Day 4 – China’s Imperial Way - A.K.A. The Long March - 22 June 08 (20km walk)
Today was all about endurance rather than enjoyment. For starters the newly developed blisters were a bit of a worry. But the blisters turned out the least of our worries. We walked for 20km along a stop bank serving as a gravel road between The Grand Canal (part of a major canal system that is known as China’s Imperial Way) and a lesser canal. This embankment was lined with poplar like trees so there wasn’t too much to see apart from occasional glimpses of ferries chugging across the Grand Canal and the odd bridge leading to the communes across the lesser canal.
The great part was the trees provided wonderful shade. There were a few dilapidated farmhouses alongside the embankment with either chooks ranging around or herds of goats being closely monitored by their bamboo and whip wielding herder. On the wildlife front we saw what looked like woody woodpecker and cuckoos, which was rather cool.
The end of today’s walk was a cross roads connecting a ferry crossing the Grand Canal and a bridge crossing the lesser canal leading to a large commune, judging by the amount of traffic passing us by at the end of the working day. This was about 6pm. We sat beside the road intersection of the lane up and over the embankment and waited for a likely looking vehicle that could take us back the 50 odd km to Xuzhou.
We tried haggling with one guy deciding his price was too high at which point he decided ours was too low and drove off. A local chap was helping us and insisted that he could get us a good price with his mate. Well….it was a good price, but was it worth it we asked ourselves 1.75 hours later as we finally pulled up outside the hotel. After driving all the back country lanes, through communes and past rice paddies we ended up circumnavigating the city and coming in from the total opposite side from the hotel. The time that it took however, was not our main worry. This guy was a real horn hog. Every 10 seconds or so he was leaning on it…until that, is it got dark. Then it was a flickering light show from low to high beam….not as one in the western world would expect, dipping your lights as you come towards traffic. Oh no!!! On to high beam as cars come towards you so that they know that you are coming…and of course they are retuning the favour. So here we are blatting along weaving in and out of pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and various other two or three wheeled farm vehicles (mostly with no lights on) flashing and if we were really lucky tooting as well. Then he packed a sad on the outskirts of the city, pulled to a stop and insisted we catch a taxi from there! We finally convinced him that we could show him the way to the hotel, which we did, safely arriving after another eventful day in China!
Made it to the restaurant before it closed at 9pm. We discovered that most restaurants close at that time.
Grow well
Dr Merrin
Today was all about endurance rather than enjoyment. For starters the newly developed blisters were a bit of a worry. But the blisters turned out the least of our worries. We walked for 20km along a stop bank serving as a gravel road between The Grand Canal (part of a major canal system that is known as China’s Imperial Way) and a lesser canal. This embankment was lined with poplar like trees so there wasn’t too much to see apart from occasional glimpses of ferries chugging across the Grand Canal and the odd bridge leading to the communes across the lesser canal.
The great part was the trees provided wonderful shade. There were a few dilapidated farmhouses alongside the embankment with either chooks ranging around or herds of goats being closely monitored by their bamboo and whip wielding herder. On the wildlife front we saw what looked like woody woodpecker and cuckoos, which was rather cool.
The end of today’s walk was a cross roads connecting a ferry crossing the Grand Canal and a bridge crossing the lesser canal leading to a large commune, judging by the amount of traffic passing us by at the end of the working day. This was about 6pm. We sat beside the road intersection of the lane up and over the embankment and waited for a likely looking vehicle that could take us back the 50 odd km to Xuzhou.
We tried haggling with one guy deciding his price was too high at which point he decided ours was too low and drove off. A local chap was helping us and insisted that he could get us a good price with his mate. Well….it was a good price, but was it worth it we asked ourselves 1.75 hours later as we finally pulled up outside the hotel. After driving all the back country lanes, through communes and past rice paddies we ended up circumnavigating the city and coming in from the total opposite side from the hotel. The time that it took however, was not our main worry. This guy was a real horn hog. Every 10 seconds or so he was leaning on it…until that, is it got dark. Then it was a flickering light show from low to high beam….not as one in the western world would expect, dipping your lights as you come towards traffic. Oh no!!! On to high beam as cars come towards you so that they know that you are coming…and of course they are retuning the favour. So here we are blatting along weaving in and out of pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and various other two or three wheeled farm vehicles (mostly with no lights on) flashing and if we were really lucky tooting as well. Then he packed a sad on the outskirts of the city, pulled to a stop and insisted we catch a taxi from there! We finally convinced him that we could show him the way to the hotel, which we did, safely arriving after another eventful day in China!
Made it to the restaurant before it closed at 9pm. We discovered that most restaurants close at that time.
Grow well
Dr Merrin
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