The ride north from Longmen into the Yellow River canyon towards Hukou waterfall was spectacular. I started the ride with some trepidation because Chinese cyclists told me there were no places to get food or water along this 70 kilometre stretch of the river. Leaving the ugly industry of Longmen behind me, I stayed on the Shanxi (east) side of the river, which the cyclists had told me was preferable to the road on the western (Shaanxi) side because it had less traffic, and especially fewer trucks.
I emerged from a short tunnel to see a beautiful scene: the river canyon extending northwards for many kilometres, and even better - the road had a cycle lane. The road was labelled as the ‘Yellow River Number One Scenic Highway’ (黄河一号旅游公路) and it was marked with the same blue, yellow and red stripes as I’d seen further south.
After passing a ‘stone forest’ of rock pinnacles I followed the road cut into the side of a steep cliff. The river here was narrow and the water green and clear, with occasional sandbars. As pedalled further north the terrain became wilder and more remote, with the road bridging several deep gullies extending down to the water. The dry reddish-brown sandstone rock and green scrub reminded me of the landscapes around Pittwater, north of Sydney.
Amazingly, there was almost no traffic and I had the road almost to myself. This was just as well because the constantly changing scenery had me stopping to take photos every few minutes. It was a sunny day and I enjoyed the ups and downs of the road as it skirted high cliffs then descended to sandy beaches alongside the river. The road was an engineering marvel of bridges and cuttings through the cliffs and appeared newly constructed.
Apart from a few signboards erected by the local Jixian (吉县) government promoting the scenic road, there were no facilities for the next 60 kilometres. Then I reached a bridge that brought more traffic onto the road, funnelled from a major east-west highway. For the last 10 kilometres or so into Hukou Falls the gorge widened and the road was lined with restaurants offering river fish and other dishes, until I reached the small town that served as the tourist centre for the waterfall.
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| Route map: Longmen to Hukou Falls (click on image to enlarge) |
It was a hot day as I checked into a guesthouse and dumped my bags in the room. With the lighter unloaded bike I went to explore the road ahead, to see the falls and investigate if it was possible to continue further north. My maps indicated that the riverside highway petered out after about 10 kilometres north of the Hukou falls, with a minor road looping back to the county town of Jiaxian.
And when I approached the entrance to the waterfall scenic area, I found the road blocked by a barrier, with admission only allowed on foot. I locked up my bike in the shade of some trees and bought a ticket. The waterfalls were another three kilometres further north, and I joined scores of other visitors to board a shuttle bus and be dropped off at another car park. It was obvious that no private vehicles - or bicycles - could proceed further north along the Yellow River from this point.
At Hukou the green waters of the river flowed for a few kilometres through a narrow channel formed by horizontal slabs of sandy-coloured rock. In some wider sections the waters flowed over the flat rock in several shallow channels, but at the point of the falls the waters of the river plunged into a single deep channel that churned up the water into a powerful white torrent. The public viewing area allowed you to walk out onto the rock slabs to within a few metres of the edge of the main fall, where the river dropped several metres into the rock channel. The spray created a mist that wet the rocks and provided a welcome bit of cooling during the hot part of the middle of the day.
The falls really were an impressive sight and it was possible to get an even more dramatic view of them from an underground chamber entered via some rather slippery steps. On the Shanxi side of the falls there were scores of visitors posing for photos by the barriers and stumbling among the nearby rock slabs. There were a few locals offering souvenir photo opportunities with dressed-up donkeys they had brought down as props. I felt sorry for these poor animals that looked like they were suffering under the heat of the sun.
After seeing the Shanxi side of the Hukou waterfalls I took the shuttle bus back to the entrance gate and crossed a bridge over to the Shaanxi side to view the falls from the opposite direction. There were more extensive tourist facilities on this side of the river, including shops, restaurants and even a theatre in a complex built on top of the rock slabs. The views were even better because it was possible to walk down the length of the falls and the subsequent water channel for almost a kilometre.
After the exhilaration of seeing the mighty falls, I returned to the hotel and sought shelter from the hot sun to ponder my next challenge: how to proceed further north without a road along the river. There were two options: on the Shaanxi side the road turned westward towards Mao’s old Red Army base of Yan’an, some 150 kilometres away deep in the loess hills. From there it would be possible to head north towards Inner Mongolia via the desert terrain of Yulin (榆林) and Ordos (鄂尔多斯), as described by my predecessor Bill Porter, who followed this route by bus in 1991. This would mean being away from the Yellow River for much of its next 500 kilometres wending through the Shanxi borderland.
A second option would be to try rejoin the river where the next major road ran alongside it, some 150 kilometres further north on the eastern side, at a place named Wubu (吴堡). However, this would require taking a road ‘inland’ away from the river through the remote hills of the Shanxi borderlands. I decided to go this way because I was curious to see the unvisited riverside towns that lay further north in this loess gorge of the Yellow River.
In the event, it took me three gruelling days to reach Wubu from Hukou, pedalling through dull rural landscapes along minor roads that were busy with coal trucks. The weather turned grey and overcast, which matched my mood of gloom as I encountered a series of mishaps that almost led to me giving up on this part of the river.
After backtracking eight kilometres south down the river to reach the major road junction, I faced a long steep climb up an arid gorge to get out of the river valley onto the hilly Shanxi plateau. After passing through the small town of Jixian, I realised with horror that my phone was missing from its handlebar holder, where I'd clamped it to follow the map app. I backtracked towards the town, desperately scanning the roadside in search of the phone that I now realised had become my lifeline because of its apps for navigating, booking hotels and paying for everything via WeChat. It also contained the only copies of all the photos and videos I had taken on the trip so far.
To my profound relief I was reunited with my phone thanks to a crew of road construction workers who had picked it up and kept it for me. They waved and yelled at me, holding up my phone, and told me it had fallen off when I had bumped over the potholes they were fixing. Thank goodness for the honesty of the ordinary Chinese ‘laobaixing’ workers!
I continued on towards my goal of a town called Xixian (隰县), which was a whopping 120 kilometres from Hukou. The hilly terrain and twisting roads drained my battery and I became frazzled by the constant flow of big red trucks, which in some places meant I had to pull over and let them pass because there was no road shoulder. The clay soil landscape was one of orchards, terraces of corn and clusters of beehives.
By mid afternoon when I rode into the obscure town of Daning (大宁) my batteries were almost drained. Not too keen on staying in this drab place for the night, I found an apartment block that had an electric vehicle recharging station in its car park. It had power sockets that could be paid for with an AliPay QR code, so I plugged in my bike batteries and sat studying my maps for an hour under the gaze of puzzled residents. When I had three bars of battery power I set off on the last stretch to Xixian.
I was now definitely off the beaten track, at least in terms of tourism. There was little to see or do in this part of the world except visit monuments to the martyrs of Zhu De’s Eight Route Army in the 1930s or the “Yellow Soil Plateau Folk Cultural Village”.
By the time I arrived in Xixian, it seemed to me like a great cosmopolitan metropolis. Feeling a bit isolated and lonely, I splurged an extra 100 yuan and checked into the best hotel in town to try raise my morale. The immaculately attired staff of the ‘Ritz Luxury Hotel' (Meihao Lizhi, 美豪丽致酒店) did a creditable job in welcoming this shabby cyclist into their pristine pastel-coloured lobby. Ignoring my scuffed jacket and oil-stained trousers they handed over my room card along with a complimentary box of preserved pears (‘our local speciality’) and even insisted on carrying my panniers to my room and wheeling the mud-splattered bike from the street into a corner of the lobby for safekeeping.
After I’d rinsed off the road grime my face (leaving dark marks across the pure white hotel towels), I went out to explore the eating opportunities in Xixian. Like many towns and cities in this part of the world it had a food street where locals sat at outdoor tables to enjoy hot pot and barbecued skewers of meat, seafood and vegetables. Amazingly for this obscure little town I found a craft beer shop next to my chosen restaurant, and found myself discussing the relative merits of peanut butter stout over melon IPA with the owner.
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| Route map: Hukou Falls to Xixian (click on image to enlarge) |
Torrential rain the next morning prevented me from making any progress towards Wubu and the Yellow River. I should have heeded the dark clouds when I set off from the Xixian hotel at 8am and heard the distant rumble of thunder as I passed an abandoned swimming pool on the outskirts of town. I had only made about three kilometres' progress along the highway north when the first big drops of rain started hitting the ground.
I sought shelter under a railway bridge as lightning flashed and the heavens opened. The wind picked up and soon I was getting soaked by the near horizontal rain. The only nearby shelter was a corrugated iron shed that served as a grain store, into which I wheeled the bike as the storm increased in intensity until it became a grey-out and rain hit the ground like bullets. The owner of the grain store beckoned me into his primitive living room, where his wife insisted I join them for a second breakfast of noodle soup.
“You’re crazy trying to get to Wubu on a day like this,” the farmer told me. “The weather forecast says it's going to rain all day. Stay here! Have a rest!” he insisted. Soaked to the skin after just a few minutes exposure to the elements, I had to agree. After an hour I returned to the 4-star comfort of the ‘Ritz’ hotel and spent the rest of the morning drying out my kit.
The rain eased off in the afternoon and I took a ride out to the local Buddhist monastery of Xiao Xitian (小西天). Perched on top of a narrow razorback pinnacle, the tiny temple looked like something from a fantasy tale. This was in a way correct, because the Xiao Xitian temple features as a setting in one of China’s most popular online role playing games, Black Myth Wukong, based on the monkey tales of the Journey from the West.
The temple was actually a nunnery, built during the Ming Dynasty. Its unique feature is a main hall containing a wealth of intricately carved coloured decorations: flowers, snakes, pagodas and deer, amid which sit almost 2000 gold-lacquered Buddhist figurines and statues. The temple is reached by a steep set of steps leading up to a series of small courtyards, each of which contains a Buddha shrine overseen by monks in saffron robes with a low background chant of ‘Namo Amituofu’.
I thanked the divine intervention of a rainstorm that had brought me to see this place.
After my sojourn through the hinterland of Shanxi I was eager to get back to the Yellow River. Getting there required another day of cycling up and down the loess hills and into cave house country. Rather than take the truck-plagued main highway in the direction of Wubu, I opted for a back road route that went over the highlands. The initial ascent from Xixian required a lot of pedal assist and the subsequent maze of roads through orchards would have been difficult to navigate were it not for the directions provided by the Gaode app, which often were counter to my instincts. In its bicycle mode, Gaode had a tendency to offer the most direct route, which in this case involved me following an empty road that became more remote and fragmentary until I was eventually pedalling on a gravel and mud track through a desolate landscape of clay mounds. Just as I was beginning to wonder where it was leading me, the track descended to the small town of Shilou (石楼), where I paused for some wonton soup.
After following the downhill course of a small river for an hour, the road again veered off up into the loess hills, through which I pedalled for the rest of the morning without seeing anywhere to stop. Sometimes the road followed the course of a railway line, which (unlike my road) had the advantage of tunnels to cut through through the hillsides. It wasn’t till after 1pm that I rolled into a scruffy collection of houses and workshops that made up the village of Zhangjiagetai (张家圪台村) in Liulin county (柳林县). It didn’t at first appear to have a restaurant, but I eventually found an unmarked door that led into a kitchen with a couple of tables and chairs. The only thing on the menu was the chewy and oily pancakes known as laobing (烙餠), which the lady owner chopped up into pieces for me to wash down with some soup.
Wary of any further incursions into the desolate hills on back roads, I opted at the next junction to follow a more substantial looking major road that took a slightly longer route towards Wubu.
On the descent through the loess hills there were more wind turbines and more arrays of solar panels. The eroded slopes also contained numerous examples of cave dwellings in various stages of neglect. Some of the tunnel entrance-like brick archways on the slopes looked to be abandoned and collapsing, others were being used for farm storage. But a few were obviously being maintained as living places, with wooden frame housefronts and window frames.
Some of the dwellings seemed to be half house and half cave, with regular walls and roofs built as projections from the hillside. Further down the valley I came across an elaborate white ‘mansion’ that combined more than ten archway cave rooms with more traditional Chinese walled courtyards and gatehouses. As I stopped to take some photos, one of the inhabitants emerged and I tried to chat with him. I couldn't understand much of this thick rural accent, but he allowed me to peek in behind the curtain of his cave home.
The single room was like a small tunnel of whitewashed brick with an arched roof. Inside he had a bed, wood-burning cooking stove, wardrobe, desk and a chest of drawers, and the modern amenities of a TV and refrigerator. A large water barrel was presumably either the water supply or washing facility.
There were several more such cave homes on the road down into Liulin town, which took me through numerous tunnels. But many cave homes appeared to be unused, and I could see why when the outskirts of the town revealed a series of newly-built gated communities of low-rise apartment blocks. Why live in a cave when you can have a condo?
A final haul over a wooded hill brought me into view of the Yellow River below some cliffs: once again a muddy brown colour, with the high rises of the town of Wubu across a concrete bridge.
There were no 4-star hotels in Wubu, which was little more than a single street of shops running alongside the river. I did find a basic hotel that would let me stay on the waterfront, where the manageress had a refreshingly direct and mocking manner when she heard of my plan to cycle up the Yellow River.
“But why? What is there to see and do?” she asked, incredulously.
Thankfully, like every other town, Wubu had the usual well-stocked supermarket located in the basement of its shopping mall, where I was able to get my supplies of yoghurt, milk and bread. After dinner I was so exhausted I dozed off in the armchair of my hotel room, waking with a start at 2.30am wondering where the hell I was.
It was good to be back on the river, because the cycling was for the most part easy on level roads and with little traffic. The next day passed in a relaxed blur of sunny weather, pedalling along the rediscovered ‘Yellow River Number One Tourist Road’ which ran along the eastern bank of the river. I’m not sure what happened to it between Hukou and Wubu.
This stretch of the river was for the most part sparsely inhabited, with just the occasional village or a pagoda visible on a distant hilltop. The cliffs were lower, the river wider and with many sandbanks, and there were occasional glimpses into dry river gullies and steep sided canyons running down from the Shanxi hillside. At one point there was a ‘stone forest’ of rounded stone hills that formed a massive natural amphitheatre around a flat expanse of grassland in the middle of which stood a single tree.
I saw no other tourists on this ‘Tourist Road’ until I arrived mid morning at Qikou (碛口), which appeared to be a tourism-related reconstruction of a traditional village. There were a handful of visitors to the shops and cafes along the waterfront, but the camel drivers had no customers for their rides.
Just north of the holiday village I paused at a place called Gaojiata (高家塔) where there was some kind of folk music and dance performance going on. A band of male and female drummers and pipers were playing enthusiastically in a car park to a small crowd of locals. The music was unusual and sounded un-Chinese, more like a demented Scottish reel. The drumming beat got faster and faster and the jigs of the performers more physical, until they reached a sudden crescendo and tailed off, then changing key to start off slowly on another tune that would also gradually build up.
Across the road a couple of people-carrier minivans were parked up next to some kind of memorial plinth. I walked over to see a group of about ten men dressed in the unofficial uniform of ‘leaders’: white shirt, black trousers and black collarless jacket. They were paying homage to the ultimate leader, Mao Zedong, who had stepped ashore at this point when he crossed the Yellow River on his historic move back into the centre of China in March 1948 after more than a decade in the relative isolation of Yan’an.
The inscription explained that by the second year of the ‘war of liberation’ the Red Army had routed the forces of Chiang Kai Shek’s US-backed nationalist KMT regime to the point that Mao and the Party leadership were able to shift their headquarters from Yan’an in Shaanxi to the city of Shijiazhuang in Hebei, virtually on Beijing’s doorstep.
Like Moses leading the exiled Israelites across the Red Sea, Mao’s crossing of the Yellow River was portrayed as an epic, epoch-defining moment, with a sculpture of him standing on the bow of a boat pushing through the waves of the Yellow River, looking resolutely forwards.
The inscription said: “After arriving in Shanxi on the east shore of the Yellow River, Chairman Mao disembarked and looked back at the vast land on the opposite side and said affectionately: “Northern Shaanxi is a good place! ”
“At this point, Mao Zedong ended 13 arduous seasons of revolutionary work in Northern Shaanxi …. This smooth eastward crossing is not only a turning point in the Chinese revolution, but also a new starting point in Chinese history,” it read.
The group of modern-day leaders looked me up and down with a bit of suspicion until they realised I could speak Chinese. When I told them of my cycling trip along the river they gave me gentle pats on the shoulder and condescending nods as if I was a minion who’d won a local government prize for patriotic work.
One of them who seemed to be the big potato in this group of ‘ganbu’ (干部, cadre), made a pronouncement that seemed directed more at his colleagues than at me:
“It’s good to see foreigners coming here to learn about China. You can see many more aspects of China’s deep history and culture by travelling along the Yellow River. I wish more of our young people would follow this example!”
They scuttled back into their minivans, with the youngest among them lingering behind to grab a selfie with me and add me as a WeChat contact. “Pay attention to safety on the road. Have a good trip!” he said.
After a few more hours of pedalling through increasingly arid hills beside the river, I arrived at the town of Jiaxian (佳县), perched on top of hills on the Shaanxi side of the river. Crossing the bridge, I could see no obvious route for the road up what appeared to be a vertical cliff face ahead of me. It was only when arriving on the western side that I saw the road led back down the river for a kilometre before taking a zig zag route up a gully.
Like its downriver counterpart of Wubu from the day before, Jiaxian did not offer much in the way of hotels or restaurants. It was a small backwater town with little reason for visiting or for drivers to stop while passing through. The small Yellow River Culture Museum had the usual displays of ancient pots and bowls, and a skeleton of a dinosaur. There were dioramas and 3D models of how the town had looked in ancient times, showing traders with camels bringing in goods from the nearby desert areas in the northwest. There were models of the flat bottom boats that were once rowed or hauled up by ropes when the river here was a key transport link.
As the owner of an inflatable kayak I was most interested in the display of a traditional raft made from a wooden frame of sticks supported by three rows of inflated sacks made from sewn-up goat skins. Because the Yellow River goatskin sacks were inflated by mouth, they inspired the phrase “Get to the Yellow River” being used in Chinese as a shorthand for bragging, as in ‘blowing a lot of air’.
Such rafts were in use until as recently as the 1980s for transporting people and goods along the river from Gansu and Qinghai down to Shanxi and beyond. Now the only examples to be seen are as tourist rides. There were very few boats to be seen on the Yellow River. Unlike the Yangtze, it was a shallow river and therefore unsuitable for all but the most flat-bottomed of craft.
As was to occur several times on this trip, there was no one in attendance at the Jiaxian guesthouse when I arrived. I rang the number left on a note on the locked door and the manageress arrived after ten minutes to open the door and check me in. She then departed and I didn’t see anyone around all evening. The door was locked the next morning when I tried to check out, and I had to drag my bags and bike out of the fire exit and down some stairs to get on the road again.
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| Route map: Wubu to Jiaxian (click on image to enlarge) |
With a level road along the river, sunny weather and good cycling conditions I set myself the ambitious goal of covering more than 130 kilometres the next day. The long distance might also be unavoidable because I could not see anywhere to stay along the river before the town of Fugu (府谷). The only hotels marked on my map would require a 20 kilometre detour away from the river to a place called Xingxian (兴县).
I set off into the unknown trying to preserve my battery power by only using the pedal assist where necessary. The morning’s ride was a pleasant one, with the surrounding hills and cliffs becoming lower and more arid, and the river wider and slower. It was a sunny day and after getting a red wind-burned face each day my habit had become to pull my scarf up to completely cover my face. I’d brought four litres of water but the growing heat of the day meant that I had used much of this up by the time I arrived at the 80 kilometre mark at midday. The landscape had changed to become a series of almost desert-like low rocky outcrops, many of the nearby hills had been subject to reforestation programs, covered in line after line of green saplings.
There was no town or village when I arrived at the road turnoff for Xingxian, and I had to make a decision whether to divert and find a hotel 20 kilometres away from the river or continue for another 50 kilometres to Fugu. I decided on the latter. Fortunately, I soon came across a roadside shack that advertised itself as a supermarket. As is the custom in China, the lady owner provided me with some boiling water to add to the instant noodles that I bought. She also let me use her power socket to add a bit more charge to my batteries.
The last section of river road to Fugu looked do-able, but I was soon to find that the road down from Xingxian delivered a steady stream of heavy trucks heading north. This became a nightmare as the small road had no shoulder on many sections and I was hemmed in by a crash barrier. The only safe option was to pull over when I saw trucks coming up behind me. Most of them kept a reasonable distance away from me, but occasionally I would get one that would brush within centimetres of my shoulder. It was a highly risky, nerve-wracking, white knuckle ride for the next 40 kilometres towards Fugu.
My relief at arriving at this relatively large town did not last long because I was turned away from the Vienna Hotel that I had pre-booked online. The embarrassed young receptionist informed me that the hotel did not accept foreigners and made polite excuses when I tried to bluff my way into staying.
I was tired and stressed from the day’s long bike ride, and it took all my Chinese language skills to make a pleading and convincing argument to stay at the hotel. I told her the Public Security Bureau had advised me to stay at the hotel. This was not strictly true, although this was a national PSB advisory notice, and I pointed out that the hotel had stated online that they accepted foreigners.
Repeating these claims - and that they already had my money eventually won her over, and I sighed with relief when she handed over my room card after I’d filled in an extensive registration form by hand.
I had almost made it to the lift with my bags when I was called back by a more senior manager who seemed much less sympathetic. She handed me a phone and told me it was the local police. A man’s voice told me tersely that local regulations forbade foreigners at all hotels in town except an expensive one down by the river. He gave me the name and rang off, brooking no argument.
Accepting defeat, I got the reception staff to cancel my booking and arrange a refund. They did at least call the other hotel and make a new booking there for me. I wearily put my panniers back on the bike and cycled about a kilometre down through the town centre to the alternative hotel where they accepted me without question. It had been a long day.
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| Route map: Jiaxian to Fugu (click on image to enlarge) |
第十一章 峡谷行与壶口飞瀑
从龙门北上壶口瀑布的黄河峡谷骑行堪称壮丽。出发时我有些忐忑——中国骑友警告这段70公里河岸没有补给点。将龙门的工业废墟抛在身后，我选择山西侧的路线（骑友说比陕西侧车少，尤其货车更少）。
穿过短隧道后豁然开朗：峡谷向北延伸数公里，更妙的是——这条路竟有自行车道！标注"黄河一号旅游公路"的路面，刷着与下游相同的蓝黄红三色标线。
经过石林景区后，道路切入峭壁。此处河面狭窄，碧水清可见底，偶见沙洲。越往北地形越荒凉，公路架在通往河面的深沟之上。赭红色砂岩与绿色灌木，恍若悉尼北部皮特沃特的风景。
难以置信的是几乎没车，整条路都是我的。不断变幻的景色让我每隔几分钟就停车拍照。晴空下，道路在峭壁与沙滩间起伏，桥梁与开凿的岩壁显示这是新建的工程奇迹。
除了吉县政府设置的景区标牌，60公里内毫无设施。直到一座桥将东西干道的车流汇入此路。临近壶口瀑布的最后十公里，峡谷渐宽，鱼餐馆林立，直至瀑布游客中心所在的小镇。
炎炎烈日中入住客栈后，我轻装探路。地图显示瀑布以北十公里沿河公路就会消失，只有小路绕回佳县城。瀑布景区入口设了关卡，只得锁车购票。换乘摆渡车三公里后，可见碧水在砂岩形成的窄槽中奔流——平缓处水分多股浅滩，至瀑布则汇入单一深槽，激荡成雷霆万钧的白浪。观景台可走到距瀑缘数米处，飞沫在正午酷热中送来清凉。
通过湿滑台阶进入的地下观瀑台视野更震撼。山西侧的游客挤在护栏边拍照，当地人身着戏服牵着作道具的毛驴招揽生意，这些烈日下的牲口看起来备受煎熬。
看完山西侧，我过桥转战陕西侧。这边旅游设施更完善，商店餐厅甚至建在岩板上的剧院一应俱全。沿瀑流行走一公里的体验更胜一筹。
回到客栈躲避烈日时，我思考着后续路线：两条选择——要么取道陕西侧前往150公里外黄土丘陵中的延安（毛泽东旧日根据地），再经榆林、鄂尔多斯的沙漠地带北上内蒙古（比尔·波特1991年乘巴士走过此路），但这意味着将远离黄河主河道500公里；要么尝试在更北150公里的吴堡重归河岸，但这需要穿越山西边陲的偏僻山地。出于对黄土峡谷中未知河畔小镇的好奇，我选择了后者。
从壶口到吴堡的这三天艰苦骑行，穿行在运煤车往来的乡间小路，单调的乡村景致与灰蒙天气同样令人沮丧。一系列意外几乎让我放弃这段黄河之旅。
南返八公里至主路岔口后，面临漫长的干热峡谷爬坡。途经吉县时惊觉手机从车把支架失踪——这个装载导航、支付和全部旅途照片的命根子。万幸修路工人捡到后高举呼喊，原来颠簸的坑洼路面震落了它。感谢淳朴的中国老百姓！
继续向120公里外的隰县进发。丘陵弯道耗光电量，赭红卡车流逼得我时常靠边让行。黄土地貌上散布着果园、玉米梯田和蜂箱。下午抵达大宁时电量告急，不愿留宿这个沉闷小镇，我在小区停车场找到扫码充电桩，在居民好奇目光下充了一小时电。
隰县堪称"国际大都会"。为提振士气，我豪掷百元入住当地最好的美豪丽致酒店。衣冠楚楚的员工毫不介意我脏污的骑行服，奉上特产梨脯礼盒，甚至将泥泞的自行车推进大堂保管。夜市烧烤摊旁竟有家精酿啤酒屋，老板与我讨论花生酱世涛与蜜瓜IPA的优劣。
次日暴雨阻路。躲进粮农的铁皮棚时，主人邀我共享第二顿早餐面条。"这种天气去吴堡是发疯！"老农的劝诫让我撤回酒店烘干装备。雨歇后造访小西天——这座明代比丘尼道场坐落在刀背般山脊上，主殿两千尊金漆佛像与精雕彩饰，恰是网游《黑神话：悟空》的场景原型。
穿越山西腹地后，我渴望重返黄河。选择避开货车主道的山路穿越黄土丘陵，高德导航的"捷径"将我引向愈发荒凉的土路，直到抵达石楼县。张家圪台村唯一的餐馆供应油润筋道的烙饼，女主人帮我切块配汤食用。
下山路上，废弃与有人居住的窑洞混杂。一幢结合十孔窑洞与四合院的白墙"豪宅"里，乡音浓重的主人允许我窥探他的窑居——刷白的拱顶单间配有床灶、衣柜和电视冰箱。柳林镇郊新建的封闭小区解释了为何许多窑洞遭废弃。
最后翻越山林时，浑浊的黄河与对岸吴堡高楼终于重现。这个沿河单街小镇没有豪华酒店，前台大姐听闻我的骑行计划时直言不讳："有啥可看的？"好在超市地下室能买到酸奶和德国啤酒。晚餐后我在扶手椅昏睡，凌晨惊醒时恍惚不知身在何处。
重归河岸的感觉真好——平坦的道路和稀疏的车流让骑行变得轻松。接下来的一天在阳光和恍惚中度过，沿着重新出现的"黄河一号旅游公路"在东岸骑行。不知为何这段路在壶口至吴堡之间消失了。
这段河道人烟稀少，偶尔可见远山顶上的村庄或佛塔。崖壁更低矮，河面更宽阔，沙洲遍布，时而能瞥见从山西丘陵延伸下来的干涸沟壑与陡峭峡谷。某处还有片圆形石林形成的天然剧场，中央平地上孤零零立着一棵树。
在这条"旅游公路"上未见其他游客，直到上午抵达碛口——一个为旅游重建的传统村落。水边的商店咖啡馆只有零星游客，牵骆驼的人无人问津。
在假日村北边的高家塔稍作停留时，正赶上一场民间歌舞表演。一群男女鼓手笛手在停车场为少量当地观众热情演奏。这音乐很特别，不太像中国风格，倒像疯狂的苏格兰里尔舞曲。鼓点越来越快，舞者的动作也越来越激烈，直到突然达到高潮后渐弱，转调开始另一首由缓至急的曲子。
路对面停着几辆商务车，旁边是某种纪念碑。走近看到十来个穿着"领导标配"的人：白衬衫、黑裤子加黑色立领外套。
我走过去，看到一群大约十个人，身着非正式的“领导人”制服：白衬衫、黑裤子和黑色无领夹克。他们正在向最高领导人毛泽东致敬。1948年3月，在相对孤立的延安待了十多年后，毛泽东从这里跨过黄河，踏上历史性的回归中原之路。
碑文解释说，到“解放战争”的第二年，红军就击溃了蒋介石在美国支持的国民党政权，以至于毛泽东和党的领导层得以将总部从陕西延安迁至河北石家庄，几乎就在北京的门口。
如同摩西带领流亡的以色列人渡过红海一样，毛泽东渡黄河被描绘成一个史诗般的、划时代的瞬间，一座雕塑描绘了他站在船头，劈波斩浪，目光坚定地向前看。
碑文写道：“毛主席到达黄河东岸的山西后，下船回望对岸的辽阔土地，深情地说：‘陕北是个好地方！’
至此，毛泽东结束了在陕北艰苦卓绝的13个春秋的革命工作……信上写道：“这次顺利东渡，不仅是中国革命的转折点，也是中国历史的新起点。”
这群现代领导人上下打量着我，带着些许怀疑，直到他们意识到我会说中文。当我告诉他们我骑车沿黄河骑行的经历时，他们轻轻地拍拍我的肩膀，居高临下地点点头，仿佛我是当地政府因爱国工作而获得奖励的下属。
其中一位似乎是这群“干部”中的头号人物，他发表了一番话，与其说是针对我，不如说是针对他的同事：“很高兴看到外国人来这里了解中国。沿着黄河旅行，可以看到更多中国悠久历史和文化的方方面面。我希望我们更多的年轻人能效仿他们！”
他们匆匆钻回商务车，最年轻的那位落在最后，拉着我自拍并加微信。"注意安全，一路顺风！"他说。
又骑行几小时穿过愈发干旱的河边丘陵后，我抵达陕西侧山顶上的佳县。过桥时，前方垂直崖壁上根本看不到路，直到西岸才发现道路沿河折返一公里，才以之字形爬上山沟。
与下游的吴堡类似，佳县没什么像样酒店餐馆。这个闭塞小镇的黄河文化博物馆陈列着常见古陶罐和恐龙骨架，立体模型展示着古代驼队从西北沙漠运货的场景，还有当年作为重要运输工具的木船模型。作为充气皮艇拥有者，我最感兴趣的是传统羊皮筏——木架上绑三排吹胀的缝制山羊皮囊。由于需要用嘴吹气，"到黄河"在中文里成了吹牛的代称。
这种筏子直到1980年代还用于甘青至晋陕的黄河运输，如今只剩旅游体验项目。黄河上几乎看不到船只——不同于长江，这条浅水河只适合平底船航行。
佳县宾馆再次无人值守。按门上纸条电话联系后，女经理十分钟赶来办理入住就离开了。次日退房时大门紧锁，我不得不带着行李从消防通道楼梯溜出去。
趁着河畔平路、晴好天气，我定下日行130公里的目标——因为府谷之前沿河没有住宿点，唯一标注的酒店需要绕行20公里到兴县。
清晨出发后，为省电量只在必要时开启助力。上午骑行很惬意，丘陵渐低渐旱，河面渐宽渐缓。烈日让我养成拉围巾遮脸的习惯。虽然带了四升水，中午抵达80公里处时已所剩无几。地貌变成沙漠般的岩丘，许多山坡覆盖着造林工程种植的树苗。
兴县岔路口没有村镇，我决定放弃绕行继续骑50公里到府谷。幸运的是很快遇到一家自称超市的路边小店，老板娘按中国习俗提供开水泡面，还让我充电。
最后这段路看似可行，但很快遭遇兴县北上的卡车流。没有路肩的小路加上防撞栏让我进退两难，只能听到后方来车就靠边停让。多数卡车保持距离，但偶尔会有擦肩而过的惊险。这40公里堪称神经紧绷的死亡骑行。
抵达府谷的 relief 很快破灭——预订的维也纳酒店拒接外宾。疲惫不堪的我用尽中文能力恳求，最终精疲力竭地倒在床上，连洗澡的力气都没有了。
我告诉她，是公安局建议我住这家酒店。这并非完全属实，虽然这是国家公安局的劝告，我还指出酒店在网上声明过他们接受外国人入住。
我反复强调这些说法——以及他们已经收了我的钱——最终说服了她。当我手写填写了冗长的登记表后，她递给我房卡时，我松了一口气。
我正要提着行李走到电梯口，一位更资深的经理叫住了我，但她似乎没那么同情我。她递给我一部电话，告诉我是当地警方的。一个男人简洁地告诉我，当地规定，除了河边一家价格昂贵的酒店外，镇上所有酒店都禁止外国人入住。他告诉了我酒店的名字，然后挂断了电话，不容任何异议。
我认输了，让前台取消预订并安排退款。他们至少给另一家酒店打了电话，帮我重新预订了房间。我疲惫地把驮篮放回自行车上，骑了大约一公里穿过镇中心，来到另一家酒店，他们毫不犹豫地收留了我。真是漫长的一天。
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