Steadying the handlebars with one hand and adjusting the bungee leash clipped to my waist with the other, I cycle slowly down the quiet street. Trotting close to the curb beside me is馍馍MóMo (Steamed Bun), the older of our two adopted street mongrels. I keep an eye on her Batman-style ears, reading their twitches and tilts for any signs of distress.
Riding a few meters behind me is Tamzin, and at the end of her bungee leash is秋秋QiūQiū (Autumn), our younger adoptee. Lanky and wiry-haired, QiūQiū is tracing an endless ribbon of scent through the air beneath her guardian’s watchful eye.
The street cuts neatly between two housing projects – a landscape which has evolved from rubble to 43-story apartment towers in just over a year. Announcements from a loudspeaker fill the cavernous spaces between the new-builds as we ride. While I usually associate the tinny, nasal sound of such broadcasts with the local markets – where savvy traders save their vocal cords by advertising their wares on repeat instead of shouting them – this tannoy isn’t selling vegetables:
Wear your face mask; take your temperature; present your health code. Thank you for your cooperation!
At the end of the road we reach a football pitch-sized expanse of green, recently cleared for the incoming apartment residents. We regularly take the dogs here to run around, but as we reach the park’s entrance we discover the source of the noise: a gruff, elderly保安bǎo'ān (security guard) stationed in a recently-erected booth, the blaring megaphone slung over his shoulder like a rifle.
‘Show your health codes,’ he growls. We weren’t expecting this and have left our phones at home, so are unable to open our Sichuan Health Ministry mini-programs and prove we haven’t wandered into any ‘red zones’ recently. He dismisses us with a wave of his hand.
Cycling away from the park, I can feel MóMo’s desire to run in the form of elastic potential energy, straining at the bungee leash. We decide to ride south towards home along an ancient waterway, the 沙河Shāhé. While the canal is part of an irrigation and trading network that has sustained Chéngdū, China’s ‘Western Capital,’ for over two thousand years, the tree-lined greenway flanking it feels as new as the towers.
We unclip the dogs and they run alongside us for a couple kilometers, frequently dipping-down the bank to the water’s edge, peppering the black silt with paw prints.
‘Must have been another outbreak,’ says Tamzin as she comes alongside me on her bamboo expedition bike. As I nod, I notice my rising anxiety – not really about my own safety, or even the pandemic itself– but about what it means for our own, totally selfish urge: the desire to go cycle-touring.
Tamzin and I both believe that long-distance, pedal-powered travel is the best way to see the world. It throws us on the mercy of nature and the goodness of strangers, making it the perfect tool for exploring the climate and ecological crises and searching out grassroots solutions. In the winter of 2018, we cycled from England to Slovenia, camping in rewilded land and interviewing scientists, foresters and rangers in some of Europe’s reclaimed wildernesses. While this journey taught us much, it only scratched the surface of our continuing interest for environmentally-focused bicycle touring.
Returning to our work as teachers in China after this European expedition, we only intended to stay for a year in Chéngdū before beginning a similar overland adventure in Asia. We built Tonkin bamboo touring bikes, with the intention of riding home across the Eurasian landmass, pulling our newly-recruited pack members in a trailer. But since Covid19 closed the land borders, we’ve been stuck in a state of limbo. Each fresh outbreak deals another blow to our hope that the trip will someday take place.
The greenway ends, and its neat, manicured reality gives way to a throng of small-scale industries as we turn onto our road. We push our bikes past numerous faces that are familiar, even if partially-concealed behind surgical masks. Uniformed waitresses outside the neon-lit Hotpot restaurant coo and call out to our dogs, who tilt their ears in response; the tattooed boy-racer mechanics stonily ignore us and宋大哥Sòng DàGē, Big Brother Sòng, our local handyman, yells a Sìchuān greeting: 好得Hǎo děi! It’s all good!
We pause to spend a moment with Sòng; he’s standing behind a swivel-chair, on which an elderly man reclines sporting a Santa’s beard of shaving foam. As he fits a fresh blade to a straight razor, I grin behind my mask: he’s cut keys for us before, fixed a tap and even broken-into our apartment with a credit card when we got locked-out. But seeing him turn a hand to roadside barbering is an unexpected sight. Sòng shrugs and laughs hard into his own mask, as if he can’t believe it himself, before carefully edging the razor up the old man’s throat. Not for the first time as I walk through the turnstile into our apartment complex, I feel my respect for Sòng rise to a new level.
Any anxiety I might have felt by the river has dissipated by the time we wheel our bikes out of the lift and into our ninth-story apartment. Once again the humming in my ear drums has returned: that deep excitement at being in China – the vast and ancient civilization, with its blunt friendliness and enduring capacity to surprise.
The dogs lie down in warm squares of dusty Autumn sunlight beaming through our balcony window, while we pour cups of coffee and pull out our phones. An important climate conference has been taking place in the UK, which we’ve been following somewhat obsessively over the past two weeks.
The conference is wrapping up, and the widespread expectation it would end in failure is being confirmed in real-time, as representatives of powerful nations bluster their way to the finish-line without pledging to leave fossil fuels in the ground.
One clip in particular catches our attention: looking for an easy scapegoat, the conference’s British president lays blame for the event’s failure at the feet of China, for their unwillingness to totally phase out coal – the cheapest and easiest-to-extract fossil fuel on which many middle and lower-income countries are dependent.
‘China will have to explain themselves to poor nations,’ he exclaims.
What really strikes me is that within the confines of his speech, China isn’t a real place at all. China isn’t this room smelling of coffee we’re sitting in with two sleeping dogs, with a balcony overlooking a road where Sòng shaves an old man; mechanics work on drag-racers and waitresses stand on the steps welcoming families in for hotpot. Instead, ‘China’ is simply a rhetorical device, drawing on deep wells of Cold War paranoia and postcolonial anxiety.
It’s in this moment that Tamzin and I look at each other and decide we can no longer sit and wait for the pandemic to be resolved before doing something. With the leaders of rich nations relying on ignorance and xenophobia to prolong inaction on the crisis, it is our duty as Westerners living in China to offer a counter-narrative.
And so, a newsletter is born, that will document our journey. With hearts and minds open to the kindness and ingenuity of the people we meet, we will take you to corners of the planet you’ve never even considered. Riding on our bamboo bikes and accompanied by our dogs, our adventures will seek-out the hopeful, the positive and the vital.
Each month will focus on a different theme. During January, we will introduce you to ourselves, our dogs and our neighbourhood in China. In February, we will dive into the topic of food production.
On the first Thursday of each month you will receive one piece of investigative travel writing, centered around the months’ theme.
On the third Thursday of the month, you will receive an exclusive video, taking you along on the adventure with us.
And scattered throughout the rest of the month, you will receive behind-the-scenes info, nuggets of advice from life on the road and dog-related tips, tricks and confessionals.
Subscribe for free now, and let’s build this together.
Parallel Worlds