Home » China South Korea » Boat from Korea to China; cycling down to Nanjing

Current Location: Nanjing, China
“Monsieur, do not wake a sleeping lion? (Napoleon, on seeing China’s potential)

“What is ideology? It is a kind of spirit to make sluggish people industrious and intelligent people even more capable. The spirit should be started from inside the court and then spread all over the country to as far as the remotest corner of the empire? (The Final Imperial Examination Paper of Number One Student, Confucian Examination Hall, Nanjing)

Boat from Korea to China; cycling down to Nanjing

Rob Lilwall
2007-12-01 14:42:31

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www.cyclinghomefromsiberia.com

Km cycled: 10,100
Km to home: 29,900

Current Location: Nanjing, China
"Monsieur, do not wake a sleeping lion? (Napoleon, on seeing China's potential)

"What is ideology? It is a kind of spirit to make sluggish people industrious and intelligent people even more capable. The spirit should be started from inside the court and then spread all over the country to as far as the remotest corner of the empire? (The Final Imperial Examination Paper of Number One Student, Confucian Examination Hall, Nanjing)

"It is glorious to get rich? (Chinese Communist Party Leadership in 1978)

Two whole hours before we were due to land I strolled out on to the deck of my ferry from Korea. All around (to my surprise) rather than an empty seascape and perhaps a distant grey landmass, were literally hundreds of giant cargo ships, an armada from all corners of the world. For the final hour of the voyage, cranes, docks and industry bore around us like prison bars. These were my first views of the waking lion. China's east coast.

Rolling off the boat and taking my first few pedals into China was exciting. Last time I was here, in the late 1990s, it was out in the far west - the empty deserts and epic mountains which border the Stans. Here in the heartlands, things could not be more different - concrete, steel and noisy, busy roads. The people smile and help and spit. The drivers are wild - but at least (unlike in Korea!) do superb braking/swerving manoeuvres to avoid hitting you. Food and accommodation is refreshingly cheap.

There is a feel of partial dilapidation - but in contrast to the collapsing blocks of Siberian Russia, these buildings are falling apart not due to alcoholism and despair, but rather because everyone is so busy throwing up new buildings... there is no time for the past. It is time to get on with the serious business of getting rich.

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