20/8/25
There was no other way to say it. Breakfast was shit. Made worse by the fact it had all the trappings of being excellent. Uncooked dough sticks and no watermelon lowered the bar.
Pau was a Spanish cyclist who was also in Chengdu. Conveniently he had some ‘Somoni’, which would be handy for us in the future if all went to plan. Soon after meeting him we discovered he had another problem. Pau banked with Triodos, an ethical bank. We had heard of it but never made the leap away from the immoral banks ourselves. It wasn’t working in his favour and he was finding it impossible to withdraw money.
Selflessly stepping in, we of course offered to help. Withdrawing ¥2000 for Pau was the easy part. Sitting in a coffee shop he desperately attempted, and repeatedly failed, to transfer us the money. His own bank, Paysend, Western Union, Paypal. Nothing worked. Eventually we had to leave it at that and part ways. Pau promised us he’d get us our money. We had no reason to distrust him, but it was hard to unseat our unease about being £180 out of pocket with a stranger we’d just met in China.
Pushing that out of our mind we headed south to the Tianfu branch of Decathlon. Jonathan needed new bib shorts, which were easy enough to find. Who knew if they’d be comfortable. We also bought cotton shirts. A travellers staple that we felt like we deserved. Lastly brake pads for Jonathan’s bike. Frankie’s were fairly bespoke and would be harder to find. Pau soon messaged us to let us know his dad had wired us the money. Only he’d sent too much by sending pounds instead of euros.
Chengdu used to have a good bike shop, apparently. But not since the pandemic. No bike tourers seemed to know where one was. Even though there was a blossoming cycling culture, everything revolved around a brand called ‘XDS’. The only tip we had was a dead end. Marching eastbound up the street from Baxi Youth Hostel was all we’d been given. All we found was an XDS shop. To be fair, despite being a franchise of some kind, they had 9-speed chains, a cassette – but it was only 11-32 so we passed, and surprisingly, a single set of brake pads for the green Surly.
Just as we were preparing to leave, by thanking the 18 year old student who’d helped us and also compared China to North Korea, a very western looking man walked in with a puncture. After saying “hello” in a very American accent he used the word ‘cool’ in a surprisingly fluid manner. Revealing himself to be from northwestern China, and being taught English by his father from an early age, Ali invited us to eat dinner together with his partner “Rabbit”.
The neighbourhood felt trendy. Ali greeted someone he passed in the street as he led us to a hotpot restaurant. Metal bowl in hand, he confidently filled the bowl with vegetables. Sadly, there was no tofu in the fridge. Not long later we had a large bowl of hot vegetables in a deep red sauce. A small bowl of rice on the side.
Ali was a Ughyer. Throughout the conversation it was something we were aware of, but it was a topic that was hard to broach. The closest we came was when he confirmed he wasn’t able to hold a passport. Rabbit, a name we didn’t question, was Han Chinese. She also spoke English but less ably, and less confidently. Ali was exceedingly well read. He’d self studied philosophy and found it difficult to find people to have deep conversation with. He repeatedly expressed his happiness at having the opportunity to speak about social and political issues.
It was one of those situations where we wished there was more time to develop our relationship. Being able to converse with someone from China always felt like an opportunity not to be wasted. Especially someone as interesting as Ali. We exchanged email addresses. Perhaps we could be penpals.
Staying next to Chengduxi railway station felt like the smart thing to do. We would be able to relax in the morning, our final China train leaving in the afternoon. There were just a few more errands we wished to run. Dinner hadn’t be quite filling enough, so we bought barbecued wheat gluten and tofu on our way. We also stopped in a supermarket for some fruit and lucked out with a generous shop assistant and some cheap fruit. Including a reduced piece of durian. Midnight was our final sleeping time. Too late really but it was our final night in the east of China and we would be sad to let go.
