Wild Trials in China
Another World

©2007 Nancy Black & Isaac Hernandez

China was chosen as the destination for the maiden voyage of the Hans Rey Adventure Team, for several reasons. One: to seek high adventure and exotica, mixed with fine riding. Two: To search out and present to the world the pyramids rumored to rival Egypt's. Three: in search of aliens. 

     As I hung up the phone, I couldn't help but be impressed by Hans' sheer enthusiasm. He'd seen a documentary that proposed that a hill tribe of big-headed dwarved people, known as the Tro Pa, live in a remote valley in China, descendents from an alien race who'd crash landed there from the vicinity of the star Sirius some five thousand years ago. According to the story, the Chinese government was hiding their existence, and that the group was isolated from contact with outsiders, leaving their religions and mythology full of reference to their "otherworldly" origins. Though it sounded completely farfetched, I was intrigued; and Hans, after his research, was excited to the point of wanting to go where no cameras had gone before: to take the newly-formed Adventure Team on the alien trail. And why not? Who says the X-Files isn't some bizarre form of art imitating life?
     Of course, there would be excellent riding. That went without saying. And daredevil thrills performed before crowds (or at least our everpresent video cameras). To showcase Hans' particular look at adventure, the Team had been formed: Hans himself, his wife Marissa, working as coach and second cameraperson, Jeff Neu, the cameraman who was shooting footage for a documentary to air on Outdoor Life Network, and myself, the photographer. This would be well-documented adventure; without a doubt. For this reason, the Chinese Tourist Board welcomed us with open arms; providing meals, transport and accomodations, as well as a series of official guides and meetings with local dignitaries.
 In Leshan the name of our local guide was Xie Wei. We asked her what it meant, as we noticed that most of the women guides we'd met had chosen English names for themselves, like Linda, our guide from Beijing, who accompanied our trip. "Sex," she replied, with an innocent smile. "Xie means 'sex'. And Wei means 'great';  'Great Sex'."
     This was a stunning thought for us; we'd been briefed early on to avoid talking about sex or politics behind the Bamboo Curtain; and here was this tiny young woman named Great Sex. Linda clarified matters for us after Xie Wei had left. "Xie means 'thanks', but she has a very thick accent."
     The first official destination of the Adventure Team was Xi'an in the Shaanxi Region, now one of China's most popular tourist destinations; more specifically, the site of the unearthing of the famed Terra-Cotta Army. Six thousand completely individual soldiers, molded after their real-life counterparts some two thousand years ago, guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi (First Emperor Qin, pronounced "Chin", hence the name "China"), who unified China for the first time in 221 BC. The vast tomb, 225 square kilometers, was discovered by a farmer who found "a head with evil eyes" while digging for a well, and holds not only a life-size army of molded and baked clay, but all of the 700,000 craftsmen and any childless concubines of the emperor, who were ordered killed by Qin's eldest son upon his death. At the time, this represented the slaughter of one tenth of China's working population. Needless to say, Qin and his dynasty were not very popular after that.
     At the time of that first dynasty there were 20 million people in the newly-unified China, of different ethnicitties. Now, two thousand years later, there's an estimated population of 1.3 billion: one fifth of the world's total population, despite the efforts of the Chinese government to reduce the birth rate to one child per family. And all of them (or so it seems) have bikes. A heavy, steel Chinese bike, one speed, built to withstand a hurricane, will cost a month's salary; but it provides the predominant local transport, serving as a truck, commuter vehicle or the family minivan. What would the world be like if all these people drove cars? Hans tried to ride a "truck" bike, heavily loaded with coal. "Us pro mountain bikers think we're studs," he remarked, exhausted after a short haul. "I have so much respect for these guys."
     Surrounded by Chinese tourists, and with an open trench full of long lines of terra cotta soldiers, Hans put on his first show, threatening to topple into the trench and inspiring concerned gasps from the throng. 
     Hans had brought two bikes along: a GT Zaskar trials mountain bike (rigid-tail), and a full suspension bike. Each were worth more than a year's salary for a government worker. Luckily, the trials bike worked perfectly straight out of the box (as opposed to the suspension bike, which later dumped Hans in a ditch of muddy water along a narrow rice paddy trail when the gears slipped).
     After checking out the morning Tai Chi group gathered below the ancient Xi'an city walls, we followed Hans up to witness a truly wild ride: along the narrow edge of the wall itself, witha drop of 12 meters (about 36 feet) mere centimeters from his tires. More than 600 years old, the wall itself is quite wide on top, enough to drive a chariot across to survey the city from above. But the higher edge of the wall measured no more than 40 centimeters; those few souls who saw this feat turned away to shield themselves from the lunacy of the strange blond man. A gear slipped at these heights could have proved tragic.
     Every time we requested of our guides a visit to Hui Long, the village of the indigenous hill tribe suspected of being alien descendents, the resounding response was "no". "It's flooded," we heard more than once (later we learned that the floods were several thousand miles south). "It doesn't exist," we heard; or finally, in irritation, "there are some places that foreigners may not go." 
     So we went to the pyramids. Rather than being enshrouded in mystery and hidden away, they were quite the tourist attraction: huge mounds of dirt and stone, said to be the burial place of emperors and generals, covered with vegetation to make them appear as symetrical mountains dotting a flat landscape. More than seventy of them cover the Saan'xi region. In some 5000-year-old monastery documents they are said to be "very old", suggesting that they predate the chinese dynasties, and maybe even written history. Others are more modern, such as the tomb of General Huo Qubin, where Hans regaled the tourists with his psycho antics. Though the pyramids are as large in some cases as those of Egypt, few have been excavated, and therefore mystery remains. After a slippery climb up the tomb of Empress Wu, Hans took the opportunity for a steep downhill run, taking advantage of terrain unfettered by stone steps and roads. 
     Impressive as this was, it was perhaps overshadowed by the odd lifestyle that we encountered next: a village of cave-dwelling people. It being easier to carve one's house into the hillside that to build something that would need to endure long, heavy rains each year, folks here live in one small room carved into the clay. We were the real oddities here, though; old-timers and kids alike surrounded us, curious about our bikes, our clothes, and later, by the unorthodox things Hans did on a bike.
     "In China," Hans recounted sagely to the video camera, "wisdom is measured by the length of a man's beard. The longer the beard, the wiser the man. In fact, youth and beards don't go together, since the young man cannot be wise. And therefore it is considered rude for anyone but the old to wear one. Good thing I shaved my goatee before the trip."
     Wise or not, he's nothing if not persistent; but none of our guides would budge on the question of the "alien" hill tribe. So we went to Szechuan in southern Shaanxi, land of spicy food. With a quick stop in the region's capital city of Chengdu, we were on to Mount Emai, one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains. With more that thirty temples, it is said that every Buddhist should witness the sunrise from the peak of Emai Shan before dying. So that's where our kamikaze bus driver was taking us on a three hour ride in the rain that seemed far more dangerous than riding a bike on the edge of a tall wall.
     We found ourselves riding a gondola up to the Golden Summit in the dark, where hundreds of other tourists awaited us and the impending sunrise. At 3099 meters, the peak was a 35 kilometer hike up ancient and slippery stone steps. It's said that a visit to this sacred spot will ensure good health; and after a walk like that I can see why. I, with my bag of heavy camera equipment, was grateful for the gondola.
     At the top we found men with golden monkeys, who would literally throw the monkeys at the people passing by, then ask for money after coercing them into a photo. Hans remembered an old Chinese saying, "'With one monkey in the way not even ten thousand men can pass.' With that in mind I tried to avoid monkeys and tourists alike."
     Despite tourists and monkeys, the sunrise experience was as beautiful and inspiring as rumored. Hans decided to take the quick way down: the river. Flying down the wet bed itself, hopping from boulder to boulder, his defiance of gravity (and our subsequent recording of the feat) earned us all a well-deserved rest at the Bao Dua Monastery near the foot of the mountain, where we were scheduled to spend the night. Rooms with eight beds are rented here for about 30 cents a night per person, while private double rooms are about two dollars per person.      
     This was perhaps the most magical time of our trip; and one that has left the most lasting impression on me. A gentle rain, scented with incense, melted over centuries-old Buddhas carved in stone. Water lilies floated in a small pond. We sat on the sheltered steps above an enclosed patio, and just breathed it all in: the low drumming in the background as the monks chanted their evening worship; the sunset transition into dusk; and the overwhelming sense of peace. Bursts of lightning peeked in through the curved Chinese ceiling posts of the open patio.
   Chanting was to begin in the wee hours of the morning and to continue at intervals of about every hour for three or four hours. Far from disturbing my slumber, it added a peaceful background soundtrack to my well-earned dreams, having slept only three hours the night before. We re-juiced ourselves with sleep and inner peace; ready for more action.
In our search for great bike trails we ran into the head of the Greater Buddha, carved out of the side of the hill some 1000 years ago to protect the fishing boats below from being swallowed into a whirlpool in the turbulent river junction. Buddha did his magic; the rocks from the carving, which lasted for 90 years, fell into the water and filled the subaquatic hole that caused the whirlpool. We hiked 71 meters down the narrow stairs carved out of the rock; down to Buddha's toes, riding whenever possible on the slick trail, until we reached those enormous digits, each of them measuring 28 feet (about ten meters). Since when does a toe measure more than a foot? The perspective of the largest carved Buddha in the world from his feet was quite impressive, but so was the view from the top, overlooking the merging of three enormous rivers and the skyscrapers of the city of Leshan.
    We were to find a mountain biking paradise southeast of Leshan, for which we had to drive 160 kilometers north to Chengdu, and then another 400 kilometers south to the Shunan Sea of Bamboo, in the counties of Yibing and Jiangan. The driving was tough, but so was Mr. Tao, our local official host during our lunch stop in Zigong, who insisted that we drink several fierce shots of a liquor some call "dragon's breath", with 52 percent (not proof!) alcohol, after he declared that Hans was "very handsome, very sexy."
    Considering that our final destination after Yibing was again Chengdu, and fortunately without having to visit Mr. Tao on the way back, our trip turned into a 20 hour driving torture at the mercy of the most aggressive driver in China, who passed everybody in his way, whether there was visibility or not, as long as his horn was working.
Ultimately, the whole crazy ride was well worth it, for what we were to discover at the Sea of Bamboo: 12,000 acres (120 square km) covered with around forty different species of giant bamboo, with endless waterfalls. Unlike one might think, giant pandas don't live here but rather in the northern part of Sichuan. This forest is the home to bamboo fungus, bamboo frogs and bamboo snakes, which were served at lunch along with bamboo shoots cooked in hundreds of ways.

Performing in front of 7000 silent terracotta soldiers and about the same number of tourists.

The old bicycle wheel is this kid's precious toy.

Hans flying down the steps of the Xi'an city wall.

One of the farmers from the cave village near Xi'an City

A farmer checks out Hans riding on the narrow rice field paths.

Bicycles loaded with enough furniture to fill a home.
 

During a five hour thrilling ride in our van, we calculated that our driver pounded the horn over 5000 times. Buddha must have protected us - we made it back in one piece, but were certainly frazzled from constant honking and passing on blind corners. Ultimately, it was well worth it, for what we were to discover at the Sea of Bamboo: 12,000 acres (120 square km) covered with around forty different species of giant bamboo, with endless waterfalls. This forest is the home to bamboo fungus, bamboo frogs and bamboo snakes, which were served at lunch along with bamboo shoots cooked in hundreds of ways.

Hans rides on the top of the mountain that serves as a mausoleum.

At the Sea of Bamboo, the rivers are also fun to ride.

Climbing to the top of the General's pyramid.


    Riding can be tricky in the dense forest, as you may hit the hard bamboo winding through the narrow trails. Not many westerners have been here before (as this place is not in any tourist guide that we know of). For this reason, the local merchants were quite eager to sell to us, so Hans came home loaded with expressively carved bamboo masks with beards made from the root of the bamboo; each mask selling for two to three dollars.
    While in Yibing County we found a web of trails among giant bamboo and fern. From the top of the chair-lift, which they put in motion just for us, one could see why it's called the "Sea of Bamboo" as the vegetation goes on forever, disappearing into the fog on the horizon. In Jiangan County we fell in love with the waterfalls that poured into the valley and over trails; the names being as suggestive as the place itself: Rainbow Waterfall, Carefree Valley, Mirror Pond, Blue Dragon Lake and Fairy Lake among them. All the rain that had followed us along our journey finally paid off with beautiful waterfalls that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.
    We left many wonderful sites unvisited, but China is a vast country which could take several lifetimes to see and understand. Our official Chinese escorts outnumbered us most of the time, opening some doors while closing others. We were able to visit some very exclusive places, while others were made inaccessible. Still, whether riding ancient city walls or pyramids. descending sacred mountains, or riding on the edge of waterfalls, China lifted her veils to show us unimagined beauty, as well as ample mystery to inspire future visits. And if there are any aliens, their secret is safe; for the time being.

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