Riding out of town on the now-familiar road that circumnavigated West Lake, I couldn't help but notice how Fred has perfected his rendition of the \"Chinese National Anthem.\" It's basically a two-note tune, consisting of a prolonged and high-decibel clearing of the throat and nasal passages, followed by a sharp and (hopefully) well-aimed spit. It's a tune that is quite literally infectious in this part of the world, and one I won't miss when I leave. We were following a pre-described route for a change, prepared with a precision bordering on anality by fellow Santa Cruzan Roger Grigsby in \"China by Bike.\"
I'd been lugging the book around for months and it felt good to be finally putting it to use, not to mention having someone else in the driver's seat. Leaving the park-like surroundings of Hangzhou, we crossed a bridge over the extra-wide Qiantang River. I gazed down into its murky vastness and wished we'd stayed an extra day in order to witness the annual \"tidal bore,\" a phenomenon that occurs but once a year, three days after the closest full moon (which happened two nights ago). The lunar pull of the tide is so great here that it creates a mini tidal wave that can reach many meters tall.
Jack and Leslie's guide told us that many too-curious people have been killed by it, but that the height of the bridge makes it a safe vantage point. He also told us that the bridge had been destroyed twice in its short history, once to keep the Japanese army from advancing, and once to keep out the Communist forces. Its most recent incarnation doesn't date back very far, yet it wasn't really designed to accommodate bikes. We had to ride on the narrow sidewalk and play dodge 'em with elderly fishermen. Our guidebook described highway 104 as carrying \"light traffic\", but it was published four full years ago --an eternity in hyper-developing China.
Now the narrow road is packed with trucks and --gasp---private cars, all busily transporting goods and people through this prosperous region. The villages were unlike any others we've seen in China: all the houses here are vertically oriented, of very recent construction and often surmounted by miniature Eiffel towers. Each village --and they were everywhere, sprouting up like miniature Manhattans out of the rice fields---boasted at least one \"nouveau riche\" style house complete with turrets and domes and lots of gold trim. When we saw a new and empty road y'ing off to the right, we couldn't resist. So much for sticking to the route (neither of us has ever been very good at following other people's directions).
Big bike lanes led us into the big futuristic town of Chengxiang (also known as Xiaoshan), where we hooked back up with highway 104. The road became even busier from here, and didn't feature shoulders. We were surprised, though, by the relative civility of the traffic. The air was noticeably chemical-smelling from all the industry and I thanked the Void that I didn't have to live in such a place. We pedaled swiftly through a flat landscape of rice crisscrossed by a network of busy canals, the horizon broken by an infinite number of concrete villages. There are a lot of people in Zhejiang province, and they all seem to be very actively scuttling about looking for that next yuan.
As we neared Shaoxing a couple of morons on a scooter acted as our escorts into town, riding alongside us for the better part of an hour. We checked into the first hotel we saw, thirty stories high and brand spanking new. We had made good time from Hangzhou and were able to shower before lunch --a rare luxury for us. On our long walk around this fascinating town, we were surprised to find many little corners of old China tucked away in the shadow of skyscrapers. Old stone bridges crossed ancient canals lined with little wooden houses. Overall, Shaoxing struck us as a friendly, civilized place.
One street we walked down looked more like a market town in Denmark than anyplace in China --full of bikes, tidy and discreetly rich. Fred referred to this part of Shaoxing as \"Beverly Hills.\" We also walked by Zhou En Lai's ancestral home, followed by a tasty dinner in the street and a funny conversation with some Uighur minority people from far-flung Xinjiang. Seeking refuge from the skeeters, we headed back to our hotel for a relatively early night. Our hotel room was mercifully mosquito-free, though not without pests. As in literally every other hotel we've stayed at in China, the phone rang with a girl offering her services.
\"*Ao Mo,\"* (massage) they say, or simply \"*xiao jie*\", meaning \"little miss.\" They don't try just once or twice either, and have no qualms about ringing in the wee hours of the morning. We call it \"dialing for dollars\" and have learned to deal with this nuisance by unhooking the phones (yes, plural phones, since Chinese hotels invariably feature phones in the toilet). The next morning I was surprised to be awakened by the sound of a phone ringing. Fred had woken up early and reconnected the phones so as not to freak out the maid. I foolishly answered, and a breathy female voice, sounding a bit desperate now, urgently said once again, \"Do you want a little miss?\"
I don't know the Chinese word for \"persistence\" so I complimented her in English before declining as politely as possible and hanging up.