4 jiaoza (steamed buns with filling) -1 yuan
3 or 4 bananas -3 yuan
1 fresh noodle soup to go in a bag -2 yuan
1 big bottle beer -6 yuan
1 600 ml bottle water, with bendy straw -4 yuan
1bag of popped rice -1 yuan
1 zuchinni and some carrots -1 yuan
1 dense corn meal cookie -2 yuan
1 night half-decent hotel -80-140 yuan
1 night in a brothel -1 yuan
1 liter gas -2 yuan
1 coil -80 yuan
2 liter can of oil -45 yuan
1 set extra clutch and brake cables -85 yuan
spokes -2 yuan each
1 hour fax line to Beijing -50 yuan
1 tire pump -40 yuan
1 long bungie cord -3 yuan
1 motorcycle battery, & labor -300 yuan

Half an hour out of Datong, coal-hell city or Buddhist mecca, take your pick, you're in the wild wild west. I mean like the Wild Wild West of the TV show, or like Gunsmoke or Ponderosa, with Matt Dillon and that saloon gal except Matt's a Chinese guy riding a motorcycle up to bust the Ma Jong game and the saloon gal is dealing cards on an upside-down cardboard box at the noodle stand. It's lunchtime, and everyone's just kind of hanging out, most of the boys are standing at the biggest mudhole to check out the traffic forced to slow down. Lots of truckers, and there's the farm folk come trotting up on their donkey cart, just a flat slatted platform with wheels digging the ruts in the road even deeper down the middle along with the rest of the traffic passing through. Cowboy truckers from the south haul coal and from the north they're piled high with sheepskin and hay.

The shops are nearly right up against the road, only room for two trucks to pass and some sidewalk space which makes it kind of messy in the rain. A peek down the side streets reveals narrow mud rutted roads lined with mud, straw walls, and low brick houses with mud and straw roofs with coal smoke spouting out a round metal chimney. The air is fresh from the rain and as I pass by there's the sweet bread smell of jiaozi -- those little steamed buns with veggies and meat inside -- and noodles pungent with peppers and soy, and somebody's cigarette and then onions and bananas and whatever else is for sale on the produce table.

Then I am out of there, passing the students walking back to school dressed in their red and white or blue and white polyester athletic suits and bright green plastic rain boots. Their glossy black hair straight and neat, the girls' hang in long ponytails held with two or three bands. They turn in groups at the sound of my engine but they don't stop walking like the kids who stay at home helping. I wonder why these kids aren't going to school. I don't know if they're the second child (I think that the one-child policy only supports one in school) or if their families don't want school for them or what. I've seen them helping to make noodles or change tires or seed fields or whatever their parents are doing.

Then there's a barrier, a toll gate of some sort and my heart pounds at the sight of a bunch of policemen who are really really interested in my sudden appearance. They gather round and have a laugh when they see I'm a foreigner and then that I'm a woman, but the head guy just asks for 5 yuan and pretty much says have a nice trip. I'm so nervous that five miles up the road I have to stop and get a snack and a drink of water and walk around a little bit to calm myself, but of course 20 people come running. This is the outback and they probably don't ever even get to Datong an hour away.

Sheep are being herded, fields are being planted, it is spring and new crops are greening everywhere. There is a big sign that says something in what looks like it might be Mongolian, topped with a metal cut-out horse and I am in Mongolia and at another checkpoint where there are a bunch of cops or army guys. They don't ask for money, just want to know where I'm going. For the moment I'm going to Jining, which is the next big town up the road and that's good enough for them.

It rains, and a guy on a motorcycle keeps passing me and then letting me pass and driving me crazy, just because he wants to stare at me. It's getting dangerous so I pull off the road for a while, but eventually catch up with him again. He gets tired, I get stressed.

Then there are wild flat spaces, adobe and straw houses, and my first Mongolian pony tethered near a hut and quietly grazing. The road is dimpled so badly that there's absolutely no flat spot at all so I ride the sidecar wheel on the dirt to minimize the shake. This lasts for about 10 kilometers and makes me have to pee but there is just enough car/bicycle/donkey cart traffic to keep me from dropping my pants on the side of the road. Then there is suddenly a very long line of blue trucks... another toll gate, I think, and stop to run underneath a little bridge to pee gast before somebody gets interested in the motorcycle. But nobody's looking because the holdup is a very bad accident. One of those blue trucks is lying on its side, and a couple of guys are lying on the grass nearby. It's been over with for a while and the truckers have organized their vehicles so that there's just enough space for a small car or a sidecar bike to get through. They don't look at me, they're looking at the guys on the grass who are not at all in good shape. No blood but no movement, either. Truckers never wear seat belts, you see them moving around the cab, sometimes four people are jammed into the seat and the driver is half hanging out the window. And I see what John Shuck meant when he told me to be careful because if you get in an accidient nobody does anything they just stand around and watch you bleed to death. Somebody else told me that if they help they become totally responsible for you and if you die then they are responsible for your death, whether that's true or not I'd like to know.

Because of the accident the road is completely empty up ahead of me. The dimples disappear and it is a smooth black dream road for motorcycles, with cool air and no traffic and cute little villages dug into the hillsides, little cave villages, some completely in the hill with a mud and straw front, a door and window and that's it. Ten minutes at a time with nobody around. I stop and eat a hard boiled egg. I don't know what to do with all this empty space. It's the first I've seen since I've been here.

The people are tan and ruddy cheeked, mostly Han Chinese but a few are definitely Mongolian. One young Mongolian man pedals furiously against the wind in the middle of nowhere, his bicycle loaded with two metal panniers on the rear wheel, and a full pack on his back. It's a fat heavy load for cycling against the wind, but he is half standing up and his head is well forward of the handlebars. His long black hair is the first I've seen on a man in China and his moustache is just as long and he is strong and bursting with determination. I have no doubt that he is going to get where he is going and when he wanted to get there.

There is a crossroads. I stop and to look at the map and compare characters. Hohhot is a string of about 8 characters, but the first three are distinctive and I turn off onto the Mongolian super highway, like an American highway except for the sudden grouping of potholes every five or ten miles that force a slowdown and shift into first gear.

Hohhot is the capital of Inner Mongolia, a city of about a million people and very clean and modern, at least along the wide boulevards. Taxi drivers don't run red lights or drive on the wrong side of the road very often here, and there are fenced off lanes for bicycles so they're not sharing the road with cars. The rearing Mongolian pony logo is everywhere... in squares, on top of buildings, painted on shopping centers, as emblems on this and that. The alleyways look like the hutongs of Beijing, narrow dirt streets where people sell food or plastic buckets or bicycle bearings or sheep heads or whatever. Unlike Beijing it is crisp and clear, with a bright blue sky, which might be the reason it is named Hohhot, the Mongolian word for “blue city.”

My hotel was recommended in the guidebook and the main building lobby is so opulent that I'm embarrassed to be seen with my dirty fingernails and tangled hair, but as in all the hotels I've seen here so far all the opulence -- marble floors, chandiliers, sweeping staircases, bellmen in little red caps -- is a front for a barely satisfactory in-room ambiance, leaky plumbing, stained red (always red) carpet, battered furniture, loose knobs on everything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maintenance looks to be an unfamiliar concept. That's why it's $15 and not $150 I guess, which would be the expectation if you judged from the lobby.

I want a quiet room, I say. No problem, she says, there's a building that is especially quiet, 20 yuan more. Okay I say, but it has to be very VERY quiet. Of course it's quiet, she says. VERY quiet. Much quieter than the other buildings.

Guess what?

Previous | Next