ROUND THE WORLD PLANNER
Download our FREE round the world planner. Everything you'll ever need to sort your trip out!
Find out more >>
Home Page > one > Articles & Features
Want to see our new BETA site? - Click Here >>
Your thoughts and feedback would be great - newsite@gapyear.com
Your thoughts and feedback would be great - newsite@gapyear.com
Cycling China Cycling the Chinese-Russian border Jonathon Litton writes... Cast list "After teaching English in China for a year, I got frustrated with the uninspiring cast of characters that I all-too-frequently had to play. These included: - Panda (let’s all stare at the foreigner) - Idiot (just because he can’t speak Chinese doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to use a kettle!) - Robot (he’s a teaching machine and is purely here for our benefit) - King (let’s shower him with gifts and attention and give him everything he could ever want... except his freedom, which is the only thing he really wants) - Fashion accessory (look at me... I have a foreign 'friend'... I’m so cool) I decided to take action in the form of a new guise: the Russian. No acting was required; simply bringing my white face to the Russian border made me fully qualified for the part. And then I was ready to play the little game of: 'let’s cycle along the Sino-Siberian border until the police, army and village idiots take exception to my presence.' Found it! The journey began in the Inner Mongolian grasslands. I camped as close as I dared to the China-Russia-Mongolia tripoint, keeping out of site of the military compound whose name translates as New 100 Road Capture. How very inviting! Day one took me through real Mongolian territory; never-ending vistas of undulating land covered with stubbly brown grass and dotted with sheep, herdsmen on horseback and their beautiful sheepskin tents, known as yurt. Everything about this place was big: the sky, the wind and the enormous raindrops. Navigation was hit-and-miss as roads and reference points were about as abundant as McDonald’s in these parts.  And then I saw something that I’d been wondering about for months. It all started with a line on a map. Not just any line, but one running for more than a thousand kilometres in eastern Mongolia before crossing into China and slicing through the Russian town of Zabaikalsk. What’s more, the graphic was the same as the Great Wall. Intrigued, I began to search for information about it but drew blanks for ages. No other maps marked this wall. My cartographers couldn’t have created a fictitious wall, could they? But their map was excellent and I doubted it was their mistake. So why had their cartographic competitors ignored such a large feature? The answer was that the wall had been eroded to such an extent as to be considered by many to be long-lost. Whilst the Chinese built their wall from stone, the Mongolians constructed an earthy embankment. Which was exactly what had caught my eye. Maybe three feet high and four feet wide, it extended beyond the horizon in both directions and was undoubtedly man-made. I must have ridden over it the day before without noticing. Oops! I managed to take a picture of a real Mongolian herdsman by this site but may be lacking a photo of self, as said Mongol attempted to operate the camera whilst looking through the lens rather than the view-finder. Ironically his name sounded like Fuji. My type of town When I returned to civilisation I was as dehydrated as the arid land I had ridden over and my T-shirt was as salty as the dried-out lakebeds I had passed. And for me, Manzhouli represents the height of civilisation. Last stop before Russia, this railway town is the perfect place for people-watching. Its population is remarkably free of the afflictions of averageness and normalcy that affect so many of us. Deviants encountered in this place include Marx, a drunk Russian boxer who couldn’t understand that I couldn’t understand Russian and had a penchant for picking fights with taxi drivers (him not me), King Martyr Paul, who may or may not have been a Korean pastor wandering around the Inner Mongolian grasslands in search of his dead grandmother, and Suzanna, the unforgettable girl of the sky whose family owned seven yurt and seven horses in the steppe. I roomed with two Kyrgyz companions whose collection of empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and cartons of taken-away Chinese dumplings was even larger than the cluster of consonants in the name of their homeland. Ostensibly they were businessmen. On the outskirts of the town were real Mongolians serving real Mongolian fare: mutton, lamb and sheep.  Much fun was had by all, and I vow to return one day. ‘Twould be the perfect place to learn a language or three, what with the mingling of Chinese, Russians and Mongolians. The relaxed atmosphere and chance encounters were a refreshing break from the monotony and predictability that I found during my teaching stint. In contrast to the cleanliness and laissez-faire entrepreneurial spirit of Manzhouli, the next town was a blue-collar industrial eyesore. However, dirt equalled pay-dirt as this was a mining town. They used steam trains to haul coal out of huge open cast mines, and I got to ride on one for a while. I left the historic trains behind, but hadn’t finished with historical railways. I paused as I crossed the Trans-Manchurian line and, seeing barren land in all directions, both Moscow and Beijing seemed a long way away. Probably because they were. Once upon a time the Japanese been in control of this stretch of the track and, indeed, much of Manchuria. They were civilised enough to build some underground tunnels which provided much-needed respite from the heat of the desert. However, what they did down there - conducting horrendous medical experiments on the Chinese - was far from civilised. Exchanging the horrors for the hills, my journey from Hailaer to E’erguna (Argun if you’re Russian or want something easier to pronounce) brought a change in scenery. There was a gradual transition from the sands and brown stubbly grasses of the steppe to rolling green hills that looked surprisingly Scottish. There were plenty of localised storms, some of which I could out-run on my bike. At one time I counted four on my right and three on my left and when they and I converged, I ducked for cover in a conveniently located Mongolian roadside restaurant. There were swarms of beekeepers lining the road. I never imagined the Mongolians to be a honey-loving people, but the world is full of surprises. Land of the sheep Argun ‘City’ is just beginning to open up, thanks to the Argun River Bridge. This provides a link with Russia, and represents the only such structure joining the two nations despite the fact that more than 3,000km of their shared boundary is marked by waterways. The bridge opened in 2001, is located in the Inner Mongolian hinterlands and no-one had heard anything about it. The mystery made it a must on my border tour. On my way to explore it I was overtaken by a few moon buggies - well, that’s how I think of a particular type of Soviet jeep that looks like something a '70s scientist would come up with if given the task of designing lunar transportation. The Argun valley was immensely wide as the river lazily meandered along its course. It supported low-growing, water-loving trees, which gave the impression of an impossibly wide green river from a distance. The 'insect incentive' kept me pedalling, as a momentary break would result in a swarm of aerial enemies.  I stopped for dinner in a small village and merely asked for lamb, knowing that this is the land of the sheep. Surely they would be able to concoct a wonderful dish for me. They took me into the kitchen to choose my pieces of meat, cooked it, and, err, served it straight up. Bones and meat on the plate, a bit of sauce at the side, a soup made of the juices, and a little penknife to carve off small pieces! It wasn't what I expected, but was nice all the same. I probably lingered in this village a little too long, but it was necessary to buy water from a shop and re-tie my bags to my bike. As I was doing this, some policemen came, and I felt a little annoyed, because up until then I had been able to get away with being a 'situational Soviet.' What I mean by this is that if anyone wanted to talk to me then I had the option of either being the real me, able to converse a little in Chinese, or I could just use my literal and metaphorical 'dimmer switch' and reduce my perceived comprehension to zero, just like my Russian cousins. Anyway, when the police came, not only would I have to be English as per my ID, but I would also run the risk of getting sent back to Argun ‘City’. Which is exactly what happened, thus negating 50km of up and down cycling in the Inner Mongolian heat. Actually, the police here were kind and friendly and very interested in the parts of my journey that I decided to tell them about and were genuinely sorry to have to put a stop to it. They pointed out other places worth going to and organised transport back to Argun. Well, I pretty much decided I wasn't going to cycle back for psychological reasons. Other than my legs, my main source of power on this journey was optimism; the belief that the next hill may be the last one, or may at least have a great view at the top, maybe even of the next settlement. Ignorance is indeed bliss and one can blindly set off to do things that one wouldn't necessarily be so game for with prior knowledge. Like attempt a long route on mud roads in the rainy season, which is what I did for the next few days. Braking for the border I left the grassy hills behind and would have been shaded from the sun by the forest, had it not decided to rain pretty solidly for the next couple of weeks. I passed through Mangui, home of the reindeer-herding Ewenke people. These are one of a handful of indigenous groups that inhabit both sides of the border. I didn’t see any of these Chinese Laplanders, but did see some raging waters in the swollen rivers. I was on the road to the 'Arctic Village,' China’s northernmost settlement. I’d been there before in the winter when it was -40. My nose froze and I ate un-refrigerated ice-cream bought in the streets for comedy value. Mosquitoes were more of a danger than frostbite this time round, and have allegedly caused the death of reindeer by entering nostrils in such numbers that the antlered beasts can no longer breathe. Given that the Argun was a tributary of the Black Dragon and that I’d climbed a lot during the past few days, I knew I’d be going down, down, down. Indeed, four days’ worth of climbing was repaid in the final fifteen kilometres resulting in an awesome unbroken descent. Well, my motion was unbroken, but my brakes were very broken! I had no way of stopping myself as I gathered speed and hurtled round bends. I used my feet and slalomed down the road in an effort to keep my speed in check and prayed there were no bulldozers lurking round blind bends. There weren’t, but there were several streams to ford and I got some serious air-time as I hit one at an incalculable rate. I saw the other side of the valley and knew I must be homing in on the mighty Black Dragon, the eighth longest river in the world and my companion for the next 1,800km or so. As I was straining to see the water, I noticed that my road would take a sharp turn to the left in a second. Too sharp for me, but fortunately a track continued straight on. Unfortunately it was the entrance to a military compound and had armed guards either side. Damn! I got through inches of shoe leather and skidded to a halt about ten metres from the soldiers. They were of the beefeater-esque mustn’t-move-a-muscle training and were stationed to face each other, their steely gazes forming a laser beam designed to intercept any miscreants daring to break their line of sight. On this occasion their training failed them and they turned to see a 'foreign devil' on a bike smile and disappear pretty quickly. I hope they were severely reprimanded for their breach of discipline! On tracks & trucks How on earth was I to get out of this bottomless pit? I didn’t fancy doing the descent in reverse, so I posited the existence of a road where I wanted to go. Amazingly, such a strategy worked for 10km or so until I hit a dead end surrounded by impenetrably dense forest. So I backtracked and theorised a second road for myself, then headed into the woods on my rocky track. I was passed by a couple of trucks which were serving a quarry of sorts, where men chipped the rocks by hand. Well, the hands wielded axes, but still, it looked pretty primitive. After hours of nothingness, a lone betractored yokel confirmed that this unlikely route did indeed link with my road east. At the connection was an absolute ghost town. There were maybe 50 houses, all derelict and littered with broken glass and wood chippings. This place was eerie. I was going to stop and take photos except it transpired that some people actually lived here, and had the type of body language that said: "move or else I will fetch my rifle and send you to kingdom come", so move on I did, passing under a barrier and onto my road, marked here by "688". That's a lot of kilometres to do on a sandy forest track, wherever the 'zero point' is. During this time I thought a little about tigers, and whether or not they could climb trees, but considered that statistics was a far better defence than tree-climbing. Two days before I left the UK I had caught a documentary on the Siberian tiger, which replayed a single killing of a sheep about 20 times, suggesting they were kind of low on footage, which in turn suggested that human-tiger interactions were something of a rarity. Indeed, it is estimated that as few as 20 of the beasts may be wild in China at any one time, the rest opting to terrorise the North Koreans and Russians. So: "Oi! Big cat! Go eat Bell's Theorem, not me!" Time progressed in a forwards manner, as it is wont to do. I didn’t. My chain had snapped. Of all things to go on a bike, the chain ought to be pretty low on the list, but hey, this is China. A quick inventory of my Chinese-bought products which had failed would read: tent, tent bag, panniers, shoes, computer, clock, camera, batteries, tow-rope. This last one was used to secure things to my bike, and although the rope didn't snap (unlike the one my kids used for tug-of-war in school), the clip at the end malfunctioned and could work itself loose. So I found myself hiking instead of biking. After an hour I heard a motor, and hailed it. It turned out to be two truckies going in the same direction as me, and they were not averse to me chucking my bike in the back, hopping in the front, and enjoying the ride with them. And boy, what a ride it was. Just like seeing the grasslands around Manzhouli had opened my eyes to the Mongolian angle of the town, seeing the track from a truck's cab gave me a whole new perspective of the road and the beasts that I shared it with. We had an interesting truck-submerged-in-river situation somewhere between the villages named '23 station' and '22 station.' It being the rainy season, there were plenty of streams to ford, and this one was deep, wide and had a truck in the middle whose owner had stopped to wash it, thus hogging the good rocks and forcing my driver to either wait or take a diversion through, well, quicksand, as it turned out to be. Quicksand aint so quick, and you generally reach an equilibrium in it without sinking further unless you struggle. The scientifically minded might be interested to note it is caused by masses of alluvial particles (i.e. sand or rocks) supported by circulating water as opposed to each other. Put anything in it, and you upset the equilibrium. However, its density is greater than most things, so you’re not going to sink all the way down, even if you’re a big truck. You're just going to find yourself a lower equilibrium point as the system re-stabilises. The more you struggle, the lower you’ll go. Nothing perilous; just a: "what now?" situation. To cut a long story short, we made it out after several false starts, had dinner at '22' and made it to '18' before midnight, where I found a room to stay and got my bike fixed on the morrow.  Baldies, fatties and crazies Time and kilometres passed. On the road to Heihe I incurred a missed morning and enjoyed a morning mist. The morning for which I was absent was caused by baijiu, a lethal Chinese spirit made from distilled sweetcorn. This beverage was proving to be more effective at stopping me than the combined efforts of the police and army. The morning mist was breathtakingly beautiful and added an artistic touch to the giant cobwebs that hung across the road. I expressed my gratitude to John Loudon McAdam, the Scot of road-surfacing fame. Thanks to his genius, the last 20km to Heihe were unbelievably easy. Heihe lies opposite the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk and imports mapc (that’s 'mars' in Cyrillic). Mmm! I decided to take a break from the border and head for the volcanic formations of Wudalianchi, which translates as Five large connected lakes. The bodies of water were enclosed by fourteen extinct volcanic cones. The area contains bizarre rock formations, springs, caves and crater lakes and the majority of people that come here can be divided into two distinct groups: the baldies and the fatties. The former being leukaemia patients who come for the healing waters and the latter being obese Russian tourists. Riding off the tourist circuit I came across many run-down sanatoriums and hospitals, and heard screams from one. (Acupuncture?) Later I encountered an individual foaming at the mouth and nose and talking to the invisible man in front of her. Or herself. I guess I’ll never know which, but I knew that the time had come to leave this weirdness behind and get back to the border. Back in Heihe, and in the shadows of the 'communist-grey' apartment blocks, I felt a hand on my waist. ‘Damn, a robber, possibly with a knife... why the hell do I have so many valuables together?’ I spun around to assess the situation and realised that my 'attacker' was actually a drunk homosexual under the impression that as a white man I too was that way inclined. I thought at the time his nose was lucky that I wasn’t a Russian truckie, but later experience taught me that maybe he was unlucky. More ports of call Further downstream I hit the town of Xunke the day before a festival celebrating the culture of the indigenous Oroquen people. I managed to wangle free tickets for the performance and witnessed colourful dancing, soulful singing and amazing acrobatics. From their style I assumed these folk were gatherers rather than hunters, and later forays to the forests confirmed this as I saw them collecting wild mushrooms in huge baskets slung over their backs. I realised just how lucky I had been to get tickets when I saw the size of the crowds that had gathered for the free outdoor encore, held at No. 2 Middle School. There was a beautiful firework display and much merriment throughout the night. When I hit the sack I wasn’t too amused to be kept awake by room-mates who were constantly questioning me. Their status as prime source of annoyance was superseded by some boys in green; the army had come and were demanding me to recount my life history. It was gone midnight. I answered their questions, showed them my ID and thought this would establish my legality and cause them to leave me the hell alone. It didn’t however, as these kids were convinced that I was their new foreign friend. It took hours to get rid of them. I had cycled 140km, was quite drunk and practically naked. I didn’t need this! The next day I realised why I had caused such a stir. The town does indeed have Russians shoppers who come across on a small passenger boat. They are all day-trippers and come to buy their 50kg worth of tack before leaving in the evening. This means the town has the bizarre concept of Russian and non-Russian days. I suppose Heihe must have Russian and non-Russian seasons, as the freezing of autumn and thawing of spring are amenable neither to the boats of summer nor to the vehicles which drive over the ice in winter. How odd! The next port seemed to run on this principle too, but I didn’t stay long enough to see a Russian day, and no-one knew when the next boat was coming. I did see beautiful Russian dachas on the other bank, and I made friends with a Chinese salesman peddling soviet artefacts. The ports were coming thicker and faster now, and the next one allowed me to see some permanent Russian residents. Well, prostitutes actually, and they operated on a Chinese island in the border river. More mapc was to be had here too. After a few more brushes with those shady officials collectively known as the authorities, I arrived at Tongjiang, where I did my duty as a yellow(ish)-haired fellow and posed for photos looking out over Russia. And then I made it to the port of Fuyuan which is further east than Lord of the East (Vladivostok). I spied the disputed islands that would be the easternmost point in China, were it not for Russian claims. Pravda, the Russian news service, recently reported the burning of a historical Russian map which supported the Chinese claim. Things aren’t particularly heated now, and the islands have become stepping stones for caviar smugglers, of all things. I managed to miss the easternmost village due to a miscalculation (d’oh), and had 80km of cycling negated thanks to the powers that be. They did give me yellow tomatoes though, and one can’t argue with free foodstuffs.  I headed south alongside the Wusuli/Ussuri River, site of unpleasant border skirmishes in the late ‘60s. The only noteworthy port was Raohe, home of Danya. She’s Chinese but makes her living selling cheap goods to Russian truckies, such as Sasha, Sasha, Sasha and Valerie. Day in, day out she flirts with the drivers and keeps track of numerous transactions in yuan and roubles, 60 of which she gave to me for free. I’m guessing that in the 11 years since the opening of the border, she’d dealt almost exclusively with Russians, as her Chinese was coloured with a Russian accent. Bizarre. I had to take evasive action from her shop when I found myself fending off homosexual advances from Sasha III. Maybe he should operate on the Blagoveshchensk-Heihe run; I could put him in touch with someone who’d be keen to receive him!Lakes, mountains and industrial eyesores I was now riding a gearless beast that serve the Chinese peasants. I loved my new bike; it was faithful, dependable and strong as an ox. And it was taking me down roads that weren’t marked on maps and through another series of villages that had numbers rather than names. I managed to overshoot my turning and vowed that this would be my last night under canvas due to the coldness that had been creeping in, day by day. My track terminated in some fields right by the border river, and so I had to turn around. Luckily the police chose this time to appear and so I got a life in their 4WD to the nearest station. As I went through the usual drill of Qs and As the cops told me about a German who they’d encountered in the past. I gathered he was hiking with a huge backpack and couldn’t speak any Chinese. It must have been one hell of a walk from where he started, as this was miles from anywhere major. I guess they think all foreigners are mentalists now. Xingkai Hu/Lake Khanka was immense and stretched beyond the southern horizon into Russia. Yep, Russia is south of China at this point. Whilst the surface area is huge, the depth is tiny, reaching a maximum of four metres.. Actually, there are two lakes; the big one and the little one, with a causeway between the two. The little one is calm, serene and peaceful with fishermen idling in their boats between the reeds, lilies and grasses. The big one has 40km of continuous beach lapped by gentle waves. Oh, and a JCB drove through it about 50m from the shore. There was a tiny fishing village in the middle of the causeway which almost became the first visually-appealing Chinese settlement I’d seen (cheap red-bricked houses and dusty streets are the norm whereas I love houses built of local stone). The only bad thing was the road, which was too sandy for cycling for the most part. However, skinny-dipping more than compensated, and the coldness didn’t detract from my refreshment after X days without washing. There was a border crossing on the western shore where Chinese hawkers scrambled to make some final sales to busloads of returning Russians. I had my reasons for wanting to avoid the city of Jixi. I could see from the map it had too many qu (districts) and was therefore likely to be an immense urban conurbation. So I decided to take an alternative route through the countryside on minor roads skirting the border. A policeman picked me off in the mountains and detained me. He phoned through for the border police, who drove me to the city police, who conducted an interrogation with an English teacher there to translate. The best question was 'tell me your life history from middle school onwards'. They kept me beyond midnight, confiscated some photographic film and made me confess to the error of my ways. They did put me up in a hostel for the night though. And so I saw Jixi after all. It didn’t disappoint; there were smokes in various hues of grey, brown and yellow (they must have'industrial snow' in the winter), a cooling tower in the city centre and open-cast coal mines in the suburbs. It did have a shop with the sign 'PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA: REGISTERED PROSTHETICIST' which had legs and the like in the window. All was forgiven then. Food for thought Lonely Planet notes that most nationalities understand that a train compartment is the property of a company and they are merely temporary residents. The Russians, however, take over the entire train. And they sure have the run of the border-towns too. Nowhere is this more evident than Suifenhe, gateway to Vladivostok. Anyone who’s anyone in the town speaks Russian. There are even Russian-only nightclubs. On arrival I had borsch and steak with a couple of Chinese architects. They could sure knock back their ale, and were trying their best to set me up with Masha, a waitress. In other parts of China these girls are known as fuwuyuan, which supposedly translates as 'maid' or 'waitress'. However, the lack of respect people give them as they holler 'FUWUYUAN!' means I can never bring myself to make such a translation. The Russian names for the Chinese waitresses were a nice touch and made for better customer-client relationships, which my comrades were keen to advance even further. Masha was quite cute, but Sonya was infinitely more desirable! The shop assistants had Russian names too, and their stores bothered stocking large sizes for the oversized lao maozi (hairy ones) that they served. How very refreshing! In the morning I got up and intended to just walk around and blend in. I saw a procession of children brightly dressed and wielding flags. I followed them and asked what they were up to. They were college students, and it was their sports day. Nearly all of them learnt Russian, not English. And they had foreign teachers, as I discovered when I got to the sports ground. Two of them were middle-aged and the other was a young girl fresh out of uni. They were all lovely people. I stayed a week, semi-voluntarily taught English and was sorry to have to leave, just as I had been in Manzhouli. Even the gateway to Russia was a recognised tourist location, and so I wasn’t risking any more run-ins with the authorities. I felt safe and secure. My favourite road sign of the entire journey came on the stretch from Suifenhe to Dongning. It informed me that the next 14.5km would be of a gradient of 5.1%. Downwards! ‘Twas some payback for all those signs back in the mud roads that informed one of an incline when I had already dragged my bike uphill for a kilometre or so. The port was located in a village teeming with ethnic Koreans and I stayed with one such family in their restaurant. They served me dog soup for breakfast - pretty tasty stuff. I was to sample foreign fare again in the early afternoon, thanks to the occupants of a car I saw going the other way. After seeing me, they stopped and got out. 'Ni hao,' said I, using the Chinese greeting. But then I realised that the passenger was a fellow laowai (foreigner). 'Zdradsvuite,' I tried, mimicking the Chinese mimicry of the Russians. She said something that I didn’t catch as her serious-looking husband emerged, so I tried: 'Angleeskee. Nyet russkie.' To which she responded, 'I am German. Where are you from?' What the hell was a middle-aged German couple doing on a dirt track in the Chinese hinterlands? They didn’t look like backpackers and they weren’t. Werner Schloesser was an engineer working at the VW factory down in Changchun, which I described in my winter report as 'an industrial monstrosity that served as a transit point only'. His wife had come over for holiday and they were driving round some Chinese cities. They’d been to Jilin City, for which I’d noted 'taxi driver informed us that meteorite museum was closed and that there was nothing of interest in city.' And their next destination was Jixi (home of the cooling tower)! Inexplicable decision making on his part, but we allow for bad judgement from those who not only come bearing beer, but also provide authentic German pumpernickel and leberwurst. What on earth would I be eating for dinner, I wondered. Or would I be eaten for dinner? This last thought emanated from the fact that my road, brilliantly described by the Germans as a 'katastroph', went through a Siberian tiger reserve. One of the English teachers at Suifenhe had told me the tale that a tiger had jumped 4m over a fence and killed a man last week. I didn’t believe him then and believed him even less now; there were no fences! And night was falling. I cautiously crossed the provincial boundary - what a welcome to Jilin! Luckily there was a battalion of trucks stuck in the mud. The entire road was blocked and so these guys weren’t going anywhere till the morning. I spent seven hours shivering in the cab of a truck - where’s baijiu when you need it? That stuff would have warmed me up! I made an early getaway and noticed the frost on the ground - this was the first sub-zero night of the journey and I was glad that I’d be finishing soon. After negotiating the tiger reserve without further incident, I was really in Korean territory. Signs were bilingual and all the locals were ethnically Korean. I was homing in on North Korea and the end of my mission.  End of the roadThe last day brought a few firsts. First tunnel, first snake (road-killed though) and first crash (caused by first first). In places the scenery became eerily reminiscent of that from the first day; brown grass failing to cling to sand dunes. I was riding alongside the Tumen river and attempting to travel to the tip of a tiny finger of China wedged between Russia and North Korea. I didn’t rate my chances, especially seeing the extent of the military presence in these parts. However, I passed a bilingual sign which said 'UN World Peace Park 11km' and wondered how many people had benefited from the English display. There can’t be too many westerners that have made it to this neck of the woods, even though the Chinese designate the tripoint as a tourist attraction! From the license plates of cars I gleaned it was enough to attract people from other provinces. At the end of the cul-de-sac was a small hill, complete with a military watchtower and a civilian observation tower. From the tower one could see three countries at once and the bridge linking the other two. One could even see the Sea of Japan, from a landlocked province no less! Hmm, next time I should make use of this knowledge in the form of sucker bets. The method being, I bet a Chinaman that I can see the sea from Jilin Province. If his geography is up to it, he will passionately argue that this can’t be done as Jilin has no coastline. Then it’s time to introduce the subject of renminbi (people’s money), produce the proof, and win myself a cool 100 yuan. Sure beats teaching! Having seen glimpses of Russia for more than 4,000km, I am deadly curious to know what life is like on the other side. And so I think I’ll pick up from where I left off. Well, on the other side of the bridge, in any case. Yes folks, I’m planning to cycle from North Korea to Norway; two countries that could barely be closer in an encyclopaedia yet could hardly be further apart in terms of politics and lifestyle. And they are bridged by a single nation: Russia. North Korea to Norway by bike. Trans Siberia sans train. Insanity. Call it what you will, it’s my next little game."  Click here >> for more China information |
Relevant Adverts |
© Copyright 1998-2007 - The Gapyear Company Ltd - Company Registration No: 3597000
