A Solo Motorcycle Trek Through Northern China

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This week we are featuring "My Gutsy Story" by Carla King.

Alone, Illegal, and Broken Down

A solo motorcycle journey through northern China.

It is my first day alone on the road and I am lost.

The mountains of northern China beyond Beijing are vast and enormous. There are no road signs, only larger roads and smaller roads, paved roads and dirt roads. When I stop to ask directions the peasants simply stare because I am the first foreigner they have ever seen, and a woman. Putting myself in their place I can sympathize. I ride up on a big black Chinese sidecar motorcycle, the most expensive motorcycle in China. Then I remove my helmet. A blond braid tumbles down the shoulder of my black leather jacket and I mutter something incomprehensible and then look at them with slightly crazed green eyes.“Wǒ mílù le,” I say. “I’m lost.”

But they just stare. Most villagers have never traveled farther than their network of about a dozen villages all of their lives. And there are no taxi drivers or buses or truckers to ask.

Nearly out of gasoline, I am sure that the town I had targeted for my first night on the road, will not appear anytime soon. The going is slow not only because of the dark but because of the potholes and badly banked curves and the asphalt that ends without warning.vWhere might I be? I might have looped back to where I began. I could be far, far away.

I remember how the land looked in daylight: the jumble of pyramid-shaped mountains covered in soft green foliage jutting through the landscape, the crumbling hillsides, the plunging cliffs. The unfamiliar engine rumbles. I am still working out its idiosyncrasies. I don’t yet know this machine well enough to take comfort in its working noises, its hard clunk down from third gear, its slight pull to the left. Shadow trees fly by and a small animal bursts into the road. A rush of adrenaline prepares me for hard braking, for swerving or impact. It races alongside me and, improbably, others join in.

Finally I realize they are piglets. We travel together down the road for several long moments of dark indecision. I hold my breath while they grunt and squeal hysterically, invisibly. Several times it seems that they will move off the road and and several times it seems that they will run under my tires. Finally, I gently let pressure off the throttle and engine noise changes. In response, one piglet lets out a sudden, long, high-pitched squeal. The others join in and leap off the road into darkness.Miles later my fingers are still stiffly poised above the brake lever. The icy night air leaks up the sleeves of my jacket and between my collar and helmet. My joints ache from working the clutch and the gears of this heavy beast of a motorcycle, bumping along a barely paved road in the pitch black backwoods of China.

The dark shapes of trees hover above on either side. Long ago Kublai Khan had traveled through China and was dismayed at the unbroken monotony of the roadways. He ordered trees planted on every roadside to give solace to travelers.

As my headlight shines on one after another after another white painted tree trunk I have the impression that it is they which move past me, and that I am sitting still like an actor on a movie set, the wind machine blowing in my face. What does give me solace is the sudden appearance of two gas pumps under a brightly-lit shelter. Beyond it stands a building strung with white lights. I pull up to the pumps and after a moment a woman peeks out of the doorway of the attached shack. She hushes the two small children peeking out behind her to walk toward me. Her outfit is garishly illuminated under the fluorescent lights. She sports a shapeless lime green dress sprinkled with large white polka dots and opaque knee-highs that have left a sharp dent halfway up her short fat calves, set off by bright pink rubber pool sandals. She decodes my rough Mandarin while she pumps gas into the tank. Yes, she nods, smiling. The lit building is indeed a hotel—her luguan.

I can stay there, and it will cost 20 yuan. I pass underneath a concrete archway and through a pair of open wooden gates into the compound where a low, cheaply built stucco building stands. It is L-shaped and there is a glassed-in hallway with motel-style doors in regular intervals, each painted bright red and illuminated with a bare bulb. I unfasten my helmet strap with cold, stiff fingers. My back aches and my left ankle throbs from the constant shifting. I toss my helmet, gloves, and scarf into the sidecar and dismount, only vaguely aware of the rush of people emerging from the door in front of me. I step away from the bike, allowing several people to push it closer to the building. My forehead itches, my hair is stuck to the skin.

Despite my aches, I feel a profound gratitude for having found this place, for the reward of having pressed on without panicking. It is dark and cold, but I’d soon be safe and warm. Finally my eyes adjust to the dim light and looking up, I meet the gaze of a dozen young ladies dressed in pajamas. When I smile they burst into giggles, covering their mouths with their hands. So many maids! Why would there be so many maids for such a small country motel? I look at them more closely. Their black eyes flash. So much makeup! They giggle some more, then, suddenly shy, lower their eyes heavy with liner and false lashes. Their lips glow with thick red lipstick and their lurid peach-colored polyester uniforms shine. They aren’t maids at all, I finally realize. I’ll be spending the night in a brothel.

Carla King Bio

Carla King has traveled the world on a fleet of various and often unreliable indigenous motorcycles. She chronicles her adventures in her Motorcycle Misadventures series of realtime online dispatches and books. Her popular blog is subtitled "a motorcycle travel writer's writings, readings, journeys, gear, and recommendations," but includes experiences on hiking, bicycling, scuba diving, boating, road trips, with musings from abroad and the San Francisco Bay Area, which she calls home. Carla has written for Women Riders Now, Adventure Motorcycle Dual Sport News, Rider, Riders of Kawasaki Magazine, Escape, Santa Cruz Travel Guide, many newspaper travel sections, and she is widely anthologized on the web. Her writing has appeared in anthologies including Rough Guide's Women Travel, In Search of Adventure, Travelers' Tales (including Food, France, and Best Travel Writing of 2011), Rough Guides Women Travel, and Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel. She is the author of American Borders: Breakdowns in Small Towns All Around the USA, and the upcoming China Road Motorcycle Diaries, as well as thousands of pages of realtime travel reports to the web from journeys in the USA, Europe, Africa, China, and India. No matter where she is, you can always find her at CarlaKing.com.

Sonia Marsh Bio

Sonia Marsh is a blogger, mom, world traveler and unconventional thinker with a passion for tropical islands. She is the founder of the "My Gutsy Story" series, and author of the forthcoming travel memoir, "Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island.”

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