However monotonous and eventless my desert and plateau ride was – it still wasn’t. Of course there are a lot of stuff I skip when sharing this journey with you. Partly due to me wanting to still have a few gems to tell when I get back, but in all honesty mostly due to my sometimes quite overwhelming laziness.
Here’s one I’d like you to know about though. One that turned from being a funny detail one day to an ongoing source of joy through the Chinese nothingness.
Here’s A Qiang!
(And no, I have no idea how to spell his name correctly)
One of those days when the headwinds were doing what they could to throw me all the way back to Sweden was when I first found him. The little guy with that everlasting smile on his face.
Thanks to the perfectly straight road and his high-vis pannier covers, I had seen him already from a far. Or I had seen something. After the better part of a year on the road I’ve had time to see the most bizarre things on and along the road, and by now I tend to accept pretty much anything as reasonable road-decoration.
By the time I reached him, I had had time to consider the possibility of that bright yellow thing over there being everything from an uncommonly extrovert local motorcyclist to a spaceship. I was even kind of suspecting that the whole thing might just be a mirage.
But a cyclist? No, that would just be too out of there.
Turned out however, I was very much in luck.
Because sure enough – there he was!
As with most Chinese people I meet, A Qiang didn’t speak a single word of English. And unfortunately his understanding of my pretty sad Chinese efforts were next to none as well (I really can’t blame him though). This however didn’t stop a new, and highly comical friendship to start taking shape.
So what if you can’t really speak to one another? If two cyclists bump into each other on the road (especially if this road happens to be situated in the middle of a huge desert) – you will camp together. Having company for dinner is nice, regardless if you can discuss local politics or not.
The next morning when we started off cycling together and rather quickly got separated, is when you would have thought this anecdote had come to an end. Where A Qiang turned into another micro chapter that would probably never be spoken about with anyone. But as I’m writing this, you already know this wasn’t the case.
I don’t know how likely or unlikely this was, but in the end we came into and left each others lives a bunch of times during the upcoming week and a half. And let me tell you it was fun! As we couldn’t really speak, and didn’t really have the same way to go about our days – we never really rode together. But in the end we still met and had lunch or camped anytime one managed to catch up with the other.
I still don’t know much about A Qiang. And he doesn’t know much about me. Our ways of communication – which generally needed support from maps, photos or hardcore charades – surely limited the possible topics of conversation. I think it’s sure to say there were a lot of ‘Me, Tarzan. You, Jane’-type of conversations going on there for a while.
Still. After spending a few nights cooking, relaxing and star gazing together with someone – even if most of it is in silence – a friendship will take form. This one was a particularly odd, but yet such a nice one.
A Qiang showing his around China route…
…of course with a chopstick for extra stereo-typicality!
Somewhere up on the plateau, we one evening ended up getting invited to stay the night at another one of those industrial areas that I wrote about in my last post. An evening that like others of it’s kind included some great people, and we were both falling asleep smiling, happy to be saved from another freezing night outside.
What made this overnight unique though was the morning. The breakfast, to be exact.
Chinese breakfasts are a lot different than anything I’ve stumbled upon before. But as I was quite used to them by now, that was not the thing. These guys had a little add on to theirs that kind of stood out to me.
A shot.
Yeah, that was one shot for me an A Qiang. Three or four for themselves. As some kind of fatherly gesture they were very strict with us not taking another one (as if any of us was even remotely tempted) – considering that we would soon be off on our bicycles. That they would just as soon be jumping into their tractors to start of today’s work didn’t seem to cross anyones’ mind.
Crazy world.
In the end, this particular morning would turn out to be mine and A Qiang’s last one together. And in all likelihood the last time we’d ever meet. Of course we didn’t know it then, but in hindsight I have to say that if there ever was a perfect morning to start off with a horribly strong shot of Chinese liquor – it was this one.
Cheers!
(Or as A Qiang would say – Ganbei!)
Fredrika