In Xi’an I heeded the tenet of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and adopted a ‘non-action’ policy of going with the flow. I did the tourist stuff and met the first foreigners I had seen so far on this trip. They were Russians, staying the hotel I’d chosen near the gateway of the Terracotta Warriors (兵马俑, Bing Ma Yong) on the outskirts of Xi’an. We didn’t talk.
I was suitably impressed by the Terracotta Warriors when I saw them the next morning. I had been one of the first in line before the gates opened at 8.30am, and yet I still only managed a few minutes of unobstructed views of the warriors in the massive hanger-like building before the walkways were crammed with crowds of visitors.
Similarly there were crowds of tourists at Huashan, where I took a cable car up to the summit on a rainy morning. The scenery was breathtaking and I rediscovered my fear of heights when I bottled out of taking some of the walkways leading to lookouts with steep drops on both sides. After an hour of weaving and shuffling with the crowds around the summit area and its restaurants and shops, I took the cable car back down, terrified of looking down into the chasm below, keeping my eyes closed most of the way.
I ‘did’ the other Xi’an sites such as the Drum Tower, City Wall and the very commercialised Muslim Quarter, where the beggars proffered laminated WeChat QR codes to solicit donations. I ate Biang Biang noodles and jianbing pancakes and the city’s famous Yangrou Paomo (羊肉泡) - crumbled bread in mutton soup.
As in Luoyang, I visited a museum to try to see the Jingjiao Stele (景教碑) which recorded the presence of Nestorian Christians in the old Chinese capital, which was then known as Chang’an, in the eight century. At the Beilin museum there was a reproduction of a stele entitled the “Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin”. The stone was erected in the year 781 with an inscription composed by a Christian named Adam who was likely from the Church of the East located around modern Iraq or Iran. I found it fascinating to note that the Emperor had noted and approved of a Christian community in China at the same time that Christianity was still just taking a foothold in England.
As with the Jewish community in nearby Kaifeng, the rulers of ancient China seemed to have a ‘live and let live’ approach to foreign religions and settlers being in the country, so long as they accepted the authority of the Middle Kingdom’s Emperor and his officials.
 |
| Hangu Guan to Xi'an (click on image to enlarge) |
I saw a few of the modern day foreign visitors to Xi’an in the bar and cafe at the youth hostel where I stayed near to the Drum Tower. I didn’t actually speak to any of the ‘laowai’ at the hostel, because like most travellers these days they were staring intently at their phones and avoiding eye contact. I did get some attention from the hostel staff, who were intrigued by my folding e-bike and full of praise (你很棒! ‘Ni hen bang!’) for my progress so far.
After a day trawling around Xi’an’s many bike shops, I found an e-bike that seemed to suit my needs for the road ahead. The Giant Tour E+ 200 e-bike had dual batteries, with a claimed range of 200 kilometres. It had pannier racks as standard, butterfly handlebars to provide multiple grip choices, ‘fat’ gravel tyres, disc brakes, lights, mudguards, and a SelleRoyal design Italian saddle. Even better, there was a choice of models, and I selected a step-through frame version, for ease of getting on and off. After a test ride up and down the street I handed over 8000 yuan for the Giant.
After packing up the Dahon to send it back to Guilin, I used the rest of my brief stopover in Xi’an to plan the next stage of my bike trip. While I had already plotted a vague course along the Yellow River from Xi’an to Baotou (包头) using Google Earth, I now broke it down into daily sections, knowing from experience that I could achieve 80-100km a day with an e-bike on level ground. The Gaode map app provided suggestions of A to B cycling routes for each daily sector, and a separate tab in the app showed me the locations of hotels en route.
I could find no reports online from any other cyclists or travellers who had done the Yellow River route from Shanxi to Inner Mongolia, but it seemed feasible. The main feature of this 800 kilometre stage would be the start of the loess terrain. From the flat plain of the eastern China river basin I would suddenly enter a new landscape of low mountains that stretched from a place called Dragon’s Gate (龙门, Longmen) all the way up to the inner Mongolia border.
The Yellow River was hemmed into a canyon by the Longmen mountains, and the map showed there was some kind of road along the river for much of this section. However, there appeared to be some remote sections north of a feature called the Hukou waterfalls (壶口瀑布) where the steep sides of the river canyon forced the road to move away from the riverbank and divert over the nearby hills for 50 kilometres or more before regaining the river.
The only way to know for sure was to go there, and this meant backtracking to Huashan and the corner where the Yellow River makes its dramatic 90 degree turn.
 |
| Route map: Stage 2 along the Shaanxi/Shanxi border into Inner Mongolia |
第9章 西安插曲：古都换新车
在西安，我遵循老子《道德经》"无为"的训诫，随遇而安地游览景点，并遇到了此行首批外国游客——几个住在我选的兵马俑附近酒店的俄罗斯人，不过我们并未交谈。
次日清晨八点半开园前就排队，使我得以在游客挤满通道前，获得几分钟无遮挡观赏那些巨型机库般展厅里兵马俑的机会。华山同样人潮汹涌，雨雾中乘缆车登顶后，两侧悬崖的步道让我恐高症发作，最终只在山顶商铺区随人流转悠一小时就闭着眼乘缆车下山。
我还游览了钟鼓楼、城墙和高度商业化的回民街——那里乞丐举着塑封微信二维码乞讨。品尝了biangbiang面、煎饼和羊肉泡馍等当地美食。
如同在洛阳，我专程去碑林博物馆寻找记载8世纪长安景教（基督教聂斯托利派）的"大秦景教流行中国碑"。这块公元781年由名为亚当的基督徒撰文的石碑，记载了基督教刚传入英格兰同期，中国皇帝已对境内基督教社群予以认可。与开封犹太社群类似，古代中国统治者对异域宗教和移民似乎秉持"互不干涉"态度，只要他们承认中央王朝权威。
在钟楼附近青旅的酒吧里，我见到几位现代外国游客。但如同当今多数旅行者，他们都紧盯手机避免眼神接触，我也未主动搭讪。倒是店员们对我的折叠电动车很感兴趣，对我骑行进展赞不绝口（"你很棒！"）。
逛遍西安车行后，我选中了捷安特Tour E+200电动车。双电池续航200公里，标配驮包架、蝴蝶把、宽胎、碟刹、车灯、挡泥板和意大利座椅，还特别选了上下方便的斜梁款。试骑后支付8000元，便将大行车打包寄回桂林。
利用短暂停留，我详细规划了下一段从西安到包头的黄河路线。虽然谷歌地球已勾勒大致走向，现在仍需根据电动车每日80-100公里的续航拆分行程。高德地图提供了分段骑行路线与沿途酒店信息。尽管网上找不到其他骑行者完成这段晋蒙黄河路线的记录，但看来可行。
这800公里行程将首次进入黄土高原区。从东部平原突然转入自龙门直至内蒙古边界的低山地带，黄河被束缚在龙门山峡谷中。地图显示大部分河段有沿河道路，但在壶口瀑布以北某些陡峭峡谷处，道路将被迫远离河岸绕行50多公里山路。唯有亲临现场才能确认路况——这意味着要先折返华山，回到那个黄河急转弯的角落。
No comments:
Post a Comment