The Chinese motorcycle diaries
A Danish and a Chinese American explorer recount their adventures on, and lessons from, a four- month, 18,000- kilometer motorbike trip to western China through storytelling and poetry at an upcoming event in the capital, Erik Nilsson reports.
COVID- 19 seemed be chasing them, always just a few towns behind their tailpipe. Before them lay the open road, their handlebars guiding them to zigzag across China like a jostled compass’ arrow.
True North, for them, was to head west and interact with the people they met along the way.
And the motorcycle journey would, at least for the driver, last for four months starting in late spring and cover 18,000 kilometers between Beijing and western China.
Along the way, they helped an injured motorist, wobbled precariously for hours atop the bike while grumbling up mucky roads that twisted up mountains, camped in the wilderness and detoured to visit China’s Mars base on Earth in Gansu province.
But despite traversing often- desolate stretches of the country, they were less exploring the land than engaging its inhabitants. Their mission was to better see places as people.
“This isn’t just us driving around and having fun,” says Beijing- based Danish writer, speaker and consultant Mads Nielsen, who drove for their trip.
“We need to create, and we need to document what we see out on the road. When you see the changing landscapes, the provinces, where the province’s borders are, then the story, the history of different areas and regions of China start to make sense.”
The pair will recount their experiences at a storytelling event that includes poems inspired by their journey at Camera Stylo in Beijing on Sunday.
Encountering encounters
Encounters are a focus of the poems by Nielsen’s travel mate, 36- year- old Chinese American Anthony Tao.
His verses liken the function of the Buddhist grottoes in the deserts of Gansu’s Dunhuang to a nightclub in a nearby city — namely, enlightenment. And they meditate on how, if ancient statues could see, they’d recognize humans haven’t changed as much over the millennia as we may think.
“I wanted to come away from this with a set of poems,” says Tao, who hosts the monthly Spittoon Poetry Night in Beijing.
“So, I was sort of trying to wear my poetic lenses to see things, trying to observe, trying to figure out how the various encounters that we had and the various scenery and our experiences could fit together.
“We know the landscapes are very different. But, also, our experiences are very different, too. So, I got a set of poems that’s equally diverse.”
Nielsen says he knew that Tao, who joined for about 1,800 km starting from Shaanxi’s provincial capital, Xi’an, would be able to distinctively contribute to the mission of mapping a portion of western China’s people’s lives.
“I knew he’d be able to see things I wouldn’t,” Nielsen says.
“Through him being a writer and editor, through his many years as a journalist and poet, he’d have different eyes and be able to look at the truth and the experiences differently than I would. I was also focusing on the road,” he adds, laughing.
Nielsen points out words like “adventurer” and “explorer” conjure images of long- ago expeditions.
“We think things are totally different now. But in reality the things we’re trying to do and find out, that’s just new frontiers,” the 31- year- old explains.
“We’re not explorers in the sense that we can go to a mountain range and map it or something like that. But we can map ideas.
“We can talk to people and hear the stories we don’t hear. That is, the way I see it, the best way you can get the story of a place — the soul of a place.”
They believe the motorcycle set the right pace for them to do this, in every sense.
“I thought that the experience of enduring some degree of hardship when traveling, this exists on the motorbike. And this actually really appeals to me,” Nielsen says.
“With a motorbike, you experience the weather, the temperature, the air, everything, in a totally different way than you will in a car or on a train. You’re free in another way. You can just travel off to whatever interesting things you see on the landscape.”
Code of the road
That said, motorcycles can be relatively dangerous, especially on bone- juddering roads that melt in the rain.
“I have, of course, a fear of falling, of crashing on my motorbike and what that would do to my body,” Nielsen says.
“But what if I encounter people who have fallen, who have crashed on the road. Then, what do I do?”
He discovered the answer when they came across a man whose scooter had flipped with a “lump the size of a ham under his pants”.
They worried his broken leg bone may cause perhaps- fatal internal bleeding and rushed to get help.
“I knew we have to act fast,” Nielsen says.
The man and his female companion thanked them when first responders arrived.
“We drove off without knowing anything else about this couple. They’ ll just know the story of two foreigners who came by and helped them mysteriously, and then just disappeared,” Nielsen says.
He points out that embassies, tourism agencies and insurance companies had advised against getting involved in such situations for fear of liability.
“But, for me, the code of the road tells me I have to. Because if I find myself in the same situation, something as basic as karma is at stake here. And I would hope that people would help me if I trash myself on the road,” he says.
“When I talk about the code of the road, I think there’s something more fundamental at stake here, which is to ask ourselves — it doesn’t matter whether we are foreigners or Chinese — this is just about what kind of world do we want to live in.”
Nielsen did fall off his bike once, without injury, when they spent four hours swishing to and fro — as if their motorbike were a spastic fish — to grumble 12 kilometers up a mucky two- track whittled into mountainsides in Gansu. There, falling off the road might mean falling off the mountain.
“There’s a feeling of, ‘ There’s nothing else to do’,” Nielsen says.
“There’s no other way you can get through that situation than to just pull through.”
Tao recalls using sticks to scrape away the guck engorged beneath the mud flap.
“This clay can be molded. And, in some ways, it molded the motorcycle — and certainly our moods,” he says.
Nielsen says: “There’s still some of that clay on the motorbike now, even though I drove thousands of kilometers after that. Some of the clay you find out west is stubborn as heck.”
They also carried enough extra food and water for a day or two, especially when traveling through vast uninhabited areas.
“You never know when the motorbike may give up or have some problem that forces you to stop on the road,” Nielsen says.
“There are a lot of these ( unpopulated) areas where you can really be in trouble if you don’t have enough food or water and you break down. There isn’t much to do aside from stock up on food, gasoline and water, and drive safely.”
They recall giving water to a man whose motorcycle had broken down in no- man’s land.
Nielsen, who was a member of the Danish Scout Council for 15 years, slept in a tent about a quarter of the nights, depending on if he could find a place to stay.
He specifically enjoyed camping near the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, on the Qinghai- Tibet Plateau’s grasslands and on various mountains.
“Sometimes, you put up the tent in the dark. And as the dawn breaks, you can see stunning views from just the opening of your tent.”
And, when Nielsen found a place where bonfires weren’t forbidden while camping, he would use local ingredients to prepare meals. For instance, in Qinghai province, he substituted yak for beef to make a version of the French dish, bourguignon.
“It was very good,” he says, smiling.
People as places
The pair relished not only local specialties at, but also conversations with owners of, small restaurants along the way.
His former classmate, Zhao Qiaojuan, took them to a snack street to sample such Lanzhou delicacies as hand- pulled noodles, apricot tea and fermented rice with eggs when they visited the city.
She recalls people were delighted when Nielsen played guitar and ad- libbed lyrics to a song about their expedition.
“We think this trip was somewhat like Che Guevara’s,” she says. “It’s a cross- cultural journey.” They visited bars and teahouses along the way to meet people.
“The people there will know anything that’s worth knowing within a 20- km radius,” Nielsen says.
“Every bar we went to, we got some interesting information and met some very interesting people with interesting stories about the place — or just interesting stories in general.”
And interesting stories, including those told through poetry, are what they hope to share at their upcoming event.
“I hope that through events we could advance and broaden people’s understanding of China,” Tao says.
Nielsen says he hopes it’ ll inspire people to reconsider how they travel, especially in China.
“Anybody can meet people. That’s our point. But that’s a really different way of traveling than simply thinking of yourself as a tourist, going to a place, buying tickets, then you’re done, go home — check,” he says.
He hopes their talk at Camera Stylo will “enrich people’s understanding about places”.
“Because when you look at a map, sometimes it can be difficult — other than the shape of a province or the name of city, or something like this — to see what that place really is, what makes that place special.”
When you see the changing landscapes, the provinces, where the province’s borders are, then the story, the history of different areas and regions of China start to make sense.”
Mads Nielsen, Beijingbased Danish writer