The adventures of Sushi and Sambar part-5: The great call of China - Bangalore Mirror

We crossed over into China from Lao Cai in Vietnam in March and for some minutes, which felt like hours, I thought Sunil had been arrested. The immigration office was neat and clean; Sunil went in first and the officers immediately took him to another room. When he finally returned, he looked flustered and said that he felt "like he was a criminal" in there. The Chinese wanted to check everything thoroughly; our luggage, bikes, passports, Sunil's forehead... After the immigration lady was satisfied that we were married, she stamped our passports. Some anxious moments, but finally we were in China. Yay!

We were on the other side of Vietnam and this side had more and shinier buildings and lots of small restaurants. We had to get to Mengzi as our host was waiting for us. Very few people speak English in China and this is where my Japanese came in handy several times. Chinese and Japanese have a common script (Kanji) and I could communicate with the Chinese by writing in this script. I asked a book shop owner for "the way" to "Mengzi" in simple strokes in Kanji and we were on our way.

We had got a Chinese visa with a 30-day validity and we needed to speed things up in order to get to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the next country on our itinerary. We decided to hitchhike to Mengzi.

We took out a notebook in which a Singaporean girl had scribbled the characters for "hitchhike" in Chinese. After some time, we saw a van and flagged it down; we showed them the notebook and they asked us to hop on to the back.

"Mengzi? Mengzi?" We wanted to be sure.

"Tue," the driver said. That's "yes" in Chinese.

We saw the most amazing sights from the back of the van; unlike India which has bounteous banana plantations in plains, China had hills full of bananas. High mountains were covered with banana trees; we saw traditional houses with stone roofs and knew we were in China.

Noodles in Mengzi; tofu in Jianshui

Mengzi looks like a new city; all the beautiful old houses have completely disappeared. Our couch surfing host James introduced us to his university bicycle club. Everyone had just returned to celebrate the Chinese New Year and each of them cooked their regional food. OMG! They were all such good chefs. We ate to our heart's content and slept peacefully. The next morning, James took us to the best noodle shop ever for breakfast. We ate a big bowl of noodles with meat and garnish for breakfast. After touring the city with James, we headed for Jianshui.

We saw beautiful villages and towns on the road to Jianshui and Kanji again came in handy. "Turn right, next road" I shouted out to Sunil, quoting verbatim from the sign. We went through a beautiful vineyard (Yunnan area has started producing wine), some mosques and saw cherry blossoms. The scenery from the top of the hill was spectacular, so we didn't mind riding uphill for a change.

We came cross a small roadside restaurant in our first Muslim town in China and saw a lady barbecuing tofu on top of charcoals. She gave us two different dips with it; the tofu was hot and the sauce was spicy. We enjoyed the tofu and the locals found it very amusing to us watch us eat.

Our host in Jianshui, Dida, took us to the beautiful old town. We joined people who were dancing in front of the city wall and picked up some moves. Dida showed us around and introduced us to yummy food, including rice in lotus root. Over the next few days, she took us strawberry-picking, seagull-feeding, abandoned mansion-hunting... she even took us to Shiping which is famous for tofu. We tried various versions of it throughout the day in different shops and restaurants and I'm sure we piled on the kilos.

***

We were running out of time so we took a train from Shiping to Kunming.

"Are you a Yogi," Lisa asked me at the platform while we were waiting for the train.

"Umm, I do Yoga. But I'm not sure if I'm a Yogi." Lisa saw my tent mattress and assumed I was a Yoga teacher.

She got chatting with us and invited us to stay with her in Kunming. A young soldier seated next to us got so curious that he asked Lisa if he could come stay with her too.

"Yes," she said. When we reached Kunming, the young soldier carried our two bikes as if he were carrying two pillows.

Over the next few days, she showed us some beautiful places. One of the memorable experiences was attending a Chinese tea ceremony. Each time the master poured tea in small cups, he talked about some lessons for life. He taught us the importance of having some peaceful moments in our lives.

Lisa was involved in a lot of activities, including volunteering. She took us to a family of a young man whose brain had not grown as fast as his body. When Lisa told him about our cycling trip, he showed us how to write bicycle in Chinese. Then we had origami and Indian dance sessions. The boy and his father put on Lungi and we danced until we all got tired. "Let's have chai," Sunil said. They had never tasted chai before but they loved it.

Lisa was crazy about selfies. One evening, Sunil cooked Indian dinner and she said "it is delicious" without even tasting the food. She did it by just clicking a picture of it.

Happy birthday in Dali

We changed our plans at the last minute and went to Dali instead of Lijiang. Dali is a walled old city with beautiful traditional old houses. It was cherry blossom season and tourists were everywhere with their selfie sticks. Our host, Luxi, lives in the heart of the city and teaches the Chinese way of cooking to tourists. So on my birthday, Sunil asked her to bake a cake for me as a surprise. She even made plum sake. "It's just like your mum's," Sunil said. My mum picks plums from our garden every year and makes plum sake. I was reminded of my days in Japan. It was a lovely birthday.

Train, drinks and cards

After some unique experiences in Chengdu, we decided to take a train to Turfan, some 72 hours away.

In China, you need to scan all your luggage before you enter the station and show your passport. If you have a bicycle, you have to put in a box. In our case, since it was a folding bike, they let us go without putting our bicycles in a box.

We were really lucky that we got a seat; the train was insanely crowded.

As soon as the train pulled out of Chengdu, four of our co-passengers put money on the table, took out a deck of cards and started gambling. The other people in the coach became encouraging spectators; they shouted and clapped, watching the four men play, drink and eat sunflower seeds; they spat the shells on the train floor. We didn't understand the game, but saw that the gentle looking person kept winning and the others kept getting agitated.

At one point, one man asked Sunil if he wanted to play. Sunil was probably tempted but could see he would lose all his money so he refused. The man then gave us sunflower seeds.

We fell asleep watching the men play. When we woke up the next morning, they were still playing and drinking but all of them looked sober. The rain was passing through desolate landscape, a lot like the one you see in Ladakh.

The card and drinking session continued for three days; there was never a dull moment on board the train.

Kebabs, polov and dancing in Turfan

"I can smell something good."

Sunil can sniff better than a dog at times. Soon enough, we saw kebab shops in Turfan. It is an important trading centre on the ancient Silk Route and lies in the Uighur region. Naan, pulao and lengmen (noodle soup) were everywhere. Needless to say, we had lots of them.

Sunil's beard was growing longer and many people thought he was a Pakistani. But when told that he was from India, they started shouting: "Salman Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Amir Khan" and invited us for biryani. But we couldn't accept their invistation as we had cycle outside of town. We saw desert and mountains; there was nobody on the road except us. We danced in the middle of the road and returned soon after as we had to get to Kashgar.

A trip back in time

Kashgar is an oasis in the Uighur region and is one of the most modern cities in China; it shares the border with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It has a rich history of over 2,000 years and it is an important city on the Silk Road.

Our couchsurfing host Q picked us up at the station. "While I was waiting for you, police asked to see my mobile phone. As you know, we have some problem with the government in this region." Since Q is a Muslim, he is often stopped by the police; he doesn't keep any religious photos in his phone.

"There are some tensions between Kan people (who look like me) and Uighurs (who look like Sunil), so you need to be a bit careful," Q whispered while we were eating ice cream.

***

Women in Kashgar dress up beautifully; they are tall and slim and put a beautiful scarf over their head and wear a long dress. They look more West Asian than Oriental. It looks like one has been transported to the 1940s or 50s.

We visited a 2000-year-old livestock market where Afghans, Indians, Turks, Uzbeks etc come to sell their animals. And we were blown away. We had never seen such an amazing sight before.

People were trading cows, camels, sheep, goats and horses. The food stalls were around the market and they were making polov in a giant pan. We felt like we were watching a film or, better still, acting in one. We could imagine how people would have traded on the Silk Road in the earlier days.

Kashgar was an important place for trading medicine and iron so there were many herbal and Chinese medicine shops and a street full of blacksmith shops.

"I want to come back to this city again," Sunil said.
"Yes, me too. Hope they don't change."

A 'much married' policeman, and snow-capped mountains

We flagged down a motorbike on the road from Kashgar to Bishkek as we were not sure if we were headed in the right direction. And we had the most hilarious conversation ever.

"Is she your wife," the old man on the bike asked Sunil.

"Yes."

"Just one?"

"Just one gives enough trouble. I cannot handle more than one."

"I am a retired policeman and I have 4 beautiful wives. You see, in China, we can have only one child with one wife. I needed more and I got married to four women and now have four children. My first wife is Chinese, the next one is from Turkmenistan, the other one is from Kyrgyzstan, and one is from Kazakhstan. I am a lucky man."

When the biker left, even though I knew Sunil was joking, I tried to pull his leg: "Sorry for troubling you!"

***

It was still a long way to the border; it was getting dark and we were in the middle of nowhere. We could see the snow-capped mountains and some abandoned tombs. We finally saw a van and it stopped for us. When we told the driver we wanted to go to Bishkek, he said: "I don't think you can. You need to take a local taxi from the border as there is still thick snow in the mountain". He dropped us near the border and we cycled towards the immigration office looking at the imposing mountains ahead of us. I was totally unprepared for snow in April but Sunil seemed optimistic.

"Ready for the snow," he asked.

"Not for the snow, but definitely curious to see Kyrgyzstan."

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