There is an unwritten law on China’s roads: “Big is best.” It doesn’t take us long to find this out. Our ride to Shanghai begins on the smooth roads of Guangdong province’s showcase city, Shenzhen. But as soon as we leave the showy downtown areas, a very different scene confronts us.
“Stay in line,” insists ‘Ride For Hope’ bike mechanic Carl Wu as we peddle along the four-lane blacktop. The roads are coated in gravel spilling from over-filled trucks. Articulated lorries wrestle for space with public buses and motor-trikes that have a habit of driving against the traffic. Cyclists evidently come bottom of the pecking order.
“We need to ride together,” Wu asserts, “just like a flock of birds.”
I associate his logic more with a school of fish. What resonates in my mind as vehicles come at us like impetuous predators, is how easily the weak might be picked-off.
I am the least experienced of the seven core riders. I’ve cycled since childhood, but I have never undertaken such an endurance ride before, and navigating the industrial Pearl River Delta is no way to ease into the trip.
For two days we wrestle with heinous traffic and poorly maintained roads. Even when the road is good, the view is of dismal uniform factories – the engine room of China’s economic rise. Rivers are contaminated and green expanses are in short supply, in what was until a few decades ago, agricultural land. It is with great relief that we cross into Huizhou, leaving the factories in our wake.
The predominantly rural lands east of the delta, offer us far more scenic riding. It is here that I get to know the team, when we kick back for a lazy lunch in an open-air Hakka Rural Family Restaurant.
The bearlike man who leads our caravan is Nicholas Smith, resident manager of Futian Shangri-La hotel.
“I had this crazy idea that I wanted to cycle from Shenzhen to Shanghai,” he quips.
The concept gained credence when it became part of Shangri-La’s corporate social responsibility program ‘Ride For Hope’, which aims to raise money for Yao villagers in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region who have limited access to clean water. Now, as we sip tea before the verdant landscape, Smith’s “crazy idea” is a reality, and the big man is charged with getting our convoy of riders all the way to Shanghai.
The three young cycling enthusiasts who signed-up from Nanning – Li Xiaobao, Yu Baokang and Yu Yushui – prove a congenial bunch that help maintain morale. Mindful Hongkonger Herman Wong is the oldest rider at 52. He frequently helps translate Smith’s orders into Cantonese. Stoic Carl Wu from Shenzhen completes our troop. Had Wu not come along, bicycle failures would have seen us off the road before we hit Fujian province.
After lunch we learn that cycling through pastoral lands comes at a price – mountains. The only parts of the populous eastern seaboard to remain exempt from industrialization are highlands. As we negotiate our first serious ascent, we’re faced with a new challenge – one of physical fitness. It’s tough going and our average speed is severely reduced. Yet the timeless scenery – the rice paddies and quietly grazing water buffalo – offers some compensation.
The coastal conurbation of Jieyang, Chaozhou and Shantou provides more grizzly urban riding. This industrial region is less affluent than Shenzhen or Guangzhou, a story told in the outmoded brick factories and crumbling infrastructure we are forced to negotiate. Motorbikes dominate here, whipping their way between construction sites. China is undergoing the least sentimental remodelling since Michael Jackson first went under the knife, with around 60 percent of the world’s cement being dumped here annually. The result is bondless constructions and heinous air, which cyclists are critically exposed to.
Fujian province is less industrialized than Guangdong. In the mountainous regions of the south and north we enjoy stunning mountain vistas dotted with Taoist temples and Buddhist shrines. The hillsides are coated in tea plantations. It is only the central urban expanse between Xiaman and Fuzhou that returns us to the chaotic roads of rapidly transforming China.
A cacophony of horns serenades us as we enter Wenzhou, our first stop in Zhejiang province. The city is dissected by the Ou River and boasts a gorgeous mountain backdrop. Yet it is the bellicose driving etiquette that makes the most immediate impression on our weary team and there are several near-accidents as we enter the city.
In Zhejiang, cyclist number eight, a Singaporean triathlete named Xin Xin joins us for our final weeks. Her presence and gregarious nature helps lighten the boys’ temperament.
We are seven degrees north of our starting point and must now wear winter gear. Palm trees are a memory. Despite the cold, however, we enjoy some fantastic rural riding along the autumnal roads between Taizhou and Ningbo on the longest leg of our journey, surpassing 200km in one day.
Dawn in Ningbo reveals a curtain of smog that won’t lift until the outskirts of Shanghai. The tourist cities of Hangzhou and Suzhou that we cross are entirely enshrouded, and riding is especially hard going in these final days. Due to exhaustion, three of the riders have minor accidents. Yet somehow, our perseverance earns us favour with the gods and just beyond the Shanghai city limits, on day 21 of ‘Ride For Hope’, the sky begins to clear.
The welcome reception at the Kerry Hotel is exceptional. Through a barrage of flash photography we learn we’ve raised over 400,000 yuan. We’ve completed three weeks of cycling and covered over 2,000km.
Yet despite the sense of achievement, the overriding impression was one of grave environmental degradation. The smog that hindered our final few days illustrates that rapid urbanization and industrialization is pushing China’s environment, and indeed public health, to the brink. Our efforts will doubtlessly help the designated charities we set out to support. But with a population equivalent to that of the USA set to move to urban areas over the coming decades, China will have to rethink its model if it’s going to accommodate so many more urbanities without ruining the land.
On two-wheels, you not only see the road. You taste it and feel it and hear it resonate in your ears. Viewed from a bicycle, the lavish new driving culture that has taken over the old “Bicycle Kingdom” exhibits the rectitude of a nation awarded only the freedom to acquire wealth. As Smith puts it, “There’s a programing problem. Everyone’s just pushing ahead.”
