The usual way of returning from the Gansu capital to Peking is simply to float down the Huang He on goatskin rafts to where one can easily reach the advancing Suiyuan railway. We had hoped to do this, but we were prepared for the news that it was impossible so late in the season. November was nearing its last lap, and while the river at Lanzhou was still open, big chunks of ice already drifting down it from the Tibetan highlands helped to confirm the general opinion that it would be frozen solid in its broader and more sluggish reaches farther north, where we would be left virtually stranded. We each bought a stout Gansu pony, therefore . . . and hired two [mule-drawn] carts and a [guide].
That American adventurer left Lanzhou in late November and aimed to reach Beijing in time for Christmas, whereas we first slid behind the E320 Bluetec's steering wheel on Tuesday and planned to be there by Friday morning, covering a leisurely 375 to 400 miles per day while munching on chocolate bars and stopping for afternoon tea at Buddhist temples. ("We" being me, photographer Alex P, and my co-driver, the grande dame of automotive journalism, Denise McCluggage.)
The brand-new, almost deserted freeway rising out of Lanzhou cuts through desolate but beautiful barren hills of loess, the sandy yellow earth that gives the Yellow River its name. Many of the hillsides have been painstakingly terraced to retain the windblown soil and precious water for irrigation. Man-made caves, or yaodongs, are dug into the hills. Cool in summer and warm in winter, some still serve as dwellings. Others are used by farmers for storage and midday reprieves from the hot fields. Mao and his crew holed up in yaodongs in nearby Shaanxi Province from 1935 to 1948. One wonders what the future chairman would have thought if he'd peeked out of his cave and seen our silver Benz streaking by at 100 mph.
One also might wonder how the freeway sweepers regarded our parade of gaily decorated sedans. Every few kilometers, a person in a bright orange jumpsuit idly swept a big straw broom back and forth on the shoulder, barely glancing up as we whooshed by.
The Chinese toll roads are as modern as anything in America or Europe, and much of the signage is in both Chinese and English. Signs frequently warn against "driving drunkenly" or "driving with tiredness," but there are no warnings about "driving with excess speediness" or "driving on the shoulder." Huge rest areas, with clean restrooms and lots of fuel pumps under big PetroChina canopies, were just being finished. They were often deserted, but one can imagine that in a few years the rising Chinese middle class will fill them with Geelys, Cherys, BYDs, and Buicks.
For now, we had vast sections of wide-open, glassy smooth concrete virtually to ourselves, so we hustled along at 90 to 120 mph, choosing to ignore the advice from our Mercedes hosts that, if anyone were to land in a Chinese prison, the Germans would not come to the rescue with a fistful of yuan and an S-class for the warden.
Lanzhou's pollution seemed as healthful as an oxygen caf's compared with the thick layer of sulfurous haze that we encountered on the outskirts of Baiyin, a city that's ringed with factories processing copper, aluminum, zinc, and lead and spewing a noxious brew of Confucius knows what into the air. We made the mistake of opening the car's window and could barely breathe. ...next page >>