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China (continued)  Night scene in Beijing
China's south east coast traces a landmass that bulges into the Pacific Ocean like the butt of Asia, rumbling with activity and spewing out its waist. The relative minnows of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam are under my wheels and Hong Kong Island has disappeared behind China's great pall; pollution. At times the traffic becomes so crazy I'm forced to ride in the gutter and chew on the pollution. After less than a week of pedalling north from Hong Kong I wake up with a small pool of carbon black phlegm on my pillow and fear for the state of my lungs. But with my focus on avoiding being sent home in a jam jar this is the least of my worries. Three hundred km's north east of Hong Kong I have my closest encounter yet with the grim reaper. A vehicle appears from a slip road and thumps my shoulder. When I slam on my brakes and swerve across the road I look up to see two trucks hurtling toward me at speed. For a moment my heart almost flies through my mouth and time freezes. Ten years ago on a sleepy Sunday morning in England my face hit the tarmac at twenty km's per hour. Three hours later I awoke to the sight of a Doctor stitching my face back together. I still recall the moment before that car hit, that fraction of a second when time froze and the anticipated taste of blood rushed through my sensory glands. That moment of dread encapsulated in point five of a second returns like a bolt through my senses before an angel descends and a corridor appears between the trucks. At times like this ones entire life is replayed like a cinematic sequence moving at the speed of light. It's not a pretty sight and only serves to remind me that I probably won't get the chance to do purgatory when it's all over. As such I'd prefer to stick around in this world for as long as possible. For now at least The Devils jam jar remains empty. Avoiding that jam jar and overcoming communication difficulties are two of the biggest challenges whilst cycling in China. Throughout South East Asia and India it's relatively easy to make yourself understood when ordering food or searching for a hotel. And when people don't speak English a little mime action will usually suffice but in China these tried and tested routines invariably fall flat in front of an audience of blank expressions. Its not that the Chinese are unhelpful or unfriendly, far from it, there are several occasions when the help and generosity of locals is overwhelming. It's just that away from the big cities most have never dealt with a foreigner. Getting lost is easily done in Chinese cities and during my long crawl through China it seems to happen time and again. In Xiamen, roughly six hundred km's north of Hong Kong I manage, like a man in a desert to cycle for two hours and return to the spot I began from. The frustration hits me like a ball and chain and buckles me up. Like Basil Fawlty I'm tempted to rip a branch off a tree and start beating my bike with it. Instead I collapse my head in my hands, squat down on the pavement and begin making strange murmuring sounds. My unfortunate audience is beginning to look quite concerned at my mental wellbeing and un-knowingly to me one of them calls the cops. The police send an English speaking officer who's both friendly and helpful. Somewhat sheepishly I explain I'm lost to a chorus of relief and laughter. At this point even I'm able to see the funny side of this absurd episode. The policeman probably considers a straight jacket but instead loads my bike into the car boot, drives me to the edge of town and sets me free. Experiencing a certain degree of suffering and frustration is an inevitable element of any long distance cycle tour. It may seem like a paradox but ultimately the lows I experience serve to accentuate the highs to create an experience more life affirming than a weekend in the Grand Hyatt could ever be. When people ask me if I'm having a nice time it's not really that which I'm looking for. If I were looking for a nice time I'd have booked a villa on a beach in Thailand for two weeks. There are times when China seems impenetrable, but as the days role by I begin to get better at communicating with the locals by developing a kind of post impressionist version of pictionary. Using strong lines and sharp angles I attempt to leap frog the language barrier. When I need food I draw pots and pans in a kitchen. When I want chicken and rice I draw chicken and rice and when I need to find a bike shop I draw someone fixing a puncture. At times this works a treat. People seem to have fun watching me draw the pictures and in some instances a small crowd gathers, making me look like Rolf Harris on a bicycle. In a city called Fuzhou, midway between Hong Kong and Shanghai I drop into a restaurant for an evening meal. The whitewashed interior is decorated with red lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a porcelain laughing Buddha sitting at the counter. The atmosphere is warm and convivial but none of the waiters or kitchen staff speaks English so I draw a picture of a chicken. An audience gathers and when I add a beak and feathers someone mimics a chicken while the crowd applauds. They think it's a competition so I draw someone eating that chicken and point to my stomach and finally the message gets through that this cartoon scribbling alien, Ben Hopkins, from the planet Zog wants to eat chicken. The manager, who speaks a little English hadn't interrupted me because he was enjoying the spectacle too much. When he asks to join me I insist he pulls up a chair. Having left Hong Kong over two weeks ago I'd had few conversations and was becoming weary of talking to my chopsticks and playing pictionary. Nearly all English speaking Chinese adopt an English name when speaking to westerners and his was Tom, after Tom Cruise. Within seconds the table is full of several dishes that we share. ''I'm sorry, my English is not good'' he says. I tell him that's okay; it's a lot better than my Chinese. He then asks me if I like to drink. The answer is an unswerving yes so he brings out a bottle of Maotai, a 45% spirit made from millet and usually drunk at the type of banquettes where Chinese businessmen shower one another in gifts and close deals. Tom tells me the Chinese rarely eat or drink alone and feel sorry for people who do, but it's different for me, he says, because I'm a foreigner. Filling our small glasses full of paint stripper the etiquette is to raise glasses together and down it in one at the same time. To lose pace with your colleagues can be taken as unsociable and unmanly so it's far from uncommon to see legless Chinese men staggering through the streets after nightfall. They're not necessarily drunks, they just drink too much at important meetings because they don't want to embarrass their hosts and colleagues and in turn experience that most terrifying of fates; losing face. Commonly for Chinese people Tom asks me how old I am, whether I'm married with children and what my job is. When I give him the answers his face droops a little. To him I must look like a misfit cast adrift from society wandering aimlessly towards an abyss at the edge world. He wouldn't be far wrong there but I insist I'm in fine fettle, enjoying my travels and looking forward to the future. He looks at me surprised and tells me he's become very worried because he can't find a wife. ''The girls in Fuzhou are not very pretty,'' he opines somewhat disingenuously, ''I come from Hong Kong where all the girls are pretty.'' I tell him the girls in Fuzhou look fine before you start drinking Chinese spirits and even better afterwards. He laughs and tells me he must find a wife soon or his father will lose patience. As a consequence of China's one child policy the disparity between sexes is now the widest in the world. Most families hope their only child will be a boy and despite the efforts of the authorities millions are aborting children the moment they discover it's a girl. Even if every male were to marry there will still have to be several million bachelors in the near future and in a country where family is everything that'll mean a lot of alienated individuals. But Toms only 31 and he has a good job so I make light of the situation, propose another toast and tell him it'll be fine before venturing to ask what he thinks of China's one child policy. ''Oh, I agree, there are too many people in China.'' He may well have a point but in many peoples reckoning China will become the worlds most powerful within a few decades. Imagine it; the most powerful nation in the world run by millions of single children all squabbling to get their way under the banner of one of the twentieth centuries most brutal tyrants and greatest killers; Chairman Mau. As one of that parties 75 million members Tom believes the future will be great. Unusually for me I decide not to play the devils advocate and instead propose a toast to the people of China, which he thanks me for effusively. Having had my milometer stolen in Hanoi I become vague about distances but Fuzhou is roughly 1,000 km's north of Hong Kong and another 1,000 km's from Shanghai. The highway continues to hug the coast and the lorries continue to stream by but there are on occasions some rural retreats where the contrast between old and new China is profound. In the kaleidoscopic city centres people don't just dress differently and stuff their designer bags full of fancy items; their very physique and skin tone and movements are different. In the beaten down towns that have been bypassed by the boom peoples skin texture is harder, darker, hollowed and lined. On average they're shorter, leaner and a lot tougher but as a general rule they come across as gentler, more polite and more humble. They may not understand my games of pictionary but they won't hurry past as if they're too important to give you the time of day and when a successful transaction or encounter happens they'll invariably beam an expression of goodwill. This is the silent majority who've suffered the most for China, the people who were used to glorify the communist regime even when it metaphorically shoved them up the ass with a red hot sickle; these are the people who feed the nation but struggle to eek out a living while Shanghai and Beijing surge forward into the 21 st century. Fortunately for the leaders of these countries, it's the culture of respect adhered to by the downtrodden that keeps them in their place. The wheels keep turning while the tilt of the earth's surface leads me north. Most of the rooms I find are in characterless hotels but they're generally clean, comfortable and functional. The prices at around $20 per night are higher than Thailand, Laos and Vietnam but still affordable for budget travellers. There's nearly always a TV and a carton of instant noodles, a bottle of water, a packet of cigarettes, a four pack of beer, a tube of erection cream and a packet of condoms for all those travelling businessmen who arrive to the greetings of potential concubines. As I approach Shanghai with a few thousand km's under my wheels the practice of getting lost and raging at the furnace overhead continues to be the defining characteristic of my Chinese leg of this tour. On a couple of occasions I choose to sleep rolled up in a bed sheet under a tree away from the big cities rather than deal with the palaver of finding a room. It's not exactly luxury but the spiders and the ants and the long wriggly creatures who try to burrow into each and every orifice of my anatomy seem to enjoy the company. The rumbling of traffic and hot sunshine usually awakes me early and sends me on my way. Despite the hardships there are numerous occasions when I'm elevated from the gravitational pull of trucks the size of dinosaurs and their stinking dumps. One of the great pleasures of travel in China is being approached by locals who speak English and offer to be a guide simply because they want to help. Having been burnt more times than a witches frog I'm initially cautious of people who offer help for no return but outside of Shanghai and Beijing my cynicism is proved wrong time and again. Three hundred km's north of Fuzhou I'm standing at a junction pondering which way toward the centre. The heat is intense and the frustration is rising. A young bespectacled guy cycles up and asks if he can help. I show him my map with the name of a hotel. He leads me through a myriad of quintessentially Chinese streets lined with one story houses and open shop fronts where old men play chess, women natter and kids flail around in all directions; circling a city centre that pierces the sky. Before we reach the city he waves down a cycle rickshaw, hands him some money and tells him to lead me to the hotel. Before he cycles off I insist on at least giving him the money for the cycle taxi. But he steadfastly refuses to accept and pedals off.  Chinese men playing cards in Gulang Yu There are numerous occasions on my journey through China when I meet people like this who take pride in helping foreigners and refuse to accept any money for their time and effort. A few hundred km's south of Shanghai I'm searching for a place where I can get a print out when an assertive young woman and her sister offer to help. The print shop is closed but she calls the manager and asks him to open up for 30 minutes because there's a foreigner who needs help. The manager obliges but no one wants any extra fee when I offer. She tells me there are over ten thousand marble and granite factories in this region. This explains why for the past 100km's the air has been thick with dust and the hills have been gorged into with heavy machinery. Then she asks me if I'm a Muslim. I tell her no before she explains that her friend and business associate, a wealthy man living in London is a Muslim. ''Oh, he is very rich and has invited me to work for him in London. It is my dream to move to London. If I marry him I get the visa.'' I ask if she wants to marry him. She tells me no, he's too old but she wants to use his job offer to get a work visa for England. She's both determined and confident about moving to England and seems to have laid down the plans. ''If he is angry when I don't marry I know I can still get a job…..lot of people in London work without visa, I know, I learn from the computer.'' I press the importance of getting a return ticket in case it all goes wrong. ''Thank you, thank you'' she says, ''in England everyone is lady and gentleman.'' When I ask her if she's sure about that she says; ''yes, yes, I know they are.'' She'll probably need that return ticket sooner than she thinks. An overnight boat delivers me at the southern tip of Shanghai just as the sun creeps over the skyscrapers. Described in travel blurb as the whore of the Orient and the city that danced when the revolution shot its way into town Shanghai certainly holds an allure for any traveller but somehow I choose to bypass the kaleidoscopic glamour of Shanghai. Knowing, just like a whore Shanghai will be bloody expensive and when she empties your wallet all love for this dazzling metropolis will be gone. Instead I pedal sixty km's inland to another popular tourist destination. Suzhou is yet another boom city where white washed houses and tree lined canals sit alongside modern boutiques and stylish restaurants and bars. It's as good a place as any to hang up the wheels for a few days and rejuvenate. Marco Polo once commented it was one of the most beautiful places in China so if it was good enough for him it'll be good enough for me. The roads of China have worn me down to a shell of my former self. The grime has penetrated the gaps between my teeth and the crevasses around my eyes. There's a continuous ringing in my ears, my legs wobble when I climb the stairs and the fact that I keep putting things down and forgetting where they are makes me wonder if one of those wriggly creatures really did penetrate my lughole and is right now eating out my brains. When I find a room I stock up on food and wine, buy Newsweek, Time, The Economist and China's only English language daily newspaper China Today; kick off my heals and spend the next 30 hours or so sleeping, eating, drinking and reading. There are times when being the ultimate slob becomes the ultimate pleasure and having cycled from Hong Kong to Shanghai I feel no guilt revelling in sloth. Ham, cheese, gherkins, bread and two bottles of wine see me through the next 30 hours or so. When I have to arise for the toilet it seems like oh so much of an effort. When I emerge from my hibernation I make it my business to go out and meet people. Being only an hour and a half from Shanghai there are an increasing number of ex-pats who bulge the bars in its more fashionable quarters. In these areas it's easy to forget you're in China. The music, the choice of food and drink, the fashion sense of the young and the shops are all western. The ex-pats I meet are mostly business types. They're all well groomed as people generally are in China but seem a little stand offish when I try to talk. In fact as this night wears on I begin to wonder if I've turned into a one eyed cyborg with a shrunken head. It may all be in my mind but people seem to turn away when I say ''How ya doing.'' Perhaps I've been on the road for too long and have lost the basic human skill of communication. Its quite possible, people who emerge from the woods bedraggled and wild eyed are rarely welcomed back into decent society until they reacclimatise and I've always had the suspicion that there's something of the freak about me. After a while I just think, sod 'em all, sit at a table outside, order a bottle of Chilean red and begin scribbling cartoons of one eyed cyborgs with shrunken heads. When one of them metamorphosis's into a genuine friend I figure the wines working fine and order another bottle.  'You promised me a rose garden.' 'Oh God, here we go again' COMING NEXT CHINA CONTINUED AND THE TRANS SIBERIAN
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