(The Bear continues his reminisces of his first tour around China; Part 1 ishere).

Things did not always go smoothly with our main guide. He was not a local, having been seconded to this job, which he clearly considered well and truly below him, from Beijing. One result of that was that he didn’t speak the local language. He spoke Mandarin, whereas all the people around, including our other guides, spoke Cantonese. He overcame this by drawing the characters for what he was saying on the palm of his hand with a finger of the other as he spoke. Predictably enough, this was awkward, and he was rarely in a good mood.

中国是,电动汽车en then, doing a lot of reforestation. Sensibly, they were importing a lot of eucalyptus seeds from Australia to create stands of these rapidly growing, healthy and useful trees. We stopped by one such little forest one day and, trying to make conversation, I pointed to the smooth trunks and said to him, “These trees are eucalyptus. They are from Australia.”

他盯着我在开放的烦恼。“没有。中国冷杉t, then Australia!” I tried to sort out this misunderstanding but he wasn’t having any and treated me with open disdain thereafter. That night we stayed in a hotel at Seven Star Lakes, a stunningly beautiful place whose lakes seem to mirror a constellation. We sat out on the balcony after dinner with a few beers, a small grove of she-oaks between us and the water.

The guide came over, pointed to the trees and said contemptuously, “I suppose these trees from Australia too!” When I nodded happily he gave all the indications of severe stomach cramp and withdrew for the night.

The food on the trip was outstanding, and of course we were not worrying about any coronaviruses. We were honored guests, and were fed accordingly. Perhaps that went over the top a little on our last night in Guangzhou, when we were served a roasted animal which one of the locals insisted afterwards was “not dog!” Considering that nobody had suggested it might be – we’d all though it was a somewhat lean piglet – it seemed odd that he would volunteer that…

It was not always easy to get a drink. The tour was organized between the German travel agent, the Guangzhou sports club, the Cultural Affairs ministry (I think) and some kind of sports authority, and as a result the messages had not always got through effectively. Mostly, the beer flowed freely as did the rice wine if you wanted it. Having had an unfortunate experience with the latter in Hong Kong before the start of the tour, I declined it but indulged happily in the former, which was universally excellent. But it didn’t always flow freely.

One night we appeared to be restricted to one beer each over dinner. Eyebrows were raised as our guide explained that the local organizers had been given a budget which would only stretch this far. We looked at him blankly without speaking for a short while and additional beers arrived remarkably quickly, though sadly not cold. He really was doing his best.

We saw one petrol station in the entire two weeks of the tour, and that had only just been completed. But every morning, a truck from what I gathered was the nearest People’s Liberation Army base would appear with drums of petrol on the back, and the bikes would be fueled up. Once that was done, our mechanic would start each bike in turn, hold the throttle to the stop for a few seconds “to warm it up” and then turn it off and move on to the next bike.

There was an off-bike component to the tour, as well. We boarded a boat and were transported through a beautiful river gorge before being unloaded at a small wharf. From here, we climbed up to a resort which appeared to have been built by someone who had a serious love affair with concrete. There were stairs, pools, hallways and rooms all fashioned from this most versatile of materials. We were the only guests, but dinner was in a vast concrete hall with disco balls revolving over our heads. This resort had apparently been built in the expectation that Hong Kong people would not be able to resist visiting the (admittedly beautiful) mountains and living it up here. Someone had built it, but the Hong Kongers did not come. We did, but then we had no choice.

One of our guides had been telling us about the Chinese ‘science’ of omens. Apparently, all kinds of things around you give you hints of what is to come. This night I met him while wandering around the deserted ponds, stairs and balconies of the resort in the light drizzling rain, and pointed at a drowned rat in a small pool. Was that an omen? What did it mean?

“It will rain,” he said morosely. “More.” It did, too, so maybe there is something to this omen business.

I treasure one evening, playing pool with the locals in a small, grimy and polluted town. We were staying in one of those Russian motels and Hermann the German and I decided to go for a walk after our guide – or minder – had disappeared for the night. Down the road was a shanty with a couple of pool tables – no baize, not even a flat surface, but that made it all the more interesting. Interesting in the “may you live in interesting times” kind of interesting. The young women we were playing wiped the table with us. I haven’t laughed so much since grandma died.

The clutch cable on one of the Suzukis snapped on the way back to Guangdong, and the rider was not particularly experienced, so I volunteered to take over the bike. Mistake, of course, but I learned a bit about riding a bike without a clutch.

We gave back the bikes, somewhat gratefully, and caught the train back to Hong Kong where we universally went – wow. Wasn’t that amazing. Even the breakfast birthday cake. Not many organized – and I use the term loosely in this case – tours turn out to be quite so… well, quite so. Pity they don’t run those kids of trips any more.