Uneasy Riders

I saw the mountains for the first time. They were always there, of course, hidden behind a veil of fog, or what they told me was fog. On clear days, a bumpy outline might appear on the horizon out beyond where the sun sets, but most days there was simply no horizon. Just an endless gray haze. But I was there, precariously squeezed into a motorcycle sidecar, careening around tight curves and verdant cliffs, the entire time in total disbelief that this was still Beijing.

Who needs to go out into the wilderness? Most Beijingers. It helps us get through those grim urban days. I am no exception. To call my life sedentary is only part of the truth: my main source of exercise is running for the bus. I was stuck in the concrete jungle for the foreseeable future, and thus was itching for something wild, something uncivilized.

Oh, and I didn’t have the time or the money to go on some fancypants expatriate vacation out to Southeast Asia, or Mongolia, or over oceans to camp out in Yellowstone.

Here’s where opportunity strikes. A friend of mine was revving up a motorcycle with a sidecar, a perk from his new job giving motorcycle tours up to the Great Wall. One of the local expat magazines had pub- lished a cover feature promoting daytrips within the Beijing sphere, places close enough to get to and back before dark but still far enough away that being stuck in traffic is avoidable. Having a set of wheels is hardly something exotic, and although Beijing is not as moto-friendly as Southeast Asian metropolises, hearing the roar of a 150cc hog is common enough to be ignored by most.

I didn’t have anything packed. We didn’t even have a map. Not to say that this was some sort of Easy Rider journey of self-discovery. There was a destination, a village we had picked out designated “Best for Explorers,” a little hideaway with rustic little villas and farmhouse scenery.

Beijing the province, rather than Beijing the city, covers an area of land comparable to most small European countries. Though it’s completely enveloped by surrounding Hebei, there’s a lot to be seen: farmland and plains down south, crumbling sections of the Great Wall still protecting villages frozen in time to the north and west. Much is made of the capital’s impressive development, praise that is well deserved. Yet this overlooks the rambling miles of scenery that is more like the China that predated the iPad and the factory whistle.

Anyone can get out to the Beijing sticks on a public bus, or even by rental car. The open road merits a motorcycle, though, and the power of our chosen conveyance infected our minds the two of us met up with another set of friends with sidecars, and changed our plans as soon as the keys were in the engine.

“I want to see mountains,” we both collectively agreed. The village plan was tossed behind us as we fired off onto the highway in a cardinal direction opposite to where we had intended to go.

There were three of us, wannabe Dennis Hoppers to a man. My friend and I had little experience of the rigors of long rides out in the wilderness frighteningly far from fire or fuel. Our partners were far more rugged than us: a tall, bald-headed Swede who had been riding motorcycles since his youth and regularly blazed out into the countryside on blue sky days, and a middle-aged American, who used his motorcycle as a personal excuse to escape the city, and, he confessed, his wife.

Tobias, the Swede, was a little bit too close to the engine for our tastes. While I was sitting in the sidecar enjoying the freedom of the rushing breeze, I could see my partner struggling to maintain his speed. Tobias reveled in it, occasionally putting his flip-flop close to the ground to feel the road slipping by him under his feet. Beijing’s cobweb-like network of highways was something that we could look behind as we passed the famous ring roads one by one, until clearing the city altogether.

You’ve left Beijing not when the buildings change but when the traffic subsides. The transition is hardly stark, as the urban growth seems to be endless highways zip by cookie-cutter apartment buildings again and again and again. The drone of repetition slides by until the organs of the colossal city begin to appear: a power plant with cooling towers large enough to defy description. An iron smelter, rising high out of a lattice of wrenched iron. Then, as you turn your head, the mountains in Mentougou district break through the horizon.

Far-flung Mentougou is a rural place, with not much in between the forgettable hamlets that are its landmarks. While a lot of literature has been written about the wonders of motorcycling the open road, the actual experience leaves any guidebook in the dust. Beyond the very real possibility of getting lost, so much is left unsaid: the sheer terror of careening around hairpin cliff bends, the awe of dropping almost weightlessly into deep valleys, and the unending discomfort of getting bugs in one’s mouth.

Plenty of villages have signs proffering homestyle cuisine, but we learned the smart choice was to hold out for anywhere serving the barbecued trout topped with hot peppers that fight for control of your sinuses. Many of these homestyle restaurants are found on the riverside: we found ours by a series of absolutely stunning ponds where they caught to the order. The fish wasn’t big, but it was fresh, and that makes all the difference in a city hundreds of kilometers away from the ocean.

It took us three tries to find a restaurant we liked. From the roadside, the three bikes slowly creeped down one-lane alleys to the riverside, where shirtless Chinese men sat around gossiping and watching the sun cross the sky. This was the quintessentially Chinese sight that greeted us at every village we passed through.

While not dodging cars, I occasionally stuck my head over the edge of the sidecar to snap a photo or peek at one of the villages before it disappeared into the distance behind us. I began to notice that not only were we not the only foreigners around, but we weren’t even the only motorcade of misfits. Twice on our journey we chanced upon local motorcycle clubs, puttering around on the twolane highways like Hell’s Angels. It seems the open road is now calling to a whole new civilization.

That’s something I’m afraid of. Mentougou will be invariably colonized by weekend-breaking tourists that want the same thing as me, to get away from the weekend-breaking tourist. Signs were already beginning to show: families driving SUVs clogged parts of the road to catch a glimpse of an unpolluted sky before heading back to their city apartments. The towering green hills dominate the skyline, but remain unsung due to their obscure status in the Beijing atlas.

What Mentougou and its highways offer is something Beijing, with all its cash and gumption, has failed to create in its urban spaces. Peaceful, quiet nothingness.