The Really Great Wall Of China

Parts 1 to 4

I left the fascinating colourful hills of the Zhangye Global Geopark, and continued northwesterly.

As I left, the lovely old woman from the little three-roomed hotel I'd been staying at gave me a packet of dried red dates. What a darling.

It's about time I had a date.

The views were beautiful.

Everything's so ancient around here that dinosaurs are still roaming around at will. Luckily they fenced these two in, to keep them under control.

For awhile there was a colourful running track which I pretended was an Olympic velodrome. I won so many gold medals zipping along there I could hardly carry them all.

I thought I'd inadvertently stumbled into Casino Beef Week, but then realised it couldn't be real, because there were no SUVs full of swearing rednecks anywhere, and everyone was speaking Chinese.

The flat road to somewhere

These fluffy seeds are everywhere. Sometimes they fly into my mouth while I ride. I should remember to close it, but I'm often so busy talking to myself that I forget.

After a steady day's cycling, and with no major spectacular incidents to report, I arrived in Gaotai, found a hotel, and aimlessly wandered about, as usual.

Delicious bikkie stall.

Hmmm, look's like someone's been tucking in, naughty naughty.

Savoury snack

Watermelon Man. This region is famous for its melons.

The Sticks

I rolled out of town the next morning, through a few dry fields.

Corn stalks are a valuable commodity out here. They bale them up and sell them to local power and heating plants, where they're burnt as fuel.

At least there was some roadside greenery for awhile.

Mineral freight train. There's large copper and nickel deposits around here.

Speaking of coppers, there's quite large deposits of them on the road too.

It's really desolate out here. There's few settlements, and long fairly straight flat roads cutting through the outback scenery.

Bewdy chillin' and catchin' some, em, rays

These tall stick monsters were everywhere.

Could easily be a roadhouse in the Oz outback

Mindblowingly huge solar array catching a ray

Rock on

These guys found some water somewhere, I really don't know where, maybe underground.

I stopped to get a late lunch, and the young couple in there were so lovely, and so fascinated to have someone from another planet in their eating place. After we chatted for awhile the woman asked me if I had any currency from my home country, which I pretended not to, as I only had a few large Oz notes, but I gave her some Lao Kip and Thai baht, which I've been carrying around forever and can't get rid of.

The man cooked noodles for me, their home made noodle maker machine is on the right.

The woman insisted I have a bottle of this Chinese soft drink, the taste of which  is indistinguishable from what I remember Australian Fanta to taste like, when I last had it in about 1978.

The couple insisted I not pay for my food or drinks, which was so sweet, even though I knew I'd already paid twice over with my currency gifts.

Local roadside market, mainly selling young animals and poultry.

Including piglets.

Three wheel sedan. You spend 25% less on tyres and brakes, and, statistically speaking, should only get three quarters of the flatties.

This looks old, but I don't know what it is.

Nullabor-esque, but not Nullabor-ing

A lone, windswept, special tree

Ghost village

This car came off the road at speed and slammed into the ditch. I didn't see it happen, but saw the damage on the car. They're lucky they didn't roll it, it's quite a big drop.

Voodoo doll of me coming out of the shower

Speaking of me and showering, this riverbank was bone dry.

And then I arrived in the dusty, dirty, hick town of Quingshui. It took me a while to find a hotel that'd have me. The locals just didn't know what to do with such a creature.

Eventually they directed me to this hotel, whose lobby was definitely the cleanest and most extravagant part of the building.

The woman who ran it almost had a baby trying to get her head around registering and checking me in. It's quite incredible what can cause stress in this world.

I went a-strolling to find food. There was hardly anything around. This girl didn't even wake up when I went past.

I lied about the hotel lobby. My room curtains were also very extravagant.

There was a nice backdrop from the stairs too.

Towards Civilsation Again

Beautiful views as I left Qingshui.

I've been following the G312 on and off on my northwestwards adventure. Today it got a second, really creative name.

There was so little to satisfy my trigger-happy photo finger that I even took a pic of my marked territory.

Sad isn't it. And even sadder that it's now appeared in this blog. I've been away from civilisation for so long now that I'm not sure what's acceptable and what's not.

Hot pink.

Corn bales

Lunch pasta

Now I've literally seen it all

Oh ok, no I haven't

The growing city of Jiuquan, which has a population of over a million. I bypassed it, and stayed a little further down the track, as I wanted to be closer to that Great Big Beautiful Wall.

Jiayuguan

This large town, with a population of around 350,000, is famous because it's the site of the western edge of the really Great Wall of China.

The town is growing rapidly, like almost all Chinese urban centres. Just for interest, around two thirds of China's population is now urbanised, and the percentage is growing. But China is still less urbanised than most other major economic powers.

For example, around 92% of Japan's population live in urban areas, 87% in Australia, 85% in the UK, 83% in the US, and around 78% in Germany.

And at the other end of the scale, in the countries I've been visiting, Thailand's figure is about half, in Vietnam it's 40%, Laos 38%, India 36%, Cambodia 25% and Nepal only 21%.

I rolled into town through the usual neverending rows of new residential developments and highrise apartments.

They looked game, but luckily they obeyed the traffic lights.

I eventually found a hostel to stay in, and chose it because they have cheap capsules to stay in. Yeah, capsules, just like Japan and the International Space Station!

Yay, I get to star in my very own sci-fi romcom, set on a space station on a desolate barren planet which looks remarkably like this one does when you get outa town.

It's actually super comfy, bigger than it looks, and the people are so sweet here. No foreigners, of course.

I immediately met Mareiun, the most beautiful young Chinese guy, who spoke really good English.

He's done something that's quite hard to do in China, given the family and societal pressure here - he's quit his job, and has been travelling around China for a few months, and plans to go to Kazakhstan and Egypt.

He just doesn't want to settle down, but wants to see the world.

Well, he came to the right person for that discussion. We spent the evening and the next morning together, and when he left to catch his train to Dunhuang he said he was way more inspired to follow his dreams, and not someone else's.

Hooray for him.

For dinner we had the most scrumptious veggie casserole soupy thingy ever. Veggies, mushrooms of all varieties, tofu, seitan (gluten blocks), you name it, it was in there and it was all absolutely divine. Mareiun, who goes by the English (Italiano) name of Mario (of all things) insisted on paying. Molto dolce, Mario.

We decided to have brekky together, I pushed it back as late as possible, and we agreed to meet at 9am for baozi.

We tried them all, including this carrot and vermicelli one, the vermicelli's made from sweet potato. Bloody divine, the food of Godesses and Gods.

And the black rice porridge was good too, especially with a bit of sugar.

We went to the markets around the corner.

At last! I've found the spice that makes my tongue numb and makes me wanna wee my pants! It's known here as Sichuan pepper. It's just an innocuous harmless looking peppercorn, but I had just a half of one here, and my tongue and throat felt like death for about five minutes.

It honestly feels like someone's sprayed a strong toxic chemical on your tongue.

It's really nothing like pepper, although it's the same family.

This must be the rogue son who never prodigalled.

Now I finally know the secret ingredient of all those hot pots that I could hardly eat in Sichuan all those years ago.

Nuts and seeds. The middle tub is full of peanuts from Xinjiang, which are smaller and harder than regular peanuts from here. And with a harder shell too, and slightly bitter.

Sunflower and melon seeds.

Homemade fresh tahini and sesame oil.

We tried some of the seed excrement. It was quite delicious. Crunchy and a little bitter, but very sesame-ey.

Mareiun tried to tell me that these were fish lungs, a delicacy. But I know in my heart of hearts that fish don't have lungs, so it must've been a language thing. I really couldn't find out which part of the fish they are. They look like skinned fish fingers to me, but I know in my heart of hearts that fish don't have fingers either, so, what to do?

Some things we may never know.

Fresh and delicious, straight from the gardens

Sand chives, a local delicacy. They tasted like very delicious normal chives to me, but what would I know?

Garlic chives

Lettuce and their stems. They use the stems in stir fries and soups.

Lotus roots

White gourd

Amazing bakery. These are rolled dumplings brushed with brine, and the salt flavours them and causes them to separate a little.

So after that fascinating lesson in Chinese local cuisine, we headed back to our hostel, and eventually Mareiun headed on his way.

I, on the other hand, rested for awhile, and then jumped on Bewdy, and rode a few clicks out, to the GWOC.

Jiayuguan Fort

It really is a sight to savour the first time you see it.

Yeah, the Great Wall of China is pretty great.

It happens to be the largest and longest man made object ever built. And it's not just one wall, but a series of fortifications, ramparts and walls, which protected various Chinese kingdoms from invaders from the north, northeast and northwest.

In its entirety, the wall structures are an incredible 22,000km long.

For comparison purposes, that would be the same as building a wall between Sydney and Perth a whole 5 times over, or between Paris and Istanbul 8 times. That's one helluva Mongol-proof fence.

It's history began when a number of walls and fortifications were unified into a single defensive line by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang in the 2nd Century BC. Over the various subsequent dynasties the wall was greatly lengthened and strengthened, with Emperors sometimes utilising up to a million labourers at once to make it all happen.

Imagine the pub on a Friday night.

The Ming dynasty were the ones who built the highest, thickest, and most widely known parts of the wall, and because they used mainly bricks and stone, huge lengths of their wall still remain today.

The wall basically runs along geographical lines, where the fertile plains of China meet the northern and western steppe regions and deserts of Mongolia, Xinjiang and Central Asia. Because of these huge geographical differences, China became an agricultural society of farms and cities, while the northern and northwestern peoples were generally nomadic herders. This resulted in hugely different cultural and historical development.

Overall, you'd have to say that the Great Wall was a Great Success. In its illustrious 2,500 year long history it wasn't properly breached very often, although when it was it was pretty disastrous for the Chinese kingdoms.

The Monguls, ruled by Kublai Khan, who was the grandson of Genghis Khan, were engaged in constant battles with Chinese forces, and at the Juyong Pass, very close to Beijing, rather than bothering to try and breach the wall, they just tricked the Chinese army into an ambush outside the wall, and then rode right in through the open gates while they weren't looking.

Cheeky buggers.

Once on the fertile Chinese plains, the Mongols were very hard to defend against, and by the mid 1200s had become the first non-Han dynasty to rule all of China.

That only lasted for about a hundred years though, which is not that long in historical terms (but bloody ages if you've been invaded by medieval Mongols). The new Ming Dynasty managed to kick them all out by 1368, and then spent a fortune on expanding the Great Wall, and making sure his generals didn't fall for the same sneaky trick again.

When I first arrived at Jiayuguan Fort, the westernmost barricade of the whole wall, the great Emperor tried to get me to look in the other direction so he could steal my chips. But I wasn't falling for that one, no way. I was way too hungry, plus I was too busy marvelling at what he'd created.

Well, more accurately, what he kindly asked his architects and builders and artisans and slaves to create.

You walk through a beautiful scenic reserve to get there. It's very beautiful, scenic, and reserved.

Breaching the first gate, in the outer wall.

Looking at the outie from the innie.

The fort here is not just a fort, but includes lots of other buildings, ancient temples and halls, and various parade and jousting grounds.

Friendly (and chatty) school group from Lanzhou.

At the parade ground the troops were still practising their fighting skills, just in case the Mongols come back. The weird thing was, they were doing their routine to a soundtrack of the theme from The Pirates of the Caribbean, the "He's A Pirate" song. Pretty trippy.

They wore interesting armoury in those days in this part of the world. It wasn't all bulky and heavy like those unfortunate Christian knights way out west. You could still jump and spin and do all your Kung Fu tricks in this gear.

Looking west, with a plastic warrior

I visited the Bactrians outside the wall, the double-humped camels, they were very chilled. One was crashed out, maybe from carrying heavy tourists.

Of course the fort had all sorts of tricky obstacles for potential invaders. This double-gated corridor was designed to trap enemy troops so they could be massacred easily.

Amazing temple art

Confucian scholar

The emperor and his guards, Chewbacca and Atatürk.

Waiting for an Uber driver. Some things never change. Including driver wages.

His

And hers.

The caption reads: "Easy peasey Chinesey! These guys must live in tents!"

This is a horse ramp. Horses would be ridden to the upper parts of the wall, so soldiers and supplies could be transported around the fort quickly.

If invaders tried riding up however, they'd roll rather nasty objects down the ramp, like this wheel of horse death.

And this is just a replica. The original was way bigger and heavier.

Jousting ground

Looking at the wall, as it continues east into the nothingness.

Old slogans from the Cultural Revolution, a hugely tragic historical period in modern China which was initiated by Mao Zedong in 1966.

Ao Nao, It's Mao!

Mao Zedong was one of the founders, and then the Chairman, of the Chinese Communist Party, which has been the sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China since it was proclaimed in 1949. It currently has 98 million members in China, roughly one in every 14 people in the country.

After leading them in their fight against the Japanese occupiers in World War II, Mao's People's Liberation Army successfully defeated the ruling Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, who escaped to Taiwan. (With a huge horde of national treasures, I might add).

Mao set about trying to modernise the country. He introduced what was called The Great Leap Forward, his push for China's rapid industrialisation. But this endeavour was probably one of the saddest misnomers of all time, for it led to the greatest famine in world history, with up to 45m Chinese citizens starving to death, basically due to a collapse in agricultural production as a result of forced quotas.

Yes, that's right. Up to 45 million.

So, after that unfathomably huge tragic failed disaster, by the mid 1960s Mao had effectively been sidelined politically.

But not wanting to let little mistakes get in the way of his ambition, Mao decided to reestablish his power in China by beginning what became known as the Cultural Revolution, to rid the government and the country of what he regarded as the remnants of capitalism, and the scourge of traditionalism. What an uncanny coincidence that the traditionalists he was talking about happened to be his political enemies.

He took advantage of student dissatisfaction in the country, and created the Red Guards, fervent young loyalists, and basically encouraged them to rebel against many established older party politicians and their ideals.

It soon got out of hand.

According to Mao's new ideology, any of the "four olds" should be destroyed - old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits, and his actions ushered in a very dark era in China's modern history, which included the complete or partial destruction of countless irreplaceable ancient sites, temples, mosques, churches, libraries, and traditional art and scholarly works.

Private homes were ransacked. All schools and universities in the whole country closed down.

Oh, oops, and let's not forget the killing of between 1 and 2 million people, which included Mao's political enemies, intellectuals and scientists (who were called the "Stinking Old Ninth," because the traditional ninth caste were regarded as scum), as well as teachers, university lecturers and anyone who was deemed to have capitalist or traditionalist sympathies.

Gangs of violent youths attacked people on the streets, just for wearing what they regarded as "bourgeois" clothing, or because of their hairstyles. Many people were publicly humiliated before being beaten to death, or were driven to commit suicide.

Once Mao realised it'd all gone to shit he then ordered the army to restore order, and they ended up killing more people than the gangs had. In fact, Mao's army killed about double what the Red Army had during that period. So cool. The army also used the chaos as a perfect opportunity to crack down on separatists within the country, and forcibly moved 10m urban students into the countryside for reeducation.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution only ended with Mao's death in 1976. But the intergenerational psychological trauma it caused lives on.

Ah, what a guy. Mao was arguably singularly responsible for more deaths than any other person in world history, even including those other 2 main contenders for that vile, blood-soaked crown, Stalin and Hitler.

So those cool t-shirts with Mao on them? Errr, not so cool.

Hanging at the Overhanging Great Wall

After witnessing the grandeur of the fort, I rode off another few  clicks northwest, to another part of the wall.

It was a classic Great Wall scene, just like you see in the pics, and there was hardly anyone there.

We climbed along the top of the wall to the summit of a hill. The hike was the equivalent of climbing a 55 storey building, according to the sign, but it didn't feel like it to me, as my bionic legs hadn't already cycled 100kms today (only about 15), and they actually didn't feel a thing.

Maybe because they're officially dead, after what I've put them through.

As you can see, the wall's been reconstructed on its old base, to represent what it used to be like, so tourists like me can take snaps and say they've been to the GWOC.

It was still amazing though, I reluctantly admit.

Gobismacking. Not the factory, the desert.

Once I made it to the top, I flopped over the other side and went for a stroll. All alone in the bushless bush.

Looking north across that vast deserted Gobi Desert.

Hey, I've just right now finally realised why they call it a desert.

See, you never ever stop learning.

Down down down, alongside the multitudes of locked and rusted dreams.

Ancient monks and scholars on their long journeys.

There's been a tad of rain. But just a tad.

There was a caravan trekking along the Silk Road. They were travelling so bloody slowly, it'll take them forever to get to Venice at this rate.

Oh, well maybe not, if they've got creatures like these. Reminds me of some sort of dragon-esque movie creature, but I can't quite remember which one.

One last look.

Archery for kiddies on the way out. It's becoming a big sport here, and has long historical roots in this part of the world.

Just in case you need it.

To Market to Market

I rode to the centre of town.

Bewdy's still growing, and her wheels are now nearly as tall as my legs.

There's a couple of great small market districts in town, this one was full of Muslim stalls and all sorts of other things. I loved it.

Wish the green ones were cheese and spinach rolls. I'd kill for one of those. They're actually a sweet roll, but not too sweet. I couldn't work out what was inside, and the woman couldn't explain it to me.

Maybe I'll see them somewhere else.

Spicy rösti, a grated and spiced potato pancake. Mmmmmm. The best pre-dinner snack ever.

Straight out of the oven.

Friendly baker

Yet another sweet treat

Men playing xiangqi, a chess-like strategic game that has been played here for thousands of years

It gets dark very late here, given the weird Chinese time zone system, ie, everything's on Beijing time.

And it's not even summer yet.

To The End Of Gansu

It's probably about another 400 clicks to my final major destination in Gansu, the incredible Mogao cave grottoes near Dunhuang.

I've already ridden almost the entire length of the province now, well over a thousand clicks, and the final stretch of it will be the most dry, desolate and barren of the lot.

Well, let's just say that I think that's true.

Because I have no real idea whatsoever of what's between here and Dunhuang.

And, as you must know by now, that's exactly the way I like it❤️

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