After a 24 hour long journey I finally made it to Shanghai. I was welcomed by the border police with a special check up because they were questioning a scratched entry page in my passport. I told them well that was Nigeria, oh well.

My friend Zaiming had his dad come pick me up with their fancy car and got me an entire apartment in central Shanghai. On the way there were 20 stories buildings, perhaps 10 in a row, in a very rural section near the airport. It got me thinking about the reason behind it, perhaps the developers were building it for a show, or that there are this huge of a demand. The next few days I was bombarded by all the flashy colors and lights of Shanghai. American bars that sells bacon beer with flamboyant Americans; Japanese grill with the waitress tries to sell us everything; Rooftop bars on the Bund that has red wine shipped directly from Bordeaux. I find it that there's something missing behind all these colors and lights and noises, and I hope I can find out more by venturing into the rural part of china.

My real journey started the next day when my cousin drove me and my bike to the Province of Anhui in his bimmer. We went through yet many many more buildings that are 20 stories high, all seems to be in the middle of nowhere next to the highway. My tourmate Marian wanted to meet in this "scenic area" called Marenshan, about 300km west of Shanghai since "it's what chinese people wanted to do", according to her. On the small road approaching to it I finally get to see rural China for the first time: fields, farmers, water buffalo, all those in the romance. It still exists outside of all the flashy buildings. Marenshan itself was a really weird experience. It was supposed to be a geological park with interestingly shaped rock formations. They tried to sell it by: building a Mongolian Yurt as an restaurant; building a Mao's button museum; hired a village of Wa minority group from few thousand KM away to work as a "primordial human life scene" event. Everything seems a little fake and rootless.

The second day I built my bike in the parking lot of the vacation hotel of Marenshan and started my journey! This was the first time I rode a touring bike with all my luggage of the next two month on the side of the back wheel. The steering is a bit funny. We biked on the small coutry road where we came from earlier the day before, and ate at a random food spot in the first town. Two other patrons start to pique interest in Marian who is decidedly not chinese looking. She actually is an expert in country side touring in china (this is her 5th or 6th tour) so she casually started a conversation with them while I pretend to be a foreigner. This is an interesting dynamic since we both can speak both languages quite well. We rode along side of a semi polluted river. Met a guy who's tractor's wheel fell off. Talked to an old guy sitting next to a Taoist Temple. We went on a bigger road and it started to pour. Water, mud, smog, pollution, dirt, whatever came down all together onto me unexpectedly. After soaking wet and few more hours we came to a town with a huge Kaifaqu (read, new planned town center). There was a church on the side of the road but it wasn't a church: it was a purposely built wedding venue. We found lodging at a hotel, roughly 20 bucks us dollars. Well, they did try to sell me one that costs 22 bucks but with sex toys on the bed..

Next day I made yirgacheff coffee from my aeropress to start the day. Couldn't be better. We biked next to the Yangtze river. It was the first time I saw the Yangtze river so I was kinda excited for this significance. Although the river, though vast, is no more than a huge muddy water. We biked next to the Anhui Greenway for about a mile, when the greenway turned into a typical new wide road and we started to see factories after factories on the side of the road. I couldn't breath, my eyes itches. I used my facemask and tried to squint my eye and go as fast as possible to get out of this damned place. Tongling, the city where we spent the night, means Copper Hill in Chinese. There are miles after miles of copper factories that inherited the city's name sake. But it was awful. After about 2 hours we decide to take a detour to see an ancient town. We saw another road side church, this time a real one built in 1875, but it was a ruin, even the archaeological plaque was smashed in halves. We went to the port, and hundred of farmers rushed to the land with their dark green or grey clothing, with a bamboo stick on the shoulder carrying very heavy load of vegetable to the market. Next to the market is the marketed "ancient town". They were rennovating it by relaying the old stone road on cement. At the end of the day we took a ferry across Yangtze to a little village that has only one hotel, operated by the pair of lovely old couple. They told us about their lives, their kids lives, their kids' kids who are in Guangzhou and recently got married. I was like, yes, this is what I want to see, after all the crazy lights. This is the real china in the shadow, struggling.

tbd