20/04/2025
Today is Easter, I take this opportunity with great pleasure to wish all those who follow and support me from Italy and beyond and who, with their presence, make me feel less alone, even if far from my loved ones, in these days of celebration.
For 20 days I have been traveling in China to cross it all from south to north.
For those who have followed me, you know about the clutch problems in Laos, I received the spare parts here in China, I fixed the Vespa which, although not exactly right, allows me to continue the journey.
To make sure I don't miss anything, I had three days of difficulty due to a strong diarrhea that "destabilized" me and made driving difficult, given the frequent forced stops I had to make. Today everything passed and I'm back in full shape, with a few kilos lost along the way, which in any case doesn't hurt.
The journey I am taking is in China on the road, not the touristic Beijing and Shanghai, nor the large industrial agglomerations that produce everything and more for the Western market, thirsty for low-cost products. I am seeing a China very different from how I imagined it, many pleasant surprises and few dark aspects, although not negligible.
THE GOOD THINGS
• Friendliness, kindness and hospitality first of all. It happened to me that in a restaurant the owner offered me lunch, or that at the vending machine the person in charge of the cashier came out bringing me two bottles of water and an ice cream. Things that we are not used to in Italy, I don't see a restaurateur offering lunch to a Chinese person or ice cream and bottles of water at the vending machine
• The Chinese enjoy life, have active social relationships, go out with their family, go to the park, play with rackets and badminton or with kites
• Economically they are well off, they have nice cars, mostly Chinese, futuristic and many electric, they dress well, a cell phone is a must, they often eat out
• Food is cheap, normally two euros are spent for dinner. The other night, 10 of us, in the best restaurant in the city, eating more of everything, we spent 80 euros between everyone
• Organization and efficiency first of all, the services work. Who has had the opportunity to go to the hospital
• They produce everything in-house, they have their own brands, which we don't even know about and with which they probably satisfy 98% of their needs. Foreign brands are exclusively linked to fashion: clothing, cell phones, luxury cars
• The roads are always in order, they are almost never clogged, it is normal to see two, three, four and even five-lane roads. You can perceive a wide-ranging structural planning
• Transport infrastructure is constantly evolving, bridges, viaducts and tunnels under construction everywhere
• The roads are continuously washed with tankers, so the roads and sidewalks are always very clean, even in the suburbs and smaller towns. Then on the highway, in the middle of nowhere, you see a little man with a reflective jacket, a straw hat and with a broom cleaning the edge of the road
• Amap, or their Google Maps, has impressive precision, it also shows you the right lane and in the city, for all the traffic lights it shows live how many seconds are left until the color changes
THE LEAST BEAUTIFUL THINGS
• Any town that is slightly larger than a village is invaded by skyscrapers, often all the same, with heights ranging from 30 to 50 floors. In a town of 30,000 inhabitants, such as the one I live in, there are hundreds of them. The largest cities, I have passed through a couple, have 10 or 20 million inhabitants in no time, just think that Milan has 1.5 million and the proportion is quickly made. I have traveled roads for tens of kilometers with skyscrapers as far as the eye can see, to the right and left, at least half of which are under construction. The curious thing is that this overcrowding does not seem to be reflected in the traffic, which is almost never chaotic and congested
• Road freight transport, judging from the number of vehicles in circulation, I believe is the main mode used, with consequent congestion of national state roads
• English is spoken by almost no one and not even young people speak it or show signs of learning it, I almost doubt that they even teach it at school or in any case, if they study it, they do so with very poor results. They speak to you as if you were a native Chinese speaker and if you make them understand that you do not understand, they continue as if nothing had happened, taking it for granted that you are understanding
This is what I saw, or rather what I am experiencing in my daily experience. As I always say, mine is a completely personal point of view, maybe someone else, making the same trip, lives and perceives different things. This is perhaps the beauty of traveling, that is, giving your own interpretation to the world you are discovering and that surrounds you.
I still have about 1,700 km to go, or nine days of travel, including the stop that I can't wait to make to visit Beijing. The entry into Mongolia is scheduled for April 30.
PS: today I'm fighting with the toilet in the hotel room where I just arrived, all electronic and super technological. I would just have to understand how to lift the bowl and flush the water and I would already be fine like that 🤣🤣🤣
