I knew little about the first city on my route, Jinan (济南), except that it was known as the ‘city of springs’ - and that it was too far away to get there in one day by bike. My map 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 halfway to Jinan, although some distance from the river. I made that my goal.
Passing through the outskirts of Dongying on side roads, 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 heavy tractor-trailer combinations (半挂车). They roared past me every few minutes, often travelling in groups of four or five, 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.
The highway I was riding on was a secondary road as it had been superseded by a recently built multi-lane motorway that ran parallel to it. The toll road motorways excluded bikes like mine and other small vehicles, but the old secondary roads were still clogged with trucks and other large vehicles, whose drivers presumably did not want to pay the added expense of a toll.
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.
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 but was nevertheless apprehensive that hotels like this in non-tourist areas 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 language in my passport and so we worked together to obtain the details they needed to input for the online police registration form.
“Which one of these is your surname?” they would ask, pointing at my passport names. “What is this month ‘O-C-T’?”.
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 weren’t any restaurants on the streets around the hotel, only basic 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 me, the exotic foreigner. And in a ritual I would learn to experience on a daily basis, they all asked if they could take a selfie with me: “her ge yin ma?” (和个影吗?)
 |
| Route map: Dongying to Gaoqing (click on image to enlarge) |
The next morning I set off early towards Jinan on a route along smaller roads that I’d chosen as a way to avoid the truck traffic on the main highway. The road followed a small canal-like waterway, the Xiaoqing river (小清河), that ran from Gaoqing almost all the way into the city of Jinan some 120 kilometres away. It was a good choice, because it was quiet and scenic.
My pedalling 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 locals from Shandong, we are Muslims from Kanbula in Qinghai province. You definitely must visit there, it is a beautiful place,” he told me. I had heard of Kanbula, but did not know it was a Muslim area. I made a note to do more research about the area and to make it a stop-off on my ride later on the trip.
Back on the riverside road, I was in a good mood and counting down the kilometres towards Jinan when I heard a horrible sound of metal twanging from the rear wheel, like someone plucking a guitar string. One of the spokes had come loose. I made a temporary repair with adhesive tape, and continued to pedal on as carefully as possible towards Jinan, still some 40 kilometres away. Fortunately, I was able to reach the city without further mechanical problems, 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 big industrial city of 10 million people that had a modern city centre, bustling with shopping malls and side streets crammed with restaurants. I checked into a cheap hotel right in the downtown area opposite the Baotu Springs and bought myself a couple of German beers from the supermarket as a reward for completing the day’s 120-kilometre ride with a broken spoke.
The next morning I was lucky to find that a small city like Jinan had a Dahon specialist bike shop, where the friendly manager fixed my broken spoke for 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 social media ‘fans’.
I had been posting about my Yellow River tour on Xiaohongshu, and had got a lot of comments and suggestions from people who lived along the route. A female follower in Jinan called Xizi invited me to lunch to try some local cuisine. I accepted, but when I arrived at the fancy restaurant she suggested, I began to fear that I might be walking into a scam, like the ‘tea house’ tricksters I’d heard about from foreigners in Shanghai.
"Never go to an unfamiliar restaurant with an unknown female who you’ve just met online,” the victims warned. ‘You will get a massive bill and be forced to pay up by local thugs,’ they said.
My fears were misplaced. 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 Baotu 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 early writing from the 10th century was said to conjure up images of a playful youth and the simple delights of being among nature. The delicate words seemed very touching and incisive for such an ancient writer. I could not help thinking that in my home country of England there was no poetry in our own language from this era, and certainly none from women. We only had the ‘manly’ Viking verses of characters like Beowulf written in indecipherable ‘Old English’ that had warrior themes of fighting, glory, loyalty and death.
And yet at the same time, here was a female poet whose words sensitively portrayed her personal feelings of sadness and yearning for her home country that she experienced when forced to flee from the north to south China during an invasion of Shandong in the 10th century. In her poetry she used sophisticated literary techniques to convey nuances of emotion and meaning. Whereas in England, women did not even have the ability to read and write until many centuries later, with no female poets emerging for another 600 years, even after Shakespeare’s time.
Jinan was also famous for its night markets at Furong Jie (芙蓉街), where food stall offered all kinds of snacks I’d never seen before. Youxuan hot crispy pancakes, braised pork belly and egg in soy sauce with rice (把子肉), and even a special kind of dark fried stinky tofu that was dedicated to the national football team. 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.
During this soiree Du Fu was inspired to write one of his most well known poems, in which he expressed his satisfaction at being at home in the natural environment of Jinan and among the company of its cultured scholars. The poem also sums up the feelings of regret and humility at having to leave the company of such esteemed dinner companions. A couplet from the poem is reproduced on the pavilion that still stands on the island today. In translation, it reads "This pavilion on the right of the sea is ancient; in Jinan, there are many distinguished scholars”.
I had previously seen Du Fu’s old house in Chengdu and presumed he came from that city. My visit to Jinan taught me that there was much more to this wandering writer from 1300 years ago.
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, there were passenger trikes decorated with fairy lights and blaring out modern Mando-Pop. I wondered if Du Fu would still find it a location for a pleasurable experience to share a dinner with distinguished guests.
Reading Porter’s description of the city highlighted to me just how much Jinan had changed in 30 years: on his visit, there had been only one makeshift bridge over the 1kilometres wide Yellow River to the north of the city, 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 numerous modern road and rail bridges spanning the Yellow River at various points around 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.
 | ||
| Route map: Gaoqing to Jinan |
No comments:
Post a Comment