BROOKLYN TO BROOKLYN: China 4: Shaanxi Province

The road northeast from Chengdu to Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi, was one of the most beautiful yet, passing through the Qin mountains. I was happy to see many Chinese cyclists each day heading in the opposite direction towards Sichuan and Tibet. Flat tires plagued my early days in Shaanxi and left me walking when I ran out of patches and thoroughly exhausted all of my 5 or so inner tubes.

Shaanxi Province

My last patch, literally seconds after taking this photo, while waiting for glue to dry on a tube, a gust of wind blew this little piece of heaven into a nearby sewer.

My dismantled bicycle

I copped this chic new metallic thermos to make my tea and retain it's warmth

A farmer marching his cattle up a mountain

This is a typical roadside toilet that one can expect to find in China, although it is rare to find any, which is a hole in an open stall, this one has chickens in it. It is not the privacy issue that I have a problem with (a year in Indonesia shattered any silly shyness I might have had with regards to bowel movements), but it's the unbelievably foul odor that serves as the main reason why I prefer to do all of my 'business' in the forest.

If you look very closely you can see a small light which is the opening at the other end of this tunnel. It is over 3k long and completely pitch black, very disorienting and difficult to cycle in a straight line.

Alone in the mountains may be my absolute favorite way to spend my time

This guy is the king, in his 60's and making a 2,000+k voyage from Xi'an to the heart of Tibet, you would be hard-pressed to find a more mountainous 2,000k route anywhere. In my very elementary Chinese we managed a wonderful 5 min conversation and were both equally inspired by each other's journeys.

"Above the clouds where the sounds are original..."

A young bamboo tree on a mountainside

These guys utilized the rainy season and used the flooded bridge as place to wash their motorbikes.

6 a.m., I just sat next to this small stream and drank tea for about an hour, beautiful sounds and extremely fresh air.

An abandoned village near Foping

Not sure what these Chinese characters mean, but I'm guessing something along the lines of 'cross at your own risk'

Water pours out of the side of a cliff

I followed this river (Wei river) from a small stream in the mountains and I felt like a proud parent when I saw what became of it.

I had a sleepless night on the outskirts of the eery town of Foping up in the Qin mountains. everything was normal and I set up my hammock in an enclosure of waist-high bushes in a riverside park. After some reading I drifted off into exhausted sleep and was awoken around 2 a.m. by rough-voiced men lighting a lighter in front of my face to see who I was. I jumped up and instinctively started yelling obscenities (of the English variety). The men backed off and, although it was very dark, I gathered that a bus had pulled up and my bush enclosure was surrounded on all sides by several dozen dark-skinned bald men that appeared to be wearing some sort of gray uniform. They laid down on the cold concrete around me, one of them came into my enclosure and shamelessly pinched a loaf a few meters from my hammock, and I thought that the mysterious dark-skinned, cigarette smoking men were a busload of prisoners being transferred who's bus stopped to rest for the night in a park. I lay awake in my hammock, pocket knife in hand, and didn't move or sleep at all. At the crack of dawn (5:30) I packed up my things and left my bush enclosure, the now visible men that I was afraid to fall asleep around turned out to be a group of Tibetan monks, possibly the least threatening group of people on earth. I pedaled off feeling like an idiot, a very tired and drowsy idiot...

The outskirts of Foping at dusk

Sleeping monks at 5:30 a.m.

Xi'an is a big city with a large (slightly sleazy) expat community and lots of historical tourist attractions, of which I visited zero. On the road into the city I met a really cool couple who left London earlier this year and cycled all the way to China: Max, aka 'the amatuer', is a laid-back Frenchman and Julia who is half Spanish half Chinese, speaks great Mandarin and enjoys 'flying hawaians'. I was really happy I met them and we hung out, ate, and drank for the whole 5 days I was in Xi'an.

South gate, downtown Xi'an

Arab quarter was the coolest part of Xi'an in my opinion (not that I saw that much of the sprawling city)

I don't care what it is, I want whatever is in those steamers

A Chinese Muslim dissecting a goat

A woman cooking hand-pulled noodles

Max & Julia

The entrance to our hostel

I ate lots of wonderful things throughout my time in Shaanxi and I was happy that the mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns were only in some dishes, not all. Check out this video for hand-pulled noodles.

milky rice batter is poured into layered steamers then cooled and cut into noodles

A cook stretching 'hand-pulled noodles'

Thick noodles with cabbage, carrots, chili, and meat

Potatoes sauteed with tomatoes

Yummy pork belly with bell peppers and onions

Huge mound of spicy clams tastes great with cold beer

These crayfish were good but covered with so much chili that they were difficult to eat

'Halal' beef dumplings in the Arab quarter

Thick and bitey noodles with potatoes, egg, tomato, celery and meat

Steamed buns and dumplings

Dough stuffed with all sorts of things then pan fried

My new favorite breakfast in a small village northwest of Xi'an: Very soft tofu in a spicy hot broth with oniony pan-fried garlic bread saturated with oil. Sooooo good for well under a dollar

At the last minute I decided to abandon my plans of heading east towards Beijing and go northwest towards Mongolia. I entered a very unusual range of mountains, in that they did not rise up, but rather went down, I call them 'anti-mountains'. The fertile earth in the area seemed very dusty and I can imagine how rivers could carve 'anti-mountains' into the landscape over long periods of time.

I've had this hammock for 2.5 years since Sydney and she is on her last leg, ripped and torn I'm forced to think of creative ways to tie her to trees

Every 10k or so the flat road drops down into these canyon-like voids

This little guy must've been hit by a car, I found him in shock gasping for air sitting in his own feces in the middle of the road. I picked him up and moved him to the side of the road and later wondered whether I saved his life or simply prolonged the agony that would've ended when a car ran him over. Poor little dude.