Not-so-Easy Riders
NOTE: A version of this story appeared in today’s edition of the South China Morning Post (subscription only).
by DAN WASHBURN
Mark Jardine needed a break. Outside of Lijiang, in the remote northwest corner of China’s Yunnan Province, he and his Harley-Davidson had just rumbled 150 kilometers up a serpentine stretch of hand-laid cobblestone that climbed to an elevation of 4,400 meters. He stopped his motorcycle and looked down. The Yangtze River roared through Tiger Leaping Gorge, and Jardine spoke to his riding partners.
“You guys have got to admit,” he said. “This is the most awesome thing that we have done.”
The other bikers — there were 11 of them, all associated in one way or another with the Shanghai-based Red Devils Motorcycle Club — nodded in agreement. Earlier this month, they ignored SARS-related travel restrictions to go ahead with a trip they’ve been talking about doing for years.
They were on the road from May 1 to May 9, traveling roughly 2,600 crooked kilometers between Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, and Kunming, the capital of Yunnan. They called their journey “Thunder in the Hills.”
“We’re the first ones who have ever done this in this part of the country,” said Jardine, 46, a Canadian who put off having shoulder surgery just for the ride. “It’s not for the faint of heart. That’s for sure.”
Most of the roads along the route were not built with these types of motorcycles in mind — big ones, the kind you hear before you see. When roads were paved, they were often pocked with potholes. Each evening was spent assessing damage and making repairs.
“It was like off-road riding,” said longtime Shanghai resident Butch Walter, 39, who founded the Red Devils with a few friends “over some beers” in 1999. “We thought it was never possible to do it with BMWs and Harleys. It was unreal. You should see the video. It’s unreal.”
Take the second leg of the trip, from Leshan to Xichang, for example. It was getting dark and a downpour had turned the road to mush. Up ahead, an overloaded produce truck overturned, blocking the narrow road and flooding a nearby creek bed with boxes of fruits and vegetables.
The problem: three of the bikers were riding ahead of the truck and the rest were stuck in the traffic jam behind its wreckage. Mobile phones weren’t working in the mountains. So the road-blocked riders rode their motorcycles back through the rain to Liziping, the first village they passed. Price per bed: 20 RMB. The villagers are likely still talking about their leather-clad visitors.
“There couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred people in this town,” said Jardine, who has lived in Chengdu and Shanghai. “It was just a gas station and a hotel. But the local people and the children there were just so friendly. We were gassing up in the morning and all the kids came out to look at the bikes and talk to us.”
But it wasn’t unexpected roadblocks that had the riders worried heading into the trip, it was all the expected ones. Travel agents and news reports warned the group that they might not even make it out of Chengdu due to the many SARS checkpoints lining the roads in rural China.
They met with the checkpoints … and passed through every one. They became celebrities of sorts along the route. Once they went through the first SARS station, their plans were public. Everyone at every checkpoint knew to expect a large group of large motorcycles — and when.
“You made good time today,” the checkers would say as they studied the group’s driver’s licenses.
“Oh, they could hear us coming,” Jardine said. “Every tunnel, every bridge, we just cracked the throttle open and made noise. I think most of them thought it was pretty cool. They thought it was so cool that with all the SARS stuff that was going on, that we weren’t afraid. Hey, where could be a safer place than out on the open highway?”
When the guys stopped at tourist spots along the way, like the world’s tallest Buddha in Leshan and Kunming’s famous stone forest, they were always the only tourists — an impossible feat during normal times in the world’s most populous country. Typically busy towns like Lijiang and Dali were barren. Bars, technically closed, let the riders in through the back door.
“Everything was easier than I expected,” Walter said. “I honestly thought we were going to end up with a little more trouble.”
But the riders are still cautious. The two non-Westerners in the group, both natives of northeastern China, are still on the road. Walter wouldn’t give their names or any details of their travel plans, fearing that publicity could cause them troubles out on the road, where SARS fears are still high.
Walter said the Red Devils would wait until the SARS epidemic subsides before planning their next big ride. But they hope to schedule at least one each year — they feel the best way to see China is from the seat of a cycle … a big and noisy one.
“You get much more intimate with the country, with the people, with the scenery,” Walter said. “I don’t know how to describe it if you’ve never been on one.”
On the Web: www.butchshanghai.com
Photos courtesy of Red Devils MC.
05.27.2003, 10:58 PM · Stories