I knew little about the first city on my route, Jinan (济南), except that it was know as the ‘city of springs’ - and that it too far away to get there in one day by bike. My map app showed no other major towns en route along the Yellow River, but it did show there was a hot spring complex at a place called Gaoqing (高青), about half way to Jinan, although some distance from the river. I made that my goal.
In the first few days of my bike ride I would be learning from basic mistakes and adopting habits that would become part of my daily cycling routine for the next few months. One of these was the need to pay close attention to the map when leaving a town or city in the morning. Distracted by listening to my music on headphones, I got lost in a muddle of traffic lights and toll road barriers on the outskirts of Dongying and had to do a long detour down side roads to regain the main highway.
I was still in the oilfield territory and came across many small pumpjack installations in the most unlikely places, including children’s playgrounds and in backyards of residential apartments. Once I was out of town I entered a flat semi-rural landscape that would have provided pleasant cycling under blue skies if not for one thing: trucks. The road was choked with the coppery-red coloured heavy duty trucks, which in Australia we would call a semi trailer. They roared past every few minutes, often travelling in groups of four or five trucks, and often far too close for comfort. To add insult to injury the trucks would often give a startling blast on their air horns as they passed.
Stupidly, I had brought only a small wing mirror for my bike, which proved inadequate for keeping a look out for trucks approaching from behind. So for much of the day I was forced to keep glancing over my left shoulder, a habit that was contrary to my natural instincts to look to my right.
The highway I was riding on was a secondary road as it had been superseded by a recently-built multi-lane motorway that ran parallel to it. These toll roads excluded bikes and other small vehicles, but the old highways were still clogged with trucks and other large vehicles, whose drivers presumably did not want to pay the added expense of a toll road.
Nevertheless, the route took me along some pleasant rural roads with occasional glimpses of the Yellow River. Riding atop the embankment running alongside the river I passed orchards and crops of vegetables that looked like spring onions and cabbages. I was also surprised to see fields of grain, because my preconception of rural China was of rice paddies. The weather was sunny and mild, ideal for cycling - and also for picnics, judging by the large number of local people who were lolling in hammocks or sitting around small barbecue arrangements by the riverside.
I’d expected this part of the China trip to be running through industrial areas with lots of factories and air pollution, but instead found myself pedalling through a rural landscape under blue skies, that might almost have been in central France. The trees were in blossom and there was some kind of fluff floating in the breeze. On one section of the river path I had to cover my face with my scarf because there were caterpillars dangling down from threads from the trees.
Another early lesson I learned on that second day of cycling was that spending six hours in the saddle leads to a sore backside and chafing of the thighs, even with the best Brooks leather saddle. By the end of the day I was continually shifting around my seating position to try to ease the discomfort. I had resisted using the electric power assist until then, so it was a relief to have it kick in and speed me over that last few kilometres to my destination.
The hot springs complex at Gaoqing was a sprawling array of grand buildings, like one of the more garish Las Vegas hotel strips. And yet like most of the hotels I stayed at in provincial China, the room cost less than the price of a bunk bed in a Sydney backpacker hostel. I’d pre-booked online via WeChat but was nevertheless apprehensive that hotels in such off-the-beaten-track areas as this might refuse to accept me, as a foreigner.
The reception staff were certainly surprised to see me, but became more relaxed and assured when they realised I spoke some Chinese. They struggled to read the English details in my passport and so we worked together to obtain the details they had to provide for the online police registration form.
“Which of these is your surname?” they would ask, pointing at my passport names. “What is this month ‘O-C-T’ in Chinese?”.
I would soon learn to have all the relevant information ready for hotel reception staff: the most important of which seemed to be a Chinese phone number.
An official Public Security Bureau sign on the reception desk listed the onerous rules for hotel registration, and warned of big fines for providing false or incorrect information. The cartoon figures of a policeman and policewoman on the poster also warned hotel residents against engaging in the ‘Three Evils’ of drugs, gambling and prostitution on the premises.
There were also warnings about scams, and more worrying for me, a stern instruction from police to uphold national security and be vigilant for anyone trying to ‘steal state secrets’. The hotel staff, however, did not seem to view me with suspicion.
The hot springs were actually just a couple of pools of greenish water in one wing of the hotel, enclosed in a glass conservatory. I had the main pool to myself except for one other older man who asked me if I was Russian. I told him who I was and about my plan to cycle along the Yellow River, in response to which he reeled off a list of places I should visit along the way. Unfortunately I could barely understand a word of what he said because of his strong Shandong accent. As usual in such situations I just nodded to him and offered an occasional “shi ma?” (是吗？‘is that so?’) which seemed to keep him happy.
Refreshed from my soaking in the pool, which had also removed the grime from the road, I went to look for something to eat. There wasn’t much on the streets around the hotel, except for barbecue stalls offering skewers of various meats, seafood and vegetables. I had to walk for half an hour through the warm evening air to find a restaurant that served up anything I recognised. Still uneasy about the notion of eating noodles for dinner, I opted for the basic staple of stir-fried egg and tomato. The friendly lady owner brought out her children and their friends to see the exotic foreigner, and as I would experience on a daily basis, they all asked if they could take a selfie with me: “her ge yin ma?” (和个影吗?) .
The next morning I set off early towards Jinan on a route I’d picked out from Google Earth, which differed from the Gaode app’s suggested bike itinerary. Wanting to avoid the main highway and its convoys of heavy trucks, I noticed there was a small canal-like waterway, the Xiaoqing (小清河), that ran from Gaoqing almost all the way into the city some 120 kilometres away. It was a good choice.
There was an almost empty service road that ran alongside the canal and it took me through a pleasant rural landscape of wheat fields under sunny skies for the whole of the next morning. For lunch I stopped at a small town called Weiqiao (魏桥) where I found a halal (清真, qingzhen) restaurant offering beef noodles. The owner became enthused when I told him I was aiming to cycle to the upper reaches of the Yellow River.
“That is where we are from! We are not local people, we are Muslims from Kanbula in Qinghai province. You definitely must visit there, it is a beautiful place,” he said.
Back on the riverside road I was in a good mood and counting down the kilometres towards Jinan when I heard a disconcerting sound of twanging from the rear wheel. One of the spokes had come loose. I stopped and tried to secure it with a bit of gaffer tape, but it continued to work loose when I resumed riding, producing a nagging ‘tick’ with every turn of the pedals. Worried that I would face further broken spokes and even possibly loss of wheel stability, there was nothing I could do except continue on as carefully as possible towards Jinan, still some 40 kilometres away.
Fortunately, I was able to cycle into Jinan without further incident, but the broken spoke was not a good omen for a bike that I had expected to carry me a thousand kilometres along the Yellow River into the centre of China.
Jinan was a modern but anonymous industrial city of 10 million people. I checked into a cheap hotel amid the shopping malls of the city centre and bought myself a couple of German beers as a reward for completing the day’s 120 kilometre ride with a broken spoke.
“You’ve got too much weight over the rear wheel, these bikes are not designed for long distance touring with heavy loads,” the manager of a Dahon dealership in Jinan told me the next morning.
I was lucky to find that an anonymous city like Jinan had a Dahon specialist shop, and especially one with a young owner who was willing to take an interest in an unfamiliar Dahon e-bike model.
“You have to understand that the Dahon design is basically for a simple city pedal bike, not an e-bike,” he told me, as he lifted my bike onto a frame for repair.
“By putting a heavy battery in the seatpost, Dahon has put extra stress on the rear wheel already, even before you add the weight of your panniers. If you look at new e-bike designs they have stronger frames and spokes to cope with the additional weight and forces from the motor,” he explained.
As he went about fixing my bike, he tutted and sighed as he found more problems with its setup.
“Whoever sold you this has failed to do a pre-sale service. It’s like it just came out of the factory and has never been adjusted,” he said. The spokes needed tightening and aligning, the chain was too slack and the brakes and gears had to be calibrated.
“But can you fix my bike enough so I can continue my journey?” I asked him.
“I can, but it will cost you,” he replied, grinning.
After an hour of adjustments and servicing, the Dahon guy returned my bike to me, ready for the road. The bill was 150 yuan ($20). A bargain, if it kept me cycling.
With the rest of the day off in Jinan, I wanted to go see the springs for which the city was famed. But first I had a lunch date with some ‘fans’.
Prior to my trip I had been posting in Chinese on the social media site Xiaohongshu (Rednote) about my impending Yellow River tour, and this had elicited comments and suggestions from people who lived along the route. One message was from a female follower in Jinan called Xizi, who invited me to lunch to try some local cuisine. I had accepted the proposal without really thinking about it, but as I made my way towards the fancy restaurant she had suggested, I realised it resembled the classic ‘tea house scam’ situations that I had read about in posts from foreigners in places like Shanghai.
"Never go to an unfamiliar restaurant with an unknown female who you’ve just met online,” the victims warned. ‘You will be presented with a massive bill and be forced to pay up by local thugs,’ they said.
I almost cancelled the lunch appointment at the last minute but was glad I didn’t because Xizi and her two friends turned out to be delightful and generous company and the best young ambassadors for Jinan and Shandong.
The restaurant they chose was a place that specialised in Shandong ‘Lu Cai’ (鲁菜) cuisine, which I initially misheard and thought they were ordering fish dishes (‘Yu Cai’, 鱼菜). But once they corrected me and adapted to my basic grasp of Chinese, we settled in for a marvellous lunch.
We started off with self-made pancakes comprising a paper-thin wrap into which we added a range of fillings including scallion, pickled vegetables, baked dough spirals, and spicy sauces. This was followed by an array of dishes that included creamy soup, home-style tofu and a variety of local vegetable and beef dishes mixed with noodles. All quite different from the spicy foods with rice that I was accustomed to having in Guilin.
Xizi and her friends told me about the cycling trips they’d done locally and about their travel to places such as Thailand and Nepal. And they had lots of questions about my trip, what gear I had brought and what my tips were for trekking and cycle touring.
“We don’t see many foreigners in Jinan, it’s our first opportunity to talk with you and share your ideas,” they said.
They presented me with a few small gifts and we parted after an hour or so, with me having a much greater appreciation for Shandong food and the gentle but warm hospitality of Shandong folk.
I tried to walk off the heavy lunch by visiting the Baoutu Springs Park (趵突泉) where water from artesian wells bubbled up into ponds set amid classical Chinese buildings. The park had a memorial hall to one of China's most famous female poets, Li Qingzhao (李清照), of the Song dynasty. Her works are said to portray the sorrow, homesickness and hardships that she experienced when forced to flee from the north to south China during an invasion of Shandong in the 10th Century.
Jinan was also famous for its night markets at Furong Jie (芙蓉街), but since I’d just stuffed my face with Shandong food at lunchtime, I just used the narrow alleyway as a thoroughfare to get to the city’s other landmark, the ornamental lake of Daming Hu (大明湖). Passing along the restored historical canal street of Qushuiting (曲水亭), this provided me with my first experience of seeing China’s Hanfu (汉服) traditional costume culture up close. There were rows of shops dedicated to hiring out garments for people of both sexes to dress up in a modern interpretation of Han clothing. The Hanfu shops also provided makeup and hairstyling, and their customers could be seen walking up and down the lanes, posing for photos by the waterside.
In Yellow River Odyssey, Bill Porter says that on his visit to Jinan in the winter of 1991 the park around Daming Lake’s was almost deserted. He hired a rowing boat on the lake and paddled out to an island where in the year 745 the writer Du Fu (杜甫) and calligrapher Li Yong (李邕,) were supposed to have spent an evening drinking wine together in a pavilion. In the spring of 2025, Daming Hu was anything but deserted: it was busy with young people strolling around the lake, which was hemmed in by high rise office buildings. At the entrance gates were passenger trikes decorated with fairy lights and blaring out modern Mando-Pop.
Reading Porter’s description of the city highlighted to me just how much had changed in 30 years: on his visit there had been only one makeshift bridge over the Yellow River at Jinan, with road traffic passing unsteadily over a pontoon arrangement based on barges. Back then the city residents had to help pile up sandbags along the riverbank at this time of year to prevent the high spring season water levels from overflowing and flooding the streets. Now the river levels were regulated by a system of multiple dams, and there were multiple bridge crossing points to the north of Jinan.
After reading further chapters of Porter’s book, I decided to follow his example and make a detour south from the Yellow River to visit Taishan (泰山) and Qufu (曲阜), the heartland of Confucian tradition.
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