Journal 4

Chinese Roads

Cold hard rains forced us out of the higher mountains of central Guizhou province. We took an amazing bus ride on a section of China’s new four-lane freeway system. We have never seen a road like it anywhere--a never-ending series of long bridges, all hundreds of feet above the valley floor, with more than 40 tunnels in one sixty-kilometer section. Twelve of the tunnels were more than a mile long, and a couple were over two miles long. No wonder China is using more concrete than any other country in the world!

We started riding again in the town of Rongjiang in eastern Guizhou. Went from one extreme to the other in road conditions. After an epic 8-hour day of riding through mud and potholes (punctuated by continual stops to make photos and “chat” with locals) it felt almost anticlimactic to cycle on a smooth, quiet road up a forested canyon the following morning. The excitement returned that afternoon as the roads deteriorated once again on the way to the village of Zhaoxing.

Here are two 90-second video clips of the last couple of days of bicycling. We had to break it into two parts to upload it from China.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpTJnkQiJZ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5vFWOlHKI4