised to see another white guy on a bike doing the same thing as me. His name was Collin, a middle-aged chap from Wales, and he was equally surprised to see me. He would be the only other foreign cyclist I would run into on this trip, and I the only one he would run into. Since we were respectively heading in the directions from which the other had come, we exchanged information about the roads ahead. Collin has lived in Yunnan for twenty years. A fun chance encounter. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and I crossed a broad valley of chartreuse colored rice paddies, then started up over another pass. Got a flat tire, and completed my first ever flat tire repair on the road successfully and efficiently (luckily I'd practiced at home before the trip).
The route to Daluo passes through stunning scenery of rice paddies, banana plantations, and emerald green mountains in all directions. Lots of small villages along the way, all with their distinctive pitched tiled roofs. While the majority of the route looks like it should be entirely downhill on the map, actually there are lots of little hidden hills. You definitely feel like you (and your legs) are in touch with every inch of the terrain when you're riding a bike. Finally rolled into Daluo around dinnertime. This was my third time approaching the Burmese border in one week. At the previous two locations, the border followed a river. Here, the border was over land. I figured this increased my chances of actually crossing the border. A couple kilometers away from the official port of entry is an old, abandoned port of entry. Surrounding the old crossing was a whole city, mostly abandoned. It's said Daluo used to be a very seedy place, full of drugs and prostitutes and gambling. Now old Daluo is like a ghost town, and new Daluo 5 km away is pretty tame.
I saw Chinese (or Burmese?) people freely crossing back and forth through the gate, and no police or border guards were anywhere in sight. But some Chinese guys hanging out next to the border told me I couldn't cross on my own, it was dangerous and illegal. Instead, one volunteered, he'd take me into Burma for a fee. I was somewhat tempted, but decided against it. Who knows who this guy was? Maybe he would have turned me into the Chinese police. Maybe he would have robbed me on the Burmese side, where I would be unable to get help from the Chinese police. Maybe he would turn me into the Burmese police, who would discover I didn't have a Burmese visa. I'm not sure how likely any of this was, but I decided it was better not to risk it. Using my GPS and Google Maps, I sidetracked to a village that was located just a half kilometer away from the border. From the village I found a dirt road heading right to the border. I found the border, sure enough. No police, no guards, but lots of signs warning (in Chinese) not to cross, as well as not to traffic drugs, and not to evade customs duties. It was here that I finally got to cross into Burma and get a picture. I didn't cross in very far, maybe 100 meters, before I headed back. I didn't want to do anything too stupid, but I did get a little thrill from actually being on Burmese territory, illegally, without a visa.
I later learned that James had previously been to Daluo, and had crossed into Burma much more brazenly than me. He had spent a whole day exploring the Burmese side. It turns out there's a whole city there. The Chinese guy at the border told me the Burmese side was wilderness, that the nearest city was 20 km away. I felt a little regretful that I hadn't been more adventurous, but still content in my accomplishment. Like my father, merely crossing a border is thrilling enough. It doesn't really matter what's on the other side.
That night in Daluo there was a huge thunderstorm and the power went out. I think it's honestly the first time I can remember the power going out since I've been in China. Honestly, the power went out more in Marin County California than it does in China.
Next morning I caught a bus for the 35 km uphill to the junction with the road to Bulangshan (布朗山). I could have ridden it, but I'd ridden it the day before and thought it better to save my time and energy for the new section of road. From the Bulangshan Junction to Bulangshan was just 48 km long, but it took all day. It was a beautiful ride, probably the best of a week's worth of good riding. All sealed, except for 7 km of cobblestone road. No dirt road. And phenomenal scenery the whole way. After an initial short, steep uphill to the pass, it was downhill for about 20 km, passing through a heavily forested, thinly populated valley dotted with the occasional village and tea plantations. Bulangshan is home to the Bulang ethnic group (布朗族). It is also home to one of the finest varieties of Pu'er tea. I stopped in some villages and talked to the villagers who were busy drying tea leaves on mats spread out on the road. Since it rains so often, they have to take advantage of every minute of sunshine for drying. They said they can earn up to 80 yuan a kg for high quality leaves. I asked if I could buy some direct and they said no. They don't do any of the processing there in the village. The leaves get sent to a processing plant in Menghai city where they're pressed into bricks and shipped to Kunming and around the world.
About halfway along, the downhill ended and the uphill began once again. I stopped at a shack selling cold drinks and the owner invited me in for some lunch - delicious bamboo shoots and pork. His friend was from Zhaotong, in the complete opposite corner of Yunnan. He's in the banana business. He said he can make a lot more money growing bananas in Xishuangbanna than he could growing corn in Zhaotong.
The next 15 or so km of uphill road passed through an unbroken stretch of primeval rainforest. I'd seen rainforest in patches all along on this trip, but this was the largest unbroken stretch of pure rainforest, with no signs of civilization, no villages, no agriculture, no lumber harvesting. This is where the sealed road turned into a cobblestone road, not the most pleasant for riding, but I suppose it's to keep the road from being eroded. It rained as I rode through the rainforest, and the butterflies were out in full force. If you try to find this this section of road on Google Earth, its hidden beneath the rainforest canopy.
Finally the road crests at the summit, and all of a sudden the environment changes completely. You're on top of a ridge looking out over a deep, wide valley towards Burma. The mountains in front of you are not rainforest, but transformed by human agriculture. You're back in tea country again. From there it's a short ride along the mountain ridge to the town of Bulangshan. I was hoping the town itself would be a little more interesting than it actually was, but the surrounding mountains made up for it. The clouds, too, were putting on a show that evening. Cumulus clouds with strong personalities, eerie mists settling in the the surrounding hills, rays of sunshine, all combined to make a dramatic sky. Then some of the blackest thunderclouds I've ever seen rolled in and it rained all night.
The police officer who registered me warned me that I shouldn't stay out too late because "the local minorities like to get riled up and make trouble". Nice stereotype, Mr. Han Police Officer. But he was right. That night was the owner of my guesthouse's birthday and she and her friends got drunk and invited me to partake in the festivities. I've been to birthdays of young people in China, and they always have a blast smearing cake frosting on everyone's face. I didn't expect that a birthday party for adults in the little village of Bulangshan would feature the same craziness.
It was still raining when I got up at seven the next morning to begin the next day's riding. Originally I'd planned to make a loop back to Menghai, but Collin had warned me that the road I thought I'd take from Bulangshan to Menghai was a dirt road and very difficult. Collin showed me a road east from Bulangshan to Menglong (勐龙) that wasn't on my map. It's a sealed road, newly built. I took that instead. It rained almost the whole way. Luckily, this route was mostly downhill. Beautiful at the time, but if I describe it here it might sound a little repetitive: villages, valleys, passes, rainforest, banana trees. The road followed a river valley for the first 40 km, then entered a broad, flat valley with lots of villages and towns. There's only so many ways you can describe bicycle touring and not repeat yourself.
Rolled into Menglong around noon. Originally thought I'd ride the remaining 70 km to Jinghong, as they were flat and easy. But it was a big highway with lots of trucks and buses, not my favorite riding conditions. And I wanted to make it to Jinghong quickly so I could catch a bus to Lancang. So once again I threw my bike on top of a bus, and was in Jinghong in an hour. In Jinghong, I went to three bus stations before I found one with a bus to Lancang. Got my ticket for 6:30 pm, and then had the afternoon to hang out in Jinghong. I'd been to Jinghong before, and went straight to the Mekong Cafe, where I had my first hamburger and coffee in ten days, and told some of my adventures to the German owner who's been there for ten years.
Arrived in Lancang at 10:30 pm. I'd been there before two: four months ago I spent a day there visiting one of Wang Ping's cousins, Xiao Yan, I met when I was best man at Wang Ping's wedding. But Xiao Yan was busy studying for the civil service exam, so I didn't bother her this time. Just spent the night, and the next morning I was out again on my seventh and final day of cycling. It would be the longest day, too. 97 kilometers (60 miles) and 2,777 meters (9,111 feet) of elevation gain. Followed a river, climbed a mountain, descended into a valley, passed some villages, climbed another mountain, descended the mountain, and then I was back where I started twelve days before, in Ximeng County Seat.
I stored my bike in a safe place, then met Ye Ping, and we traveled in a minibus to the old County Seat on top of a mountain. There we met Nana and together the three of us piled into a very crowded minivan for the two hour ride on bumpy dirt roads to Ye Ping's village Banshuai (班帅). A relaxing last couple days spent in Ximeng enjoying village life with my two Ximeng friends. Particular highlights: dancing to the "disco" DVDs and that infectious Hungarian pop song "Dragostei Din Tae" in this little Wa Village. Using the soot from the fire to paint on the face of the loser in the card game "fight the landlord".
The ride back to the Old County Seat from Banshuai was one to remember. At 6 am, we packed into a truck along with about 50 other people. A girl from the village had gotten knocked up in the Old County Seat and that day was having a shotgun wedding, and the entire village of Banshuai was invited, but there was only one truck in the village so everyone piled on together. It was the most uncomfortable ride in my life. I was in the cab, but had nowhere to place any of my limbs, and experienced the worst case of numb ever. Twice the truck got stuck in the mud and all 50 people had to get out and help push. It was hell, but it makes a good story!
You can view my photos on facebook or flickr
You can download KML files and view my cycling routes in excellent detail on Google Earth from wikiloc.com
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