The Culture Shock Cycle - Nanjing to Zhengzhou

14th of September 2019, Day 32 - 1,500ish km

Day 22- Road to Chuzhou closed, but I snook through

Here it is, today is one month into the trip. Well, I started writing this at the one-month mark, but I've been struggling to find the energy to write. During that month I at some point smashed through the 1000km mark too. When I started, I had a rough estimate of 300 days - 13,000km over 10 months. It doesn't really feel like I'm 10% done, though.Then again Joetsu definitely feels a long way away now. I guess its more I was hoping I'd be better adapted to all this by the one month mark. Safe to say I haven't quite found my feet.

Day 24 - Country road outside of Bengbu, best riding to date

The cycling itself has not been the problem at all. I get stronger week on week, going from doing 40km days to 80km days with no problems, except my right knee. Hopefully, that's been sorted by raising my seat a little, but for now the knee brace is back on. I'm out of the industrial East coast now, so every day I ride through new villages, each with its own crop. Grapes, to corn, to cauliflower, to corn, to rice, to corn. There's a lot of corn round here, strewn out on the sides of the road to dry in the sun.

Day 28 - The yellow brick road to Zhecheng

My calves stick out like they've been chiseled in marble, and my hamstrings are the size of my head. By the time I get back to the UK, I'm gonna look like a kangaroo. China does not seem to sell suncream, and I wear fingerless cycling gloves, so I have a bizarre deep brown tan that starts at my shoulder and stops at my wrists, leaving pale ghost hands tipped with chocolate phalanges. A beard has spontaneously erupted onto my face again. Who am I to tell it to leave?

Cultural Fatigue

No, the problems I've been having are social and mental rather than physical. I've already been through multiple waves of what people living abroad call the culture-shock cycle* while living in Japan. This time it's far more intense, mostly because I'm alone, and I have no safe-haven of ex-pats to moan to. At first you are love with everything. Its all so new and exciting. You don't understand whats going on, and you're loving every second of it. The "Honeymoon stage" (which you can see in the unbridled positivity of my previous post).

Day 22 - First bit of unbroken nature in the mountains to Chuzhou

Then you grow tired, from all the new and the not understanding. This is called the "Frustration stage", and it's where I've been spending most of the past week. I am now sufficiently peeved to give the other side of the coin to cycling through China.

It starts of course with the language. Despite studying on and off since January, my Chinese is terrible. I now know the words laowei - foreigner, which echos down the street as I ride by, ying guo ren, British, as despite the british flag on the back of my bike the first wary question is whether I'm american or not, and bu ming bai - I don't understand. I generally do not understand. This covers 90% of my interaction with people. To top it off, Mandarin is a very sing-songy tonal language. I can get the phrase right, but with the wrong tone I'm suddenly speaking incomprehensible gobbledegook.

Day 26 - The harvest for this town is peppers

It goes further though than spoken miscommunications. Gestures, body language, and other social signs are all different. The tonal nature of Chinese makes most people sound like they are trying to pick a fight with you when they speak, and they have no concept of personal space.I can't tell half the time if people are mad at me or want to be my friend. With no rising intonation at the end of a sentence to signpost a question, I often have someone repeating something at me louder and louder, getting more and more frustrated. That is until I hit'em with my catch phrase - bu ming bai.

My gestures for money, bicycle, eating, everything basically also seem to fall on deaf eyes. They even have an intricate set of hand gestures for numbers. I'd advise anyone going to China to learn them before going.

Day 29 - Delicious mini nectarines from a stall on the highway to Wulhe Town

Then there is the constant standing out. It's the same feeling you get when you've been on a night out in fancy dress, but now it's the next morning. You find yourself walking down the high street in a tutu, and everyone is staring at you questioningly. Except it's every day and I can't take off the tutu, cause its just me being a foreigner. In Japan you get this, but in China they really rub it in, because they can't help but come up to you and ask what the hell is going on. What in the world are you doing all the way out here in rural China? On occasions I ask myself the same thing. Those are the polite ones. Many are content to stand back and take a picture or videos of me. I must be on so many random Chinese people's phones, I'll be going viral any day now.

Day 24 - Lone Yak in a field outside of Bengbu

The "Find a Hotel" Game

The fatigue from the "Frustration Stage" then makes small inconveniences seem like the end of the world. Day 23, I was pulling out of town. I say town, cause I can't work out what it was called, but it was near the Sangjian reservoir. My rear derailleur is clicking, but rather than stop to sort it out, I try and force it. There's a big cracking sound, and my chain breaks. It feels like the world is ending. The only people around are street cleaners, who are already shaking their heads as I walk up, and put up their hands as I try to get some directions. I don't want to get involved. I'm just here to sweep.

Day 23 - Repair team in that town near Sangjian reservoir

You don't realise quite how heavy your bike is until you have to walk it 2km back into town. Thankfully I stumbled on two extremely kind guys. They were really interested in what I was doing. I wasn't going anywhere fast, so we chatted for a bit, and they seemed to actually understand what I was trying to say. Thank goodness for people who'll meet you half way when communicating. They went out of their way to find me a repair shop, walked me over there, and explained the situation to the repair guy. I love when a friend you make takes over the situation, because you no longer have to muddle through bad Chinese. You can just stand there nodding and smiling. They completely turned my day around, and I pushed on for 70km to Bengbu.

Day 29 - Curious policemen that helped me find a hotel in Wulihe Town

Things hit breaking point though at Kaifeng, day 30. I am out of the big cities now. When I search for a hotel online nothing really comes up, so if I want a reasonably priced place to stay, I have to play the "Find a Hotel" game. The odds are stacked heavily against me. I have no internet, I can hardly read, half the hotels can't take foreigners, and I'm reliant on friendly people to point me in the right direction. Thankfully there are lots of friendly people in China, so I win the "Find a hotel" game nine times out of ten. I have to say, I'm getting pretty good.

Day 26 - One of the friendly people. Bought me lunch and brought me to a hotel

In Kaifeng though, I wasn't so lucky. Hotel 1, too expensive. Hotel 2, no foreigners allowed. Hotel 3, good price and available rooms, even got down to paying, but they give me my money back when they find out I don't have a residents card. In the end I tried 5 different places, cycling up and down the city streets with no luck. In the end I go up to a policeman, which in the past has worked wonders. There are so many policemen here with so little to do, they love a little challenge to spice up their day. Not this time though. This policemen cannot understand a thing I'm saying and points me to the hotel I've just come out of. That's when I lose it and start yelling. Some more Chinese people crowd round, laughing and joking at how funny it is that a white guy is here. I throw my helmet down on the ground and walk away, put my head down on a railing, and wipe away the angry tears forming in the corner of my eyes. Count to 10. Cool it. I realise have to get out of that situation, so I ignore the crowd, grab my helmet, and cycle on.

Literally 200 meters down the road, I find a hotel with a cheap price, the warm-faced middle-aged receptionist doesn't even ask for my passport, and she even lets me bring my bike into the room. Exhausted and feeling sorry for myself, I collapse into the room, not even leave to find dinner. I've had enough of China for one day.

Next morning I'm all out of sorts, as I haven't eaten properly or done anything to fix my attitude. Cycle on the edge of tears till lunch. Found an absolutely lovey place, with an old grandma that made it her mission to make sure I had everything I needed. Turns out I was just hangry.

Day 30 - Chinese breakfast: Bao-zi and a sweet meal soup

As I'm finishing up, something kicks off outside. Two big groups of Chinese guys had been eating and drinking outside. Seems like people either don't drink here, or are drunk by mid-day. I walk out to see a full-blown fist fight taking place. One big guy is being held down by three other people, another cracks a bottle on the table and starts brandishing it about like a knife. Wives are jumping in and pulling out their husbands, walking them away like little guilty school kids.

Weirdly it fixed my mood. I was no longer the object of attention. I was in the crowd, laughing and joking with the onlookers at how absurd China can be. I got on my bike and resolved to adjust.

That's the next step of the Culture shock cycle. The "Adjustment Stage", where you accept the new culture you are in for what it is and adapt to it. Looking back, I was more mad at myself for losing my cool than I was at the policeman and the onlookers. I always eventually find somewhere to sleep, and if not I have a tent. Losing the "Find a Hotel" game is more when I let the situation beat me and give up. China is the way it is, and it's too big of a mountain for one random guy on a bike to move. I am the guest here and have to play by their rules. I can either stay angry or change the way I approach things.*


Dogs and Children

Day 27 - Owner of the Cheapest hotel in Bozhou,  40元 a night.

I don't want this post to be all doom and gloom. You guys just happen to be reading my therapy session live. By writing it all down, I can work through my feelings rather than bottle it up. I never have been good with feelings. Never fear: Things are still good and everything is fine. China still constantly surprises me, and most of those surprises are positive. Through all that fatigue and frustration, I am still amazed on a daily basis how many people will go out of their way to help me out here.

Day 28 - Taking the bike back out of the storage shed behind the hotel, Bozhou

Day 24 stands out as the surprisiest of surprise days. I was cycling through country roads, but had forgotten to bring some food, and there was nothing really around. I pull up to a little village with a shop to ask if there's a restaurant, but run into a young guy outside and ask him instead. He at first says there's no restaurant, but then has a think and tells me to follow him. On the way he's making phone calls, presumably to see if I can eat somewhere.

We pull up, and its not a restaurant, it's his house. He plops me down on a stool and starts giving me food. He has a dog, a huge German Shepherd, but not the angry kind that you sometimes get out here. The dog comes over to see what I'm eating and lets me pet him. The young guy tells me to give him the chicken bones from my meal, so now I'm basically the dog's best friend. He rolls over and I rub his belly. Everything is right with the world.

A toddler comes down the stairs, and I ask if it's his kid. No, he says, it's his brother. Turns out the young guy is just a high school student that casually invited me into his home to eat. Then mum shows up and is like er... WHAT have you brought home? I tell her she has a really good kid, and she agrees proudly before plying me with more food. I eventually have to get going, so we say our goodbyes. At no point did he even ask for a photo together. He just did it because I looked hungry. Good guess.

Day 24 - Group shot

I cycle a bit further down the road and wave to some smiley kids who wave back, but I think nothing of it. 45 minutes down the road, a guy pulls past me, stops, and waves me over. He tells me in broken English that he's a teacher, and he wants me to come to his school. At this point he doesn't even know I have teaching experience. My guess is the kids I waved to mentioned they'd seen a white guy, and Teach was like Yep, we definitely want him at our school. So he jumped in his car and drove after me. China is crazy.

He tells me the school is close, but I have a sneaking suspicion that's car-close, not bicycle-close. I follow him for 45 minutes as he awkwardly edges up the road at 10km per hour in front of me, a small traffic jam forming behind us. Finally, we arrive, but by now the kids are in the middle of class. He takes me up to the teacher's room to chat with the principle and other teachers. When I mention I was a teacher in Japan, they have a lightbulb moment, and I end up teaching the 4th and 5th grade English class in the final period.

Five years of experience making stuff up on the spot in front of a class finally pays off. I briefly introduced myself and the trip I was taking, played some rock paper scissor games, and did some speed drawing pictionary on the board to round it all off. Nothing worked right, but I'm used to that too, and the kids loved it. At the end, we took an excellent group photo, and I rode out into the sunset, never to be heard from again.

Day 24 - I teach kids

On to the Mountains

Day 24 - Owner of the best noodle shop in Cheng Guan Zhen.

Next leg is the start of the real challenge physically - over the mountains to Xi'an. As for the social and mental problems, I'm hoping that because I've identified whats up, I can be better prepared to deal with it healthily in the future. For now though, I'm taking it easy with a rest day in Zhengzhou. It just so happens to be Saturday, and the Henan Jianye Football Team are based here, so I'm going to watch a football game.

p.s. The game was great, a 4-1 win for my boys Jianye against Hebei CFFC. Almost didn't make it as I forgot my passport in the hotel, which is apparently vital to watch a football game in China. At 70 minutes they all shone their phones to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Communist Revolution, then sang the national anthem.

p.p.s. The main criticism of the last post was not enough photos, so I've tried to pepper this one with a few more.

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*Some people talk about Culture Shock as a process with an end stage, but for me it has always been more of a cycle. In adjusting you get better at the language, better at navigating through the culture, and fall in love all over again. Then you hit new barriers, get frustrated, and go through it all again. Thankfully these waves get smaller and smaller, until you get to the final stage, the "Acceptance Stage". But I think this too is not a permanent destination. The academic stuff on Culture Shock focuses on moving to another country. However I think we all experience it on some scale, whether it be a new job, moving to a new town, moving in with a partner, or going to a new school, anytime we face a new environment.