Chapter 197

Distance covered: 264 km (total 4014 km)

Up at 6:30. We packed after a quick breakfast of baked beans and tortilla bread with Nutella. I had a glug of wine and a can of beer, because why not, I’m on holiday and it’s the girlfriend’s turn to drive.

We headed west, on small country roads. 90% of vehicles were big trucks, and the girlfriend was a bit intimidated. “Plus, they’ve been driving all night, so now they’re tired!” I added, to get her even more on edge. The road eventually got us through the town of Yingxian, where the very worst of the very worst of Chinese drivers got exiled, or at least that would be a plausible theory, because Jesus fuck, some of the maneuvers we witnessed were beyond unbelievable.

Besides that, everything went smooth. We stopped in a sizable city named Shuozhou for a kickass barbecue lunch, a stop at the ATM, and the girlfriend went to a hair salon to wash her hair. She has an adventurous spirit and doesn’t mind roughing it a bit, but also likes comfort. I often poke fun at her for that, but deep down I’m not that different, especially with my addiction to cold craft beers. While she was getting shampooed, I walked the dog, and a young woman stopped me. She asked in English if I speak French, and when I said yes, she switched to that language, that she could speak quite well. I asked where she learned and she said in Beijing. That was unexpected, that deep in the north-central part of the country.

I stopped at a booze shop, of which Shuozhou seems to have hundreds, and got some red wine, perusing the shelves as if I know anything about wine but just looking at the price tags and getting the three cheapest ones. One French, one Australian and one Chinese. I’ve had some Chinese wine in the past that ranged from great value to barely drinkable, but am always willing to give them a chance. Then we got on the road again, after the imposing stone mountains and the corn fields we were entering an area of rolling green hills, it was shockingly beautiful. We stopped a few times to take pictures and to run around, despite the intermittent rain.

At one spot there was a horse tied down in a field, and the dog went crazy, trying to bite him despite the fact that he is outweighed by a factor of 80 at least. Horsey didn’t seem too phased, stomping his back hooves, I had to catch the little retard while staying out of bucking range, as he was retreating between two darting attacks. There were dozens and dozens of enormous windmills on some of the ridges, weird, that sneering balding prick from China Uncensored on YouTube said that all this talk of China adopting renewable energy forms is all a smoke show, I would have imagined that putting a few fake windmills near Beijing for the journalists to see would have been enough, but no, they even put some here in western Shanxi province. That’s some committment.

In the afternoon, we stopped at a restaurant and got a bit of raw pork and an onion, something to cook dinner with. Then at around 17:30, we approached the Yellow River, and saw a spot that would be ideal for camping. We went down on a brand-new tarmac road that branched into a muddy path leading to a grassy embankment, where we hurriedly put up the tent in the light rain. It stopped soon after, and I went with the dog to explore the vast area of eroded sand by the river. Most of it was dry, but I stepped into a patch that had the consistency of glue, and lost my shoe.

There was a section of the Great Wall right above us, some of it rebuilt with perfectly symmetrical bricks and another made from clay. There were also giant statues of rough-looking horse archers, which might be confusing if you think that these were the enemies of settled agrarian China, but let’s not forget that many of the steppe nomads were also living south of the wall and/or employed as mercenaries.

I opened the Australian wine and applied myself to make dinner. I browned the pork in batches, sliced and fried the onion, and added instant couscous and hot water. After adding a bit of hot sauce and the leftover pesto from yesterday, it was a satisfying dinner that filled us up well.