I took a little detour and walked through the fields, because there were so many pretty sunflowers:

Some were just waiting to blossom:

I thought it was very beautiful.

But then my poor caboose tipped over and I had to do some repair work:

Me, the man with two left hands, repairing my caboose, ha!

Luckily it wasn’t that bad, so I was somehow able to fix it.

…then it started raining:

Did I say raining? I meant to say it came pouring down as if someone was taking an almighty leak on us all:

Walking didn’t feel so nice this way, but things have a tendency to always get worse: the water on the street somehow turned into something very chemical and very disgusting, and the stuff came splashing up at me whenever a car or a truck passed by:

…you know what I think a situation like this calls for?

New York Hardcore - the 3-step program:

1) Put in your earphones and choose a band that is angry. They don’t necessarily have to be from NY, but something like Madball, Agnostic Front, Skarhead or Warzone would probably work best. Sick Of It All did the job for me today.

2) Turn it on LOUD.

3) Make a face that you think will best describe the mood you’re in:

Got that alright? Getting used to feeling like a lean mean fighting machine?

And what’s that: the songs are so short? The total playing time of a typical HC album is only about 30 minutes altogether?

Well, that’s very good actually, because now it’s time for our special move, which has also been dubbed “the hardcore-finger”:

Here’s what you do: you have to wait for the best parts of each song, which are mostly the chorus hooks or some stompin’ guitar riff - you should know them by the time you’ve listened to a song two or three times.

Once that good part is there there you can now work on your own accentuation of it by moving your hand with your extended index finger up and down, pointing in the direction you’re going to.

So there you go - you are now an angry person with an angry look, listening to angry music and making angry movements while walking down the road in some deserted area in Western China - congratulations!!

…make sure not to forget one thing though:

Sometimes a smile can be pretty brave.

Soundtrack: Sick Of It All - “Fred Army”

—total: 3091,4km

I woke up and I noticed there was this banner facing my hotel:

“Wishing good luck and success to the 2008 Olympic Paris-Beijing cycle tour!” - in Chinese.

Okay, this was China after all, so Mandarin was obviously the language of choice. But just how many of the European cyclists would be able to understand only a single word on that banner? Maybe it wasn’t really directed at them in the first place?

…I was still pondering over that question when I ran into another group of bikers going to Beijing - only this time they were from Germany:

…I don’t think this particular part of the road has ever seen or will ever see this many Germans again.

We had fun exchanging stories and commenting on the design of my beloved caboose.

Then we said our “Tschüs” and “viel Glück” and parted ways.

…the desert was waiting, and it didn’t look that pretty today:

I was doing my thing - walking - quietly for a little while, when suddenly the sky changed its color in the West, and something big and dark and yellow seemed to be moving in my direction:

Sandstorm!! WTF??

…I got so scared I even made a funny squeaking sound I think:

…not that I could have heard my own voice anyhow - it was all wind and dust and noise, and I had this strange feeling of being in the way of something very determined and very big.

There I was, the sandstorm-virgin from the German plains:

And not only did the thing pop my cherry today - it even tried to take off with my caboose too!

…then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone again, moving on eastward, leaving me and the caboose alone.

Ha, it’s looking for the other Germans! I figured, and cleared the dust from my camera.

Then I continued to walk.

…

When I got to the next small settlement, my first question was about the sandstorm of course:

“Was that a big sandstorm just now?” I asked them, and I knew that the answer would probably be no.

“Sandstorm?” they said, “what sandstorm?” and then they seemed to think for a while, “you mean the little breeze a few minutes ago?”

WTF??

…

The 下河清 (xiaheqing) area is famous not for its sandstorms, but for its watermelons, which have been awarded prizes in agricultural trade fairs before:

Oh, how much I would have liked to have one!

Had to stay away from fruits though - bad stomach.

So the only thing I got to eat all day (except for some dry crackers) was this:

Rice and rape - a lonely dinner for heroic heroes and devirginized virgins.

Soundtrack: Public Enemy - “Party For Your Right To Fight”

—total: 3072km

Since I was recently feeling somewhat invincible with my newly acquired caboose, I chose to take my time in the morning and got up for a late and comfortable start.

…that’s when I ran into Carlotta from Italy and her Dutch friends Marc and Jan:

The three belonged to yesterday’s group of cyclists who were riding from Athens to Beijing.

We had cold drinks under the parasol of a small restaurant, chilling in a gentle breeze that seemed to fan a bit of the heat away from us.

I got into a serious talking frenzy. I think I talked their ears off actually.

Well, they were really nice, and I found it hard to leave them behind.

…but then the road was still there, and it was calling for us all:

There was some kind of pagoda right outside the village, but I was too lazy to go and check it out:

Shame on me!

Then, somewhere in the great wide open, I ran into a shepherd - much to my surprise:

“Where do your animals drink?” I asked him, because I couldn’t see anything around that resembled water.

“Up there” he replied and pointed to the little village I had started out from. It was roughly 5 kilometers away.

…so the desert wasn’t really as deserted as I had originally expected it to be.

There were even ruins of some kind of settlement:

I couldn’t make out whether this was rather recent or maybe a couple of centuries old. My guess was that it had been deserted only 20 or 30 years, though.

Once, a car stopped on the road, and a lad from 深圳 (Shenzhen - the special development zone close to Hong Kong) and his girlfriend got out to stay for a chat:

We were having watermelons, and we sat there talking about this and that - and I think I got into another talking frenzy right there, with the possibility of bleeding ears on their part.

Anyways, they were very interesting people, the two. The hours just flew by for me.

…

When I got back on the road later, it was already getting pretty late:

I got another surprise visit from my friend Paul (June 27th 2008), which not only slowed my down considerably, but also made me feel very much like the opposite of invincible.

…but I made it to the next settlement, and that’s all that counts now.

Soundtrack: Rise Against - “Blood-Red White & Blue”

—total: 3042,4km

When I got up, I wasn’t sure whether I would get to the 3000km marker today.

…well eventually I did, so I had to name this post “3-0-0-0″, but if it hadn’t been for that, I could have chosen from these three working titles:

1) “the Chinese dream”

2) “Aaah, it’s a foreign invasion!!”

3) “dead deadly desert”

The first one, called “the Chinese dream” is about the following two pictures:

Okay, you can always say that this is not an appropriate definition of “the dream”, but I think for many people in the countryside, a nice little house like this is at least part of it:

Kind of reminded me of what you see on old photographs of American Suburbia from the 1950s.

…

I kept walking for only so long, and then I got my second title - “Aaah, it’s a foreign invasion!!”

Well, first it wasn’t really an invasion. It was just these two dudes, Mariusz and Marcin from Poland:

They had been riding their bicycles all the way from Athens (hint: original Olympics), and they were going to go all the way to Beijing (hint: Olympics 2008).

Cool guys. We got some cold drinks in a little shop and I told them about the white yaks in 天祝 (tianzhu - May 25th 2008)…

Then I learned that they were part of a large group of bikers, and that there was an even larger group from Paris riding along with them - altogether way more than 100 people, all of them on bicycles, complete with support trucks and everything.

… it was an invasion!!

I told the guys and gals from the village, and they got so happy and excited - more foreigners would be passing through here today than most of them had ever seen in a lifetime:

Then, right after I had said good-bye and good luck to the two Polish lads, the real invasion began.

It was the French group, and it was truly massive. So many people!

Much to my disappointment, most of them seemed too busy to stop for a chat. They just kind of zoomed by, turning into red flashes and leaving me with my confused “bonjour”, and the embarrassed feeling of someone who realizes he is the only one applauding in an otherwise completely silent audience.

…some of them did stop though, and I had an awesome time with them:

Not all of them were from France actually - there were Americans, Belgians, Chinese, and even the occasional German riding along!

One of the Chinese guys was from a part of Beijing only minutes away from 碧兴源 (bixingyuan - November 9th 2007) - my home, the place were I had started from!

Well, the world is small, I thought.

…and then I found out just HOW small it can really be:

Believe it or not: one of the German guys was actually from Hannover (30km from my beloved Bad Nenndorf) - and he had been to school with my former art instructor Frau Nickel! Isn’t that cool?

I really didn’t know what to say, I was having such a great time:

Since they were planning to go roughly the same route to Beijing that I had come from, I figured it might be a good idea to show them the altitude chart of the complete distance:

Note: the actual distance is a bit longer than on the chart, and the high peak around 1100km is 孤峰山 (Mount Gufeng - January 30th 2008), which can be ignored.

…

When the big rush of foreign invaders had passed by, I was alone on the road again:

…and then the road suddenly changed its appearance, thus providing me with my third title:

Much like that one day before (June 9th 2008), this was the “dead deadly desert” - only this time it was much larger, and it felt like it was there to stay.

The only shade I could find to sit down and have a nice watermelon was here:

…and every 10 minutes I was forced to scoot over to remain halfway in the shade.

Somewhere around 30km into the walk, when I already knew that I would have to do my dance today and call it “3-0-0-0″, I ran into the tail of the French group:

The two dudes, a Frenchman in his early 50s and a young student from 石家庄 (shijiazhuang - December 12th 2007), had been taking it easy that afternoon, hanging out with some folks on the way.

From the way the two were talking to each other, it seemed like they had formed a good team - and both of them were definitely having the time of their lives out here in the desert, riding their bikes under the peaceful blue skies of what some people might call international friendship and understanding.

This is it, I thought, this is why we do these things!

I mean: walking the walk can be fun, and I’m sure riding a bike around the world would be cool too - but it’s the friends that we find on the way who make these things really worthwhile. It’s them and nothing else.

…

Well, pretty landscapes can be nice too though:

Then I finally got to the magical point of exactly 3000 kilometers. I like to think of it as three million steps:

I parked the caboose and got out the camera - only to painfully realize that it didn’t work anymore! I had dropped it before when I was trying to film the French bikers rushing by, but I hadn’t really paid that much attention to it. And now it was broken, and there would be no dancing clip for the 3000km!!

There had been a dance at 1000km: January 18th 2008

And there had been another one at 2000km: April 13th 2008

Just what was I supposed to do now, with no camera to film the 3000km dance?

I thought about dancing just for the heck of it, without even filming. Or taking several pictures of myself dancing, and then editing them into a video after.

But then I got this most awesome idea and turned it into a master-plan: I would just sit here and wait for the next foreign biker to pass by - they would all have digital cameras after all!

…or so I thought. The first couple from Poland/Lithuania hadn’t brought a camera to the trip, the second couple (also from Poland) had one, but then it didn’t work out with my memory card.

Then a single biker showed up: Andrzej Gonski.

Andrzej is a very charming electrical engineer from Poland who is now retired and carries a big smile through the Western Chinese desert. He speaks a bit of English and a bit of French, so I was able to explain my situation to him. The good man laughed for a while and then said he would be very happy to help.

Luckily enough, his camera was more than sufficient for my purposes, and so we came up with this short film, which is called “dancing machine”, and which I am presenting to you in full-length, mainly because it is so good it deserves a complete screening:

…after the party was over and we had said good-bye and good luck, I didn’t have to walk very far to get to a small village called 元山子 (yuanshanzi):

Sitting in the evening light, looking at the snowcapped mountains in the distance, thinking of all the desert and of all the people, of all the friendliness and of all the dancing, I somehow felt very… content.

I guess happy is a good word too.

Soundtrack: Michael Jackson - “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”

—total: 3003,6km

I already whined to you about my sore legs.

Besides, those of you who have been with me for a while might already know that I am a total sissy (December 29th 2007).

So today, I stayed in:

Used the time to add 130 frames to the TLW-video:

It might not look like much, but doing this thing really takes up a lot of time. Gotta crop and adjust every single picture to fit the frame.

Well, it’s fun anyways, and I’m always quite amused by the results.

Oh, by the way: a good friend once told me that it looks like I get permanently beaten up in the video.

…

Well, anyways I stayed in all day.

Only went out to get myself another melon:

Besides that, I managed to find this perfect little restaurant:

Excellent food - I went back three times and prepped up my BMI.

Oh, and I have a hint of the day:

— whenever in doubt, find a chef from 四川 (Sichuan)! —

They’re the best.

Soundtrack: The Clash - “Rock The Casbah”

—total: 2966km

Well, it wasn’t exactly pouring cats and dogs out there when I started walking this morning, but it kept drizzling down on me:

…always a bit sideways from the front - it was so disgusting.

Then there was the fact that I just couldn’t seem to get used to this new kind of walking yet.

Greater speed, but sore legs and a strange feeling of fatigue…

Once I sat down on the curb for a little while, when I suddenly decided it was better to lay flat on the ground:

…I woke up after a half hour from the honking of some cars, while others had just rushed by, spraying me with tiny fountains of water.

So I went on through the cloud-covered land:

Scotland, I thought, or Ireland.

(Wales? New Zealand?)

I came by a lake…

…and then a tiny tiny patch of desert:

Then, right about British tea time, the sky suddenly cleared up:

…and I didn’t even feel so tired anymore:

There were the sunflowers again:

…and with them came the happiness of days long gone.

One of them smiled at me:

Hello sunflower, I said, here I am - the tall bearded one with the sore legs.

It’s been more than 20 years.

Soundtrack: Blind Melon - “No Rain”

—total: 2966km

I have this friend I was going to tell you about: I can’t reveal his name though. So let’s just call him Paul.

Paul is also walking through China, and today he arrived at a park in 临泽 (linze):

It was the 中国红西路军烈土陵园 (Western Army Memorial Park):

Just as Paul was walking through all the honor and the glory, he suddenly felt that something wasn’t exactly right with his bowels.

In fact, it didn’t feel right at all!

He locked his caboose (he has one as well), and then he ran into the men’s room.

…

A while later when he came out again, Paul was thinking: should I stay or should I go?

He felt that it might be a pretty good idea to just get a hotel room here in 临泽, god forbid the strange bowel movements might return.

Paul strolled across the central square:

He came by a statue of 老子 (Laozi, or Lao-tse) riding his bull into the West:

There’s something you should know about Paul: he is a man who is not very likely to stick to his decisions. Besides, he gets easily impressed.

So when he passed by the huge and tasty-looking watermelons that 刘鹏 (Liu Peng) had to offer…

…Paul forgot all about his intestinal problems, smiled and raised his voice to an outcry: “Give me the biggest watermelon you can find!”

Then he hauled at his caboose and continued walking west, looking only for a place to devour his precious purchase.

…

All the different landscapes looked so interesting to our dear Paul!

There were forestry areas that seemed to glisten with fertility:

…and there were the rough and arid stretches of the Gobi desert in the South:

Paul noticed that there were many people selling things next to the road:

He didn’t buy anything though, since he only pleasantly anticipated the cool juicy redness of his watermelon.

Then he suddenly found a good place to sit down:

He stretched his back, got a knife and a spoon and started the feast.

Here’s a video of Paul and his watermelon:

(Note the beard - Paul is growing one too!)

…

The rest of the way seemed all too easy.

He came through settlements by the road that were made up of little houses that seemed totally identical:

One time, there were all these sunflowers, standing tall and radiating with yellowness and summer:

Paul suddenly thought of the time when he had been in kindergarten…

It seemed like ages ago, but still there was this distinct feeling that the words sunflowers and kindergarten would always remain connected, inseparably tied together like Christmas and ginger bread, like swim trunks and the Mediterranean Sea, like Beijing and lamb sticks.

…so there he was, our dear Paul, staring at the sunflowers, absorbed in a sort of proustian reminiscence of his earliest childhood:

Then he suddenly felt his bowels again. Oh no! - the urge was back, and it was more violent than ever!

Paul looked around like a wounded animal, thinking: damn that melon!

There was really nowhere good to go, and the urge was getting stronger and stronger. It seemed like an exploding force that was ready to tear the whole world apart.

And nowhere good to go…

“Aaarrrrrrgggghhh!!” Paul cried, and he wanted to make it sound like a battlecry.

Then he leaped into the bushes.

Soundtrack: NOFX - “The Irrationality Of Rationality”

—total: 2940,6km

I had bought 6 large water bottles, a considerable amount of butter cookies and a massive water melon, and stuffed it all into the big white box, along with my backpack and a basic repair kit.

Then we finally made it out of town, me and the caboose:

You’ve probably guessed it: walking without all the weight on my back felt so good!

The fertile valley just kind of flowed by in a breeze:

I noticed that there were these rocks holding down some yellow papers on every bridge that I passed:

But there was no one to ask around, so I meditated on this thing for a while and then figured I might as well drop the thought and be happy with what I had: a day of gentle walking with my loyal caboose, caboose, caboose.

Once I passed through a little village, and someone asked me to take a picture of this little friend:

His eyes were so black and so big, I could actually see my own reflection in them…

This was not the only beautiful thing in the valley though.

There were flowers…

…tree-lined avenues…

…and the clouds, always the clouds…

I wasn’t too tired when I got to the little village of 沙井子 (shajingzi) later that day:

…you want to see the caboose in action?

Well, here she is:

黄黄 (huanghuang) the dog is her personal guard for the night.

Soundtrack: Snapcase - “Caboose”

—total: 2909,6km

The caboose was almost ready to go:

It only needed some minor adjustments and a complete coating in white to make it more tolerant to direct sunlight.

So I realized two things:

1) I wasn’t going to get anywhere today,

2) it was still before noon.

So I hopped on a bus…

…and went to 马蹄寺 (mati temple) a place 70km southwest of 张掖 (zhangye):

(I marked this place as a “Scenic Spot” in the Google Earth trackfile - you should easily be able to locate it!)

What’s so special about this place though?

Somewhat resembling the world-famous 莫高窟 (mogao grottoes) in 敦煌 (dunhuang), the amazing 马蹄寺 area consists of several temples and a system of Buddhist caves, the earliest dating back to the 4th century AD:

There are countless caves to explore:

And there are temples that have been built directly into the mountainside:

Most of the ancient shrines are not intact any more, having suffered destruction to a pretty massive extent, but they are still being actively used by the locals and by the guests from afar:

马蹄 (mati) means horseshoe, so the whole place is called “horseshoe temple”.

This is due to one certain stone in the temple that somehow has an imprint resembling a horseshoe:

Local belief has it was the legendary 格萨尔 (Gesar)’s flying horse that left this imprint when it kicked the ground here a long long time ago - according to the Tibetan epics.

…

There was another thing that I found very interesting about this place:

I might have to do a bit of explaining: China’s population is currently at about 1.4 billion. The nation consists of 56 ethnic groups, the 汉 (Han) forming the vast majority of more than 95 percent.

Two minorities that we’ve come across on the way so far are the 回 (the Muslim Hui - March 2nd 2008, March 30th 2008, April 8th 2008) and the 藏 (the Tibetans - May 24th 2008, May 25th 2008, May 26th 2008), both of which make up populations of several million people.

…there are some minorities that are a LOT smaller in terms of population though.

The 裕固 (Yugu) for example:

Having close ethnic and cultural ties to both the 回 (Hui) and the 藏 (Tibetans), this ethnic minority is one of the smallest in China, consisting of only a little more than 10.000 people, all of which traditionally settle only in this small area close to the 马蹄寺.

Unfortunately, I had to catch the last bus back at 17:30, and thus my time was very limited - I would have loved to find out more about the 预估-people and about the Buddhist caves that had formed such an important part of their living environment for so many centuries.

…

When I arrived in the city later that night, the caboose stood there, radiating with a sparkling whiteness:

She was perfect.

I gave many thanks to my dear 王先生 (Mr. Wang), then I gently rolled her home.

I had such high hopes for the caboose.

Soundtrack: Cool V - “Drop It”

—total: 2879,6km

Of course my postal scam got immediately busted:

…

I got criticized, and I didn’t hesitate to criticize back.

They said I should go to the 文化局 (Department of Cultural Affairs) to get a permit. I told them they were a bunch of hicks from the countryside, and then I went on to say some other mean things. I just couldn’t help it.

We argued for a while, and the whole thing felt like we were riding into a dead-end street together.

Then the right words suddenly dawned on me: “wait a minute - what if I brought my notebook and showed you what’s on the DVDs?” (June 7th 2008)

You won’t believe it: finally, after three hours…

…my dear dear photographs were on their way home!

Then, with the happiness and the relief, came the regretful feelings for all the mean things that I had said to these poor people.

I told them that I was sincerely sorry.

And I meant it.

…

Then I went and had another look at the caboose:

Hm, progress…

So what was I going to do with the rest of this day?

I had heard of an almost legendary place called 马蹄寺 (mati temple), but that was supposed to be a 2-hour ride by bus, and there was no way I was going to get there today.

So I went to another park, one that was very close to the city:

I walked around and sat by the river until the day had grown old:

Then I returned to my hotel room, took off my shirt and sat down in the evening heat to write up yesterday’s article.

…it was 22:25 when the police came knocking on my door:

“Passport, visa, routine check!”

No hello, no smile, no nothing.

I stood there in my shorts, looking into flashlights, then I got out my documents and handed them over.

This time I somehow miraculously maintained a very courteous manner: “Gentlemen, it is ten thirty at night, and I just don’t think you are being very polite!”

They didn’t even answer.

Soundtrack: Deftones - “7 Words”

—total: 2879,6km