There were three things that stood out for me during this extended bike ride along the Yellow River: how ‘green’ China was, the scale of the infrastructure changes, and the rise of ‘middle class’ China.
As I have mentioned many times in my account of this trip, I saw a huge amount of ‘green’ development in China: solar panels everywhere, wind turbines on so many hills, and a general sense of improvement in the state of the environment compared to the trips I made ten years ago. That’s not to say that China has become the new Switzerland - there were still plenty of instances of pollution and garbage. But I was pleasantly surprised by how things such as river water quality seem to have improved in recent years. I expected to be plagued by air pollution and industrial smog during my trip across the North China Plain, but was fortunate to enjoy weeks of clear blue skies and never felt the need to wear a mask. Perhaps the widespread adoption of electric vehicles and scooters has eliminated much of the exhaust pollution.
In terms of infrastructure, I was already well aware of the amazing network of high-speed trains, which I made full use of on this trip. As well as witnessing the frequent services running on the high-speed rail lines that I rode past on this journey, I also, of course, saw the construction of new lines in remote areas along the course of the Long March.
I also saw other massive infrastructure projects such as highways, hydro dams, and tunnels. As a tourist, I saw the huge investment being put into tourism infrastructure such as the ‘holiday villages’ and visitor centres in the most remote areas. New infrastructure was also noticeable at a local level, with small towns and even remote Tibetan grassland villages having undergone upgrades in landscaping, parks, and amenities such as playgrounds and picnic areas.
This brings me on to the third point, which I have already discussed in some detail: the development of a ‘middle class’ China. What I mean by this is the rise of an affluent class of individuals who have disposable income and also time to pursue leisure and lifestyle interests. Until about ten years ago, most people in China seemed to be just getting by, with just a small minority of ‘nouveau riche’ in the big cities showing off their wealth with Western designer brands. Now the affluence has trickled down to people in provincial backwaters such as Xixian in Shanxi, where locals enjoy eating at outdoor ‘street restaurants’ with a selection of craft beers. And of course, the levels of the Chinese domestic tourism market have boomed, meaning that China no longer seems interested in pandering to foreign tourists. I saw few on my trip except in the world-famous sites such as the terracotta warriors in Xi’an.
One thing that did puzzle me about China was the sheer level of ‘overcapacity’ - for want of a better word - across many aspects of the tourism sector. There seemed to be a widespread build-it-and-they’ll-come policy, like the empty hotel complex at Hanggu Guan in Henan or the 700-kilometre ‘Yellow River Number One Tourism Highway’ on which I seemed to be the only user. On the Qinghai grasslands, I cycled past scores of local tourist fun park enterprises that all offered the same things: cabin and tent accommodation, horse riding, ATV rides, and local cuisine. Hardly any of them had any customers. How do they stay in business, let alone make any return on the investment? I thought the same thing when I saw local people selling fruit and vegetables by the roadside. How do people survive when they are selling commodities such as cherries, honey or watermelons when they seem to have no customers? I’m not an economist or social scientist, and I have no answers.
This trip to China challenged some of my expectations about the country. Before setting out, I had a few worries, such as whether I would be able to find hotels to accept me in off-the-beaten-track areas. That did not prove to be much of a problem. I was turned away by a couple of hotels but was easily able to find alternative options. Similarly, I was worried about encounters with police— being banned or expelled from certain areas or, worse, being arrested as a spy. The official advice from the Australian government travel website was that I should exercise a high degree of caution because I could be detained on the grounds of 'endangering national security'. It said: “Australians may be at risk of arbitrary detention or harsh enforcement of local laws, including broadly defined National Security Laws.”
In reality, I had no problems with police or any other form of authority during my stay in China, except for the obvious one of being turned back by traffic cops on the highway to the new dam construction site. I had no interactions with police: no knocks on the door of my hotel room to check my details, no police checkpoints on the road, and no instances of being stopped and questioned. Of course, China is a surveillance state— security cameras were everywhere, but this was something I learned to take for granted. The other side of this was that I had no security worries about personal safety or crime during the trip. People were generally friendly, helpful, and honest— I never felt threatened or experienced harassment. I took common sense precautions against theft: locking my bike up and keeping my valuables safe in a money belt. The only scare was when I lost my phone, and it was returned to me by the road construction gang who found it.
A key feature of the trip was the use of apps such as WeChat for almost every day-to-day activity, from cashless payments to booking hotels and buying train tickets. The navigation app Gaode also enabled me to find hotels as well as supermarkets, craft beer outlets, and museums. These apps and other social media sites such as XiaoHongShu also helped me to get information and reviews about the places I was visiting, and even to make contacts with some local people.
What of the river itself? Seeing it in reverse, so to speak, made me appreciate what a major river it is, from the sea outlet right up to the headwaters at almost 4000 metres in altitude. I was puzzled by how the river is not consistently ‘yellow’ or silty, with some sections of its middle reaches in Gansu (Kanbula) and Shanxi (Hukou Falls) being unusually clear or green water. I was also surprised by how few boats there were on the river. Unlike the Yangtze - or even the Mekong - the Yellow River has been too shallow to be navigable for all but the most shallow draught of vessels.
The Yellow River was a source of food for many locals. I don’t know how much pollution there is in the river, but whatever the level, this did not seem to stop people catching and eating the famous carp and sometimes the fake salmon. Its waters provide irrigation for large sections of Inner Mongolia, where, like the Nile in Egypt, the river is a ribbon of green through the desert.
As an amateur ornithologist, I was impressed by the large number of birds - and wide variety of species - that I saw along the river. I’m no naturalist, so I can’t speak for the animal and plant life along the way, but I never expected to see marmots and camels on my journey.
For me, the most notable thing about my river trip was the variety of people I met along the way. The friendly and noble Shandong natives, the larger-than-life characters of Inner Mongolia, the Hui and Salar Muslims of Ningxia and Gansu, and of course, the Tibetans of Qinghai. Almost everyone I met was friendly and helpful— and all too willing to chat. With few foreign tourists visiting the Yellow River, the locals were pleased to see me and eager to tell me about the local places of interest. And of course, with a wide variety of people and cultures comes a wide variety of food. Travelling the Yellow River would be a foodie’s delight— from the seafood of Shandong to the Hui dapanji. And a big change from usual south China dishes I was so accustomed to.
Travelling the Yellow River challenged a lot of my perceptions about China. Like many Westerners, my impressions of the country had been formed based on experiences of regions of southern China such as Guangdong, Yunnan and Sichuan. Most of our news about China seems to relate to areas south of the Yangtze, whether it be Shanghai, Fujian, Guangzhou or Chongqing. For me, China was a country of rice-growing Han Chinese living in subtropical areas: traders who had links (and migration) to south-east Asia and the rest of the world via ports such as Hong Kong and Xiamen.
Travelling the Yellow River made me realise there is another China that is almost a mirror image of the south: fields of wheat instead of rice, sheep and horses instead of pigs and oxen. While south China saw an outward flow of Chinese moving to other parts of Southeast Asia and beyond, the Yellow River had the opposite. With its connections to Central Asia and the Middle East via the Silk Road, the Yellow River regions experienced an inflow of migrants who formed diverse communities along the river, such as the Hui Muslims of Ningxia, and the Christian and Jewish communities of Xi’an and Kaifeng. The Yellow River’s Mongolian links also brought in ‘Bannermen’ and even Salar Muslims descended from Genghis Khan’s soldiers.
The Silk Road was the route by which Buddhism entered China, to be established at monasteries along the Yellow River in places such as Luoyang and Shaolin.
With its source in the Amdo Tibetan region of Qinghai, the Yellow River also has strong links to Tibetan Buddhism. The present Dalai Lama was born in the village of Takster, some 50 kilometres north of the Kanbula forest park that I cycled through. When the infant Lhamo Thondup was selected as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in 1936, the boy was held to ransom by the Muslim Warlord Ma Bufang, whose troops, as I wrote about earlier, were at the time fighting and annihilating the Communist Long Marchers passing through his territory. The Tibetans were only allowed to take the soon-to-be Dalai Lama to Lhasa when a huge ransom of 330,000 silver dollars was paid on their behalf by Muslim traders, who brought the young lad with them into Tibet on their caravan en route to Mecca.
This mixing of different ethnicities along the Yellow River was still notable in Qinghai, where I saw Hui Muslim and Tibetan women sitting side by side on tractors as they went to work out on the fields.
With hindsight, I wish I’d done more research into the history of the Yellow River before embarking on the ride. I wish I’d known in advance about the lost civilisations of the Tanguts before visiting Yinchuan, and about the more recent history of the Long Marchers along parts of the Yellow River. Visiting the museums in places such as Kaifeng and Luoyang made me realise that the river gave birth to major cities and infrastructure projects in ancient times - the Great Wall, of course, and the complex irrigation and flood defence systems. The river was also the place where powerful armies fought - the charioteers and archers of Qin Shihuang, the cavalry of the Tanguts, and the merciless hordes of Genghis Khan.
The scenery along the Yellow River was impressive, but I must say I found the desert and loess landscapes rather intimidating. Of course, my main regret was not being able to complete the last few hundred kilometres across the grassland plateau beyond the ’First Bend’ of the river to get to the source near Maduo in Qinghai. Maybe in a few years, there will be roads and hotels in that area so I can return to complete the journey. Similarly, the inaccessible gorge of the Yellow River above Lajjia remains to be explored.
In the meantime, I seem to be one of a lucky few outsiders who have travelled along much of the Yellow River. I’m surprised more people haven’t done the journey - it is, after all, one of the world’s greatest rivers. And unlike some of the others, such as the Amazon or the Nile, it is mostly accessible, affordable, and safe for travel. I look forward to reading the reports of others who go the same way.
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