End of the empire

Kellen Smetana
From Zhangye, we have picked up the G312 and will be following this for the next 2,000 kilometers as we traverse the northern Silk Road route out of China.  It’s one of the only paths west out of China and pretty much every person cycling here takes it eventually; we have actually already passed a couple Chinese cyclists in the last few days.  Lucky for them, they were heading the opposite direction.

Many people originally suggested I head west to east and I brushed their insight aside.  Now we are feeling the repercussions in the form of massive headwinds.  At some points it slows us to below 5 miles per hour, and we have resorted to serving sixty minute shifts as a wind-shield up front.  Very draining.  Unfortunately, the terrain has opened into completely barren desert and it looks like we will have to battle these winds until we exit China (see distance above).

Aren't these supposed to be straight?

When faced with such obstacles, you find yourself constantly scheming up clever solutions.  The best we’ve found so far has been to use hay trucks.  I saw one pass at a much slower speed than most traffic, yelled to Ben, and immediately bolted to catch its slipstream.  It worked: I tripled my speed for the next hour and a half; I just had to put up with a little stray hay in the face.  Now I’m just hoping that people in western China need a LOT of hay from the east very soon.

Now those are some lead blockers

We took a rest day in Jiayuguan, often considered the end of old imperial China.  It marks both the western end of the Great Wall and the site of the Jiayuguan Fort guarding the Hexi Corridor, a narrow valley between two mountain ranges that opens up into eastern China.  China obviously now controls much more territory west, but hundreds of years ago this area was left to the barbarian armies of Central Asia, kept at bay by the mass of the wall and the mountains between.

We paid a visit to both these sites and I’m happy to report my Michigan driver’s license is still passing for a valid Student ID (bad news for Ben: his paper Hostelling International card didn’t work this time…).  In points the two sites seemed a little fake as they were completely restored in the mid-1980s, but all-in-all they were well-worth the visit.  It’s pretty cool to be here and imagine how awe-inspiring and daunting they must have been back in the day to the invading Mongol hoards.

Jiayuguan Fort

Expertise: keeping out Mongols

There was an excellent Great Wall museum where we learned about the system of fire signals that allowed guards to transmit messages 500 km in a matter of hours (try those speeds in headwinds) and also that at one point during the Ming Dynasty China employed nearly a million people guarding its borders.  A million people – 500 years ago!  The entire population of North America at that point was just over 50 million – fascinating stuff.  And from these sites you can also see that the town does mark a last bastion of green opening to the Gobi Desert to the north and Taklamakan Desert to the west.  Note to self: take plenty of water in the weeks ahead.

Last bastion of green

For the time being, our celebrity status seems to be continuing strong.  In Jiayuguan, we stopped to ask a kid for directions.  He was so nice and excited to see us that, against our best pleas, he immediately went into the store to buy us some bags of milk and muffins.  Awfully nice of him; we thanked him thoroughly and snapped a photo.  The next day at the fort, it happened to be China’s National Tourism Day.  I’m pretty sure someone was taking photos to show the turnout, and they consequently quickly eyed a couple token Westerners (us) to corral for the epic shot below.

Milk was a bad choice. But thanks though!

1, 2, 3, Smile... Smile?... Anyone?... Bueller?

And finally, not to be left out of this post, eight police officers showed up at our hotel to make a copy of my passport.  Three women, five men, one copy.  They were very nice and we were allowed to stay – whew!