Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128403
C hina is the oddest juxtaposition of culture I've ever seen. I don't know where else in the world you can travel on an immaculate freeway - groomed daily by cheap labor that literally sweeps the fast lane with a broom - while Audis, Mercedes and Volkswagens whiz by at 200kph. All the while, ox-drawn carts with farmers riding on top of hay, pedestrians, bicycles, and numerous forms of transportation that have yet to be named, crowd the shoulders of those very same freeways. The chaos is, at times, completely hilarious - even when that same chaos almost causes you to get into a nasty accident yourself. Sometimes I wondered if I could possibly survive a week on China's roads. Imagine a place lost in time without a hint of modern transportation... suddenly let loose in the latest German luxury missiles. It's like handing a child an AK-47 assault rifle - dangerous and deadly. The goal was to ride from Beijing to Shanghai on one of Edelweiss Bike Travel's newest routes, with the inaugural Chinese MotoGP event the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It all sounded so simple in principle, but day one alone proved that our journey was going to be way more deathdefying and dangerous than any 200 mph MotoGP (at Shanghai's state-of-the-art $300 million racing mecca) could ever be. The biggest source of my fears was the fact that I was saddled up on a motorcycle (BMW R650 GS), something that, as of yet, is completely foreign to the Chinese. In a country completely dominated by two-wheeled transportation, including bicycles, bicycles and more bicycles, and a fairly huge amount of Chinese-built scooterlike vehicles, you would think they would notice you, at least once in a while. In all honesty, I think they do see you on the road but either choose to ignore you, or completely misjudge the fact that a 650 or 1200cc motorcycle is a bit faster than the smoking piles of two-wheeled junk that they're accustomed to. There is also a huge socioeconomic gap between the rich, in their German luxury cars, and the rest, most of whom are two-wheel-mounted. The rich 20 NOVEMBER 9, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS car drivers obviously feel superior to the two-wheelers and disregard their safety. In China, survival of the fittest is also translated as survival of the biggest, so the semitrucks are king. I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many times a tandem semitrailer, dump truck or oil tanker pulled in front of our group, simply because they could. No eye contact, no blinker, just get-outta-my-way! I wrongly assumed that because we were taking a motorcycle trip in China, motorcycles actually existed in China. I can honestly say that over the course of my week in China, I saw every single motorcyclist in the country. There are only a handful, and you can be assured that those rich enough to afford such The Shanghai Circuit's entrance. toys, and who have the means to get one into the country (most illegally, we were told), were follOWing our group to Shanghai for the MotoGP race. Somehow word leaked out that we were riding to the race, and the few motorcyclists who do exist came out of woodwork and planned their week around follOWing our convoy. In