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I have a love - hate relationshp with China, it is certainly one of the mot diverse and beautiful countries to cycle through, but it is also the most frustrating and difficult countries. I have purposly left it some time to write up this segment, hoping the painful parts will fade a little and I can concentrate on telling you about the delight that is the people and countryside of China.

It is worth bearing in mind tht the back drop to all these adventures is one of contant attention, fom Xinning onwards I was rarely alone. It easy to understand, a formery closed country with few foreigners who leave the tourist trial, very few rural people have seen or spoken to westerners. Languge is also a huge difficulty, simple diections, food and drink turn in to a long act, sometimes failing altogether to pass on the message. Whilst I did larn some words, the constant change of dialect and pronunciation ment it rarely helped matters. I coped, and by the end I had a manageble repotoire, but dont assume it as easy.

August dawns out in the dry dusty hlls of Qanghai province, Im over 3000m up camped after a huge mountain pass. From here Im heading to the first major town in weeks, Delingha. Its a long way down and a adrenaline filled hurtle down a perfectly curvey road. I stop in a small village for some food.The main square is packed with a market, virtually everyone stares as I cycle past, as I stop outside a shop a mass of men and children decend on the bike. I chnge my mind, make a quick purchase of biscuits and coke, then head to a quite spot out in the desert to munch them. After days of solitude the attention is unerving.

I reach Delingha early that afernoon, make the small but subsequently important decision to take a hotel, shower and do town things like change money, internet and buy more food.

My methods for finding food and accomodation has gradually been refined. If the town is in the Lonely Planet then its merely a case of sitting down with a cold drink and filicking through the various options and finding the most suitable. My trip rarely manages to hit these towns and cities favored by guidebooks and so I have evolved the cafe technique. Locate the centre of town and somewhere, not too busy, for a drink, perhaps and ice cream or cake. Then with whatever limited language you have, attempt to get recomendations from the staff or other customers of the establishment. This has two effects, firstly you get cheap accomodation, normally, and secondly it helps prevent you taking the first place you find, purly because your so knackered. I used this technque in Delingha, and found myself in a cheap but clean hotel.

The banks are shut, but I find a net cafe. I start to notice that I am getting a huge amount of attention. A professional photogapher is called to the netcafe, to record my visit, the crowds of teenage in the place listen as I recount my journey to the owner. I am curiously a superstar in this tiny backwater. I decide to go back to the hotel for a camera before heading out to a restaurant Id spotted for dinner. The fun really begins.

The hotel staff are waiting for me, they hand me a note in English, it reads: Our Hotel is forbidden by the governemt to accept foreigners, the check in girl does not know. You must leave now. Sorry. I am swiftly kicked out on to the street. Sketchy directions are offered to the only hotel in town that accepts foreigner. Curiously it it in a police station compound.

Sofor the second time I check in to a hotel for the night. Its expensive compared to the previous offering and plenty of begging and bargining ensue. We fix an acceptable price and I hand over my passport. The receptionist picks up the phone and tells me to wait. A passing kid tell.s me that she is phoning the police, you what?? I am brought a pot of tea, its going to be a long wait.

The man from the PSB (Public Security Bureau or Secret Police) is in plain clothes, the only identification is a special PSB belt buckle. I am interviewed in the hotel lobby, two kids interpreting with what seems to be the entire hotel staff + guests in attendance. It is very surreal. The man from the PSB (no name) tells me politly but firmly that this is a closed town and I must leave on the first available bus. Whats more, my entire proposed route out of the province is in a closed area and that I must not cycle. No permits are avaiable, I must just leave. The next bus was in the morning at 10am and PSB man told me he would take me there personally, thanks. In the meantime I was escorted to dinner by the hotel staff, and surrender my passport.

Next day I was put on a bus to Xinning, the driver and I under strict instructions to only leave the bus in Xinning. Its a long and frustrated journey through the most fertile and populated part of Quanghai province. Xinning, city and provincial capital, late in the evening, I find a dirt cheap bed in a dorm close to the station. Not only do I sleep according to the gaps in the train timetable but when I wake in the morning there are two guys sat on the bed opposite staring at me. They stare as I dress and leave. They are gone when I return later in the day.

I have a British map of China, it has proved to be useless. Even with Chinese script most folk have frozen when confronted by it, it also has all the distances wrong. What seemed in Kazakstan, like a long, but doable ride to Shanghai is turning into an impossible epic. I buy a Chinese road atlas and dump the British one.

I decide that Xinning is my best shot at repairing my bike wheel, and engage one of the hostal touts, Neil, to assist me in finding a good bike shop. After a morning of visiting the markets and bike repair men of Xinning I am told that not only can nobody in Xinning help but l so that it is a western bike and that it will not break, the fact that there are big cracks in the rim appears to be normal around here, nobody can help. I hit a mental low, deported, unable to speak more than a few words, bike slowly collapsing and now certain that I wouldnt have time to cycle all the way to Shanghai make me feel like I am slowly failing. I seek solice in phoning home, listening to Radio 1 on the web and going to the KFC (which I dont even eat at home). It doesnt seem to help. I spend a scond night in the hostal from hell resolved to get out on the bike whatever in the morning. Neil charges me for not helping fix the bike.

I head into the hills South of Xinning,resoved to cycle as far as I can toards Xian before giving up on the wheel. I stop at Ti So, a massive Tibeten temple in a georgous green mountain valley, hoping for spirtual repair. There are thousends of people, and I quicky discover that there is a visiting Lama, only the devout are to be admitted. Bummer. I meet a couple of Chinese guys, strangly called Phillip and Boy, who speak english and we sit on a hill over lookng the Temple chatting and drinking bottled tea. Its very pleasant. Karma restored, and in a far more positive frame of mind than I had been for the previous days, I head into the green fertile hills tht seperate Quanghai province from lowland, east China.

Its another heartstoppingly beautiful ride along dirt tracks through the mountains. The road is once again under construction and I stop and chat with the road workers. More green tea and momos.I am back, enjoying this, weather I make it to Shanghai or not.

Its late one wet afternoon, about 10km from town when another spoke pings free of the back wheel, its in a bad way, and I hobble into a tiny village. I rock into the first cafe and get some hot food. A Tibeten monk befriends me and offers to help find somewhere to stay, I get a tiny bare concrete cell on the main street to live in for the night.The only lock on the door is on the outside, so even asI unpack people are stepping in to watch. Lucky they did, otherwise I wouldnt have met the guys from PetroChina, about a dozen of them were living around the town for 18 months whilst working on a new tarmac road throught the mountains. Between them they had plenty of education and a lot of English. I explained my prediciment. We came up with a plan, the motorcycle mechanic in the village would rebuild both my wheels, swapping the front rim for the back, thus putting a good rim where most of the weight was. In the meantime I was to hangout with the PetroChina folk, chat, eat and take digi photos of their project for them to email their bosses.

FengXiuPing in particular had great english and was keen to find out my impressions of China, we had a great chat on the current construction boom, which I liken to being ike the one Britain saw in the 1960s and 1970s, projects of little design merit are being thrown up evrywhere, some where already failing or collapsing even before they were inhabited. Its a shame for a country with such rich design heritage to be constructing anywhere buildings, in China this is predominatly concrete boxes clad in white tile, from Xinjaing province to Shanghai, new buildings did little to tie in with their context o envionment, leading to one town looking the same as many others across the land. To the Chinese, this is progress, flawed or not.

The wheels took most of the next day to be rebuilt, and in that time people popped in and out of the room, flicking through my books and things.Those that I asked to leave simply stepped utside and watched throgh the window. I had tried to lok my door by piling panniers up against it overnight however I have vage recollections of waking and seeing a man sihilloeted agianst the doorway, in the morning my panniers were neatly stacked in the middle of the room. Yet again a sleeping foreigner seems to be better entertainment than whats on telly.

My wheels were finished, and whilst their best friend would not have called them straight or even round, they went through the frame and thats all I needed. 30km later I hit tarmac, and a all of rain. I stopped to ask for a place to stay. Zalamo ws tending the shop, afer asking her mum, she invited me to stay ith her family. Magic!

Zalamo and her family are Tibetaen, they live in a Tibetean village and Chinese is their second language, English is Zalamo and her Uncle Youlas third language. For a third language they were pretty good at it. They dried me out, fed me a delicious meal and offere a bed. The bed was a platform which we had sat on to sleep, it was five foot in each direction, I am over six foot long. Three of us slept on that platform. I was quite stiff in the morning. More piles of food and I was taken to meet Youlas family for more tea. They desperatly wanted me to stay, and I could have stayed in that cosy front room drinkng tea and popping peas forever but with renewed optimism I felt I had to leave. Zalamo cried, it was quite a hearbreaking goodbye.

I made good speed down the valley, inhabited by Tibeten, thehad brought their own traditional building methods with them. Similar to the Urghur houses in the North West of China their houses wee build withinhigh mud walls, no penetratios save the ornate gateway, closed wth carved doors. All the woodwork inside is carved in inticate detail. My hosts were deeply suspisious of the camera and asked that I didnt use it, which was a shame.

So on Eastwards, into more densly packed vallies, then high over a pass through spectacular gorges and down into more population. It ws harvest time and the villages were alive with people thrashing corn, cutting and ferrying the staw and there was an ai of general indutry. Many of the shops were closed during the day as their owners were out in the fields. Inginious villagers laid their corn out on the road and the passing traffic thrashed the corn off the ears.

A big pass loomed, switchbacks disappeard into the clouds, I reckoned it was one to start tommorow. I bivvied in a hollow on a cliff face, the views of the lush valley below, laid ut with fields and speckled with houses and yurts was pretty fantastic.

A morning tackling tackling switchbacks and a dirt road decesnt in the rain was actually pretty exhilerating, in crossing the pass I had moved from the Tibeten area to the Hui muslim valley. Everyman wore a darksuit, with a little white skull cap. Whilst the Tibetens would bade "nehaw" from the other side of the road, Hui country would shout "Liawoi, nehaw liawoi!" (liawoi = foreign devil) from anything up to a couple of fields away. I dropped into Linxia and had lunch.

A quick word on the bikes health, neither of the wheels are round or stright after the rebuid, the chainst is wearing out meanng that slowly I am running out of gears tht are useable and the chain was beginging to lose its flexibiliy, to cut a long story short, it was desperatly in need of attention and parts. I was literally nursing it through each km, talking to in and reasuring it that the next town would have spares. Linxia was the biggest town since Xinning and they said to go to Xian, a mere 600km away.

Fom Linxia I had a 50 mile valley to pass through before hitting the main rod to Xian. The valley was excluivly Muslim, shiney dome of Mosques littering the skyline. The attention was unnerving, constat and tiring. This valley in particular was the most demanding, and unlike most of the rest of China, folk were not afraid to fiddle and pull at the bike even if I was stood next to it. I played the cantankerous westener card and shouted if they got too close. In one town I stopped for directions, by the time I had pulled the map out of my bag about fifty folk were jostling for position around the bike, the crowd continued to increase, my Chinese failed me, fingers pointed in every direction I decided to ditch the directions and get out of there. Hectic.

Suddenly I left the valley and joined the main road to Xian. The mosques and white caps disappeared, I had hit Han Chinese country ad ended my magical mystery tour of the ethnic minorities. I took two days to get my increasingly ailing bike to Lungxia. There was a station, with the help of Zheng Teng I took the overnight train to Xian.

I checked in to the Youth Hostal, had a fryup on the cafe then went in search of a bike shop. I was in hevan, I locatd a shop in the middle of town, they took me to another shop to get parts and lent me a round town bike whilst they worked their magic on my Orbit. Come back tommorrow and well have it sorted was the promise. All the black thoughts disappeared from my head, backup plans were scrapped. I set to working out where I had to train or bus to, to enable me to cycle as far as I could in the days left before my flight. I was going to Wuhan!

Before that I had 2 days to kill in Xian, one of the historc capitals of China, steeped in history but also cosmopolotan. I decided to spend the days mooching round the city, eating and recovering, rather than trying to hit the tourist mecca of the terraccotta warriiors. Frankly after meeting a few of the organised tours in Xinjaing province, I baulked at the idea of hitting the tourist trail, crowds and noise. Feeling that I was seening real China, not the tarted up version.

There was also a great opportnity to stock up on food, ad eat some home type stuff, pancakes and pasta were sought. Idid find a really interesting place to eat, called the Typical Fast Food Resaurant (with associated Monopolstic Food Store) it was all but typical. Single priice entry, eat all you can froma selection of delicious Chinese treats, I spent some time in here!

Next day I met Matt, Fiona and Pete, wo had travelled together overland from London, we spent the day mooching round the cities tea houses and sghts before heading to another hostal in the centre of town. Amazingly it seeed that everyone knew each other from hostals and train rides. Introduced to everyone as the token madman we all went for a big meal. Like meeting the Peace Corps in Kazakstan, the opportunity to talk proper English, compare notes on a country and generally gossip really revived me. China can wear you down. That day in Xian, if I wasnt already, I was restored.

My bike was shiney, new rim, straight wheels, new chainset. We were both ready for the dash to Shanghai. A hetic visit to the station and we were off, 16 hour squashed in the top bunk of a carrige, eating and drinking.

Wuhan, a city on the Yangzi river, not the pretty gorges here, a wide industrius river. Craft of all sizes putted up, down and across. Sadly bicycles are not allowed on the ferries or on the brand new bridge. Neither do people in Wuhan have the abilty to offer decent directions. After getting off the trainat 7am I found myself back in front of the station at 11am. It to me all morning to get out of that damn city. Little things can colour your opinion of a place!

Finally i left and enjoyed a decent run along the banks of the river, very lush and quit flat. Houses had gained an xtrastory, and people were everywhere, it was sometimes difficult to tell when you had left one town and entered another.

The Lonely Planet advises that camping is not ordinariy tolerated around habitiation, to save the hassle of PSB visits I decided to find cheap rooms from here to Shanghai. Most rooms in villages cost a couple of dollars, and give the opportunity to meet a few folk. A good option considering the amount of habitation, but still managed to attract nighttime raids rom the PSB.

An interesting phenomonon is Chinglish, English translations with a chinese flavor, the best were found in a hotel in Anqi: "Waking up is available. Please contact the floors attendant if necessary" and the peach of: " There is a toilet in every room you may wash your- self in every time". On the train a sign on the toilet door also offered the most memeroable: "No occupying whilst stabling" Ill leave you to decode the real intentions.

Police attention wasnt just limited to accomodation options, mid afternoon on the second day out of Wuhan and I found my self at the entrance to a motorway, examining the map it appeared that the motorway had been built o the route of a previous main road. There was no obvious alternative until the old road reappeared about 60 or 70 km further on. The traffic was light and there was a decent hardshoulder. I swung my bike out onto the road and headed onto the motorway. 5km later I was stoped by two policemen. Again very friendly, however, I was loaded on to a passing bus and sent to the next town. Quite a bit of excitment ensued, the police in the next town gave the bus an escort from the motorway, I was fed and watered before I was asked to follow two police cars with flashing lights throught the town and back to the motorway. They explained they were putting me on a bus to Shanghai.... Noooooo. Negotiation and phone calls. They capitulated, but I coud not cycle from here, theres no road. With blues and twos, they took me and my bike up the motorwy to another town, I can cycle from here. It was getting dark, they asked where I would sleep, I said in a tent, woops, wrong answer. I ws installed in a motorway service station for the night, they would come and take me back to the start point in the morning!

So I entered Anhui provine in the back of a screaming police car, once back on the road, the lush vallies were trnquil and very pleasant. Houses were dotted about the fields,folk in wide traw hats shouting good morning.

Since Wuhan the food had certainly got a bit hotter and a bit more exotic. Part of my communication reportoire was abattered piece of paper with random phrases, translated by English speaking folk that I had met. One of the most interesting was "I just want to at anything s OK" which Alex had written for me in Rouqoing. It often brought a suprise, frogs legs in one small town and two fryed carp in another, both delicious and filling. Rice replaced noodles as the staple, most places give you a many free refils of rice as you like. I was eating well and puting some weight back on. Food is amazingly cheap in rural China.

Anhui is a lush rolling province, the lowlands have rice pady fields, whilst the hills are soft redsandstone giving a splah of colour now and then. The road followed first the Yangzi river and then headed across the southof the delta area to Shanghai.The area is crisscrossed with rivers and streams, workingboats cruising up and down between the green banks.

It was about 150km before Shanghai when I entered its urban area, the road became wide and whilst still very pleasant to follow the cycle path along side, the pace of life chnged, industry and busines were everywhere with an almost contious urban landscape. The last night on the road to Shanghai, I spent in a petrol station, camped in their recreation room. Two guys climbed in through the window that in the night thinking they could get rest whilst their bus refueled, they woke me, I shouted and the shock of an angry Liawoi soon got them scuttling back to the bus.

Into Shanghai, on a bright afternoon, pretty pleased to be there, with a day spare before the flights. Shanghai is both a city and municipality, it too several hours to cycle into the center. Cyclin is not helped by the cities modernisation dive which seem toview bikes as old hat and undesirable, therefore most of the main roads are bike free, and there are enough police to make sure you dont skip along the wide taxi and bus lanes, ensuring you stick to the narrow busy backstreets crammed with bikes and parked cars. Occasionally bikes were banished to the tiny pavements,alng with pedestrians and motorbikes of all sizes, the chaos was unbelievable.

Shanghai itself is a monster, not only in its width but the sheer number of skyscrapers is mind blowing. Some are fantastic, and some are dire abborations on the horizon. It truley felt like the Fith Element or Jude Dread city of the future as I cycled in, expessways zipping overhead, cramed pavements, noise, fumes, scores of policemen and massive towering buildings overhead, a heady mix after Anhui Province!

I stayed in a Youth Hostal, right in the heart of town, just of the historic Bund. This was truly spectacular at night, the historic European consession buildings lit brightly, with every skyscraper gntly lit in the background, then a veil of flashy neon lights along the streets. I found a pint of Guiness in a small pub. The first for months, I felt I deserved it, I had made it to the Pacific.

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