Riding in and out of big cities in Europe and America is almost always a headache, but in China it's usually a piece of cake. This morning's big city --Wuxi---wasn't even on our route really, but I thought we might be able to find a decent map of Jiangsu province there. We zigzagged along tree-lined boulevards before crossing the boat-choked Grand Canal and entering Wuxi's glittering center, full of office towers, luxury hotels and KFC's. We asked a bespectacled guy in the street where we could find a map and he suggested the train station, some distance off. Once we'd made our way there I left Fred to guard the bikes at the edge of a vast concrete plaza while I went off in search of a map and a snack.
The only map I found was inadequate but I bought it anyway, along with a bagful of scrumptious vegetable dumplings. Crossing back to where Fred was, a guy came out of nowhere, thrusting a map into my hands, an excellent map of Jiangsu. I recognized my benefactor as the guy in the street from before, marvelling at his generosity and industriousness. When I looked up a huge crowd had gathered across the square and while I couldn't see him, I suspected Fred was at the center of it. Sure enough; I fought through the tightly-packed throng of several hundred onlookers to find my riding partner.
He told me how he had used my squirt gun to fend off a taxi driver who was grabbing at his helmet. The ensuing histrionics had drawn the crowd, as well as a policeman or two who tried to disperse the staring masses. We left town following the path of least resistance, a tiny speck among the pedaling masses. Fred seemed unhappy biking in the busy cycling lanes, but I enjoyed the slow-motion chaos. After a while we were on the open road again, snaking through endless rice paddies under gray skies. We lunched on roadside vegetables and rice before setting off on quiet country roads.
It was a longer route but infinitely more rewarding. We were instantly plunged back into a place where bikes rule the road and agriculture constitutes the local economy. The road was bumpy but I felt great. Suddenly we came upon an unusual sight for China: several dozen old women were chanting and making little oragami-esque boxes. It was obviously a religious rite but I didn't understand the exact significance. Of course we generated a great deal of interest when we stopped. One of the women insisted we kneel down in front of a little alter and kow-tow (along with ping-pong, one of the few Chinese words in the English language) as she sprinkled us with water.
She also filled our water bottles and blessed our bikes. We contributed a dollar, an act that was duly recorded in their account book. We knew we were in the deepest countryside when she asked how much it was worth in Renminbi (back in Shanghai, Yong could tell you the day's exchange rate to the third or fourth decimal). When we stopped to ask directions to the next town, a teenage boy with bad skin insisted he accompany us. Surprisingly, he kept up with us for quite a while before ditching us at the edge of Changzhou, a town much bigger than either of us had expected.
It's a sprawling disorganized spaghetti bowl of a place with grindingly slow traffic, evil pollution and gawking idiotic citizens: all in all, a city not high on my list of places to which I hope to return. From Changzhou we took the road towards Jintan because it looked small on the map. The reality was yet another wide concrete job with four lanes of auto traffic plus a spacious bike lane on either side. The forty kilometers to Jintan went quickly and without incident. Our day's intended resting point looked monstrously ugly coming into town, full of disgusting factories belching out black smoke.
In front of one such factory, a yuppiesque guy told us that the town's best hotel was the Zhongxin, and it wasn't long before we were checking in. After a street dinner and our nightly walk, I took advantage of our hotel's amenities in the sauna/massage center. Of course girls were on offer, but I was able to find an old man to scrub me all over, soap me up, bathe me and pummel me into a mushy pulp. It was the perfect recipe for a good night's sleep.