Motorcycle Misadventures: The China Road Motorcycle Diaries

Author’s note: Some of you have been asking: what makes you want to do this kind of thing? What are you thinking when you’re alone and something goes wrong? Don’t you miss home? I hope this chapter answers some of those questions. Please leave your comments and questions at the bottom. I’d love to hear them.

To refresh your memory: this is only my second day on the road, but already it’s been a week’s worth of adventure:getting lost, riding in the dark, nearly hitting a family of pigs, spending the night in what turned out to be a brothel. This chapter picks up where I left off, after two men in a mountain restaurant convinced me to abandon the back roads and head toward Datong and the Yellow River instead. (They may or may not have been Chinese mob. I’ll let you decide.)

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Chapter 9: The Road to Datong

Yīlù Píng’ān (One Road, Peace All the Way)

Finally, traffic starts to move. The men have places to go, people to see, and with regretful smiles, we stand and formally shake hands. “Datong,” one of them says, with purposeful eye contact as if to hypnotize me into agreeing with him. When I say “okay,” they giggle like boys then morph back into the serious men they are.

The proprietor hurries to hold the door. Xièxie, he says, nodding in respect as the men stride out in their fine suits and designer sunglasses. They disappear behind the tinted windows and the sleek vehicle glides into traffic like a shark in the reef, the candy-colored cars scattering to make way.

Bang bang.

I am truly tired of the mountains. All the twists and turns have made my muscles sore. I don’t worry about my safety, but the scarcity of road signs and reliable accommodation is stressful. At home, friends, family, even strangers worry about robbery, rape, kidnapping, but they haven’t traveled as I have. I’m not just a tourist, I’m on a motorcycle, and the motorcycle is a power symbol. I experienced this phenomenon on my first solo journey in France. There is an impression that the rider is capable and experienced, anything but the usual wandering traveler that might easily be taken advantage of. And here, my high-visibility foreignness is a protective cloak. As my friends in Beijing put it, I’m leaving a wake behind me. Even if I get lost, everyone else knows where I am. It’s discomfiting and reassuring at the same time.

I linger to consider the new plan without the influence of the bang bang guys, referring to what I now know is an untrustworthy map, along with the slim and outdated facts in the Lonely Planet, published before the recent shift. Okay then. Enough with the mountains. For now, at least, I’ll head to Datong and visit the nearby Yungang Buddhist Caves, then ride along the Yellow River and, looking at the map, that will bring me near Inner Mongolia, which I hadn’t thought to explore. There’s plenty of time, I remind myself, and if I find a new homogeny, if villages have been replaced by factory towns and apartment buildings, I can always turn inland again.

Packing up my things, I stop to pay my check. But the proprietor shakes his head and tells me my companions have already taken care of it. It’s a sweet surprise, and I smile as he bows and wishes me yīlù píng'ān, one road, peace all the way.

Back on the bike, I think about tomorrow, my fortieth birthday. The Yungang Caves seem like a good place to spend it.

Down the mountain the landscape opens to a plateau of deep gold, soft-looking, windswept, almost lunar in its bareness. This is loess: fine dust, carried here by the wind out of the western deserts to settle in layers over hundreds of thousands of years. The dust settled and built itself into hills two hundred feet thick in places, and once it was forests, grasslands, with soil rich enough to have fed the first Chinese dynasties. But the trees came down centuries ago, cut for fuel and farmland, and without roots to hold it, the loess has been sliding away ever since, gully by gully, rainstorm by rainstorm, into its namesake Yellow River that carries its color all the way to the sea.

Arial shot of part of the Loess Plateau system 1987 | By I, Till Niermann, CC BY-SA 3.0

The road is good and I’m flying along, if 40 mph can be called flying, but compared to the last couple of days it seems fast and free. Wow, I’m here, in China I think to myself, and I spent last night in a brothel. Did I? It seems unreal. It seems like last week. Not like yesterday. Not like this morning. I want to tell somebody, but then again, this living in the present, in the now, feels priceless, free. For a moment my mind shifts to home where Ram Dass’s book Be Here Now sits on one of our many bookshelves.

As usual, while traveling, I’ve been too busy, too immersed in taking things in to think about home or anything that doesn’t have to do with the here and now. With my mind looping on essentials like gas, food, and shelter, the state of being absolutely 100% present is effortless.

At home, I can get close to emptying my mind by riding over the Golden Gate Bridge with no particular destination in mind. My thoughts are only on the road, attuned to other drivers, the weather, the new cafe or fruit stand, the pullout at Jenner where you can watch the sea lions frolicking in the Russian River where it flows into the ocean. I almost always end up in Bodega Bay before looping home on the Bohemian Highway, stopping at Wild Flour Bread or the Fairfax Scoop. Yet there’s still room left over in my head to remember I need to pick up toothpaste and coffee filters on the way home, or to loop on triviality that won’t matter by next week.

Here, there’s no room for any of that. Everything has higher stakes. Will there be gas, food, a decent place to stay? I’m not in a constant state of alarm, but a kind of hyper-awareness, senses wide open, that’s become my best traveling companion. It’s the sixth sense, the thing I can’t quite explain, that years of solo travel have taught me to trust over everything, even reason. This sense tells me where to go and where not to, who to trust and who not to. My mind isn’t cluttered with trivia. I’m just here, now, in the middle of all of it when I see a sign and a guard shack standing at the entrance to a big empty parking lot. It must be a tourist site, getting ready to accommodate all the drivers in all the new cars.

Slowing, I see nothing but a cliff face that rises from the ground about 300 feet away. I slow further, my eyes searching for the reason for this brand new parking lot, and finally notice a man-made structure about 100 feet up. Stopping now, the engine idling, I see it’s a temple, or at least the front of a temple, or several temples, pasted onto the cliff face. They’re painted red with the traditional curlicue tiled roofs; but wait, are those bridges that connect the various buildings? They are. But how would one manage to get up there? My eyes straining to find a path, yes, there is a narrow staircase hewn from the cliff.

I'm dying to see it, but it's closed. The low fence around the lot and the sagging chain at the entrance prevent me from riding in. The guard shack, also new, with clean glass on four sides, stands empty. A large sign faces the road in bold red characters I cannot read. Opening soon, perhaps. Or the name of the site, and the ministry responsible for it, and nothing else. There is no way to know. In fact, the parking lot is so black, so smooth, so clean that I wonder if it has just been paved in preparation for all the new visitors with all their new cars.

I can’t quit so easily. Maybe if I get off the bike to walk across to the cliff someone will be there, and if not, I might just walk up those stairs anyway. It could be abandoned, or a guard might be napping there. I think the bike will be safe where it is.

I reach for the ignition key to turn off the engine and grab empty air. The key is gone. Gone. It takes me a moment.

The motorcycle is still running, but there’s no key.

Okay, it must have vibrated out. How stupid, I think. Just absolutely the dumbest thing. The bike is a rattletrap and of course the key would wobble out. I should have attached it to a string on the handlebars, but I didn’t, and now it’s gone.

But maybe it just happened now. I search around the bike. Under it. Nope. Undoubtedly, it is on the road, mashed by a tire, or bounced into a ditch. I can’t go back. I don’t want to arrive in Datong in the dark. I shudder, remembering the cold, dark roads. After yesterday, I do not want to ride in the dark ever again.

And what if the engine stalls? If I were on a hill, I could roll-start it. But it’s flat here, and I can’t push 800 pounds. The only option is to ride on and hope to find a locksmith.

How do you say “locksmith” in Mandarin? I open the trunk to find the parts and phrases list Jim had written out to make it easier for me to communicate with shopkeepers and mechanics. He wrote out the words in Pinyin and Chinese characters: oil, chain, piston, brake pad, brake lever, throttle lever, valve adjustment, tire, spokes, headlight. I turn the pages. It provides every directive, every part, except ignition and key.

I grab my dictionary and find all the words: Lock. Key. Ignition.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

There’s nothing else to do but to keep going and hope and practice the words in my head as I ride, guessing at the intonation.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

Every once in a while, I glance down at the ignition cylinder. With the loss of the key, I’ve also lost the little rave toy fob Michael gave me before I left, a silly little spaceship keychain, bright orange and green with a fringy tassel that was already getting grimy. The funny little memento had made me think of home.

It’s Sunday in San Francisco, I remember, so we’d likely be at a party or sleeping off one, having spent hours in a warehouse full of music and dancing and art and all the elaborate trimmings of the scene Michael lived for. As a popular event producer and deejay with an innate sense of how to rev up the dancers, he surprised and delighted the much younger party goers, his long graying hair becoming iconic in the scene. He was dubbed DJ Goz (short for his last name, Gosney), and rumors of his appearance were enough to bring a good crowd.

The psychedelics had done their job for me. I’d fired those synapses enough times to know what they had to show me, and though the pull was still there, I could sense it wasn’t healthy to keep going back. More often now I’d skip the parties in favor of an early morning on Mount Tam, a bicycle ride to Sausalito, or point my motorcycle to Skyline Boulevard. I’d come home to find Michael asleep, hoping he’d tire of it, too, yet knowing he was becoming more and more involved in event production and electronic music, and wondering what that meant for our future.

Suǒ. Yàoshi. Diǎnhuǒ kāiguān.

Chanting my words, I observe the stark beauty of the windswept yellow cliffs as I ride through in the sun and the warm air, sad to have missed seeing the cliff temple, but happy in my way, despite my worries. I can push start it, with help. Or hotwire it. It shouldn’t be that complicated.

The road narrows and rises to a higher plateau with low, yellow loess cliffs along each side of the road. The afternoon sun lights up the eastern-facing cliffs which feel like a wasteland, remote, empty, abandoned.

But then I see movement, a man, or a black silhouette of a man, who seems to be walking out of the cliff. Slowing down to look for the crevice or canyon he appeared from, I realize that he’s wormed his way out a hole. A literal hole, barely big enough for him to crawl into. A pile of coal chunks sits at the opening of the hole, and the man is not silhouetted, he is black like a shadow from his face to his shoes. I am too far away to see anything but the hole, the pile of coal pieces, and the coal black shadow man.

Then another man appears, pulling a wheelbarrow, stopping at another hole. And another. And then another man emerges. They speak, then continue their work.

Idling, I contemplate these men and their work. It looks dangerous. The hole could collapse. They are breathing coal dust. A cloud passes and the sun shines upon them, creating shadows from shadows, silhouettes from silhouettes, sharp like cutouts, that mimic their movements against the golden cliffs.

I pull over, idling, making sure not to stall because of the key, yet knowing I could turn the bike around and push start it from the hill.

The man with the wheelbarrow nods and goes on his way, bends, picks up chunks of coal from the pile, and moves on to the next, a wide-brimmed hat sheltering him from the afternoon sun.

I put the bike into gear again and motor on for miles and miles of the same yellow landscape.

And then, out of nowhere, a marketplace. My heart soars, then drops into my stomach. Do I dare hope? Slowing, the engine chugs along as I search among the tables. It’s like a flea market, a disorganized jumble of food and plastic goods and oh my god, tools and wheels and mechanical things set up on flattened cardboard boxes and folding card tables.

Cruising slowly along, I am dazzled, hopeful, yet not yet willing to believe my extreme good luck. I spot a teenager repairing a tire and head toward him. He jumps up excitedly when he sees me. He wears greasy blue pants, two sizes too large and cinched around the waist with a rope. Clearly, he’s thrilled to see a foreigner. When I point to my missing ignition key, he says, “No problem!” or at least it sounds like he’s saying that, and waves me on down the line, shouting to a woman selling pot stickers who, in turn, shouts at someone else farther down and so on until I reach an elderly Mao-blue clad man sitting on a stool next to a wobbly aluminum card table surrounded with boxes of all sizes. The young man in the chain of guides who has led me here shouts and picks up a box, opens it, and shows me the keys. Many keys. A locksmith.

This is unreal. I do not know who to thank. It’s like this place appeared because I needed it. Could there be such a coincidence? Such magic?

Grinning, I click the bike into neutral and leave it running as the old locksmith hobbles over to me. Suddenly, I’ve lost the words for lock and key and ignition, but there is no need.

“Qǐng, xiānsheng?“ I say, the phrase for please, mister. I point dumbly at where the key ought to be.

With the gravity of long experience, the man studies the ignition cylinder and hobbles back to his table. Among the hundred, literally a hundred unmarked boxes on and under and around his table, he selects three.

Impossible, I think, looking around for his tools. There’s no key cutter, no grinder, no generator to run them. Maybe he’ll use a file, I think, once he finds a key that will fit.

The boxes are all small, about six by eight inches, made of heavy cardboard in white, gray, and brown, streaked and dusty with frayed corners. As he picks through their contents, I think, this is too much. This is just silly. And how is he going to match the key without having the original to compare it with? I set the foot brake, leave the bike running, and walk to his table.

Inside each of the boxes are twenty to a hundred keys. They are sorted by size but in many different kinds of metal and shapes. Some of them are rusty or corroded and there’s a significant amount of dirt, metal filings, and even some nuts and bolts lying among them. A metallic scent rises as he scatters the keys with his leather-thick fingers, which are stained gray and blue with metal shavings. The metallic scent mixes with the dust of the road, chalk, coal, soy sauce, grease, onions, and something pungent, like ginger and red peppers.

Around us, other vendors are doing business as best they can with the distraction of a real live lǎowài in their midst. I feel them watching but they don’t crowd us, perhaps out of respect for the elderly locksmith.

The locksmith, after selecting four or five keys, turns to my bike. I stare, hopeful but tense, as he tries one, then another.

The third one fits.

My level of astonishment is so great that I can barely respond other than holding out a handful of small bills and coins. He picks out the correct amount—much too little. Fifty cents worth, perhaps. I hand him a few more bills, about two dollars’ worth, saying xièxiè, xiānsheng, xièxiè, but he just smiles a toothless smile and wags his head.

But I can’t possibly leave without thanking him more, he can’t realize how important this is to me. In his world, this may happen all the time, but in my world, keys just don’t fall out of ignitions and locksmiths don’t just appear when you need them.

He refuses more money and, distraught, I remember my stash of souvenirs to give away, tiny flashlights and keychains with scenes of San Francisco. Perfect! Rummaging through the gray duffel in the sidecar I find my bag of trinkets, choosing a keychain with a scene of the Golden Gate Bridge, brilliant and sparkling in Plexiglas.

He accepts it tentatively, with curiosity, turning it around and around in his leathery hands, the smooth shiny object looking as foreign as a spaceship, like the spaceship fob from Michael I just lost.

The locksmith inspects the keychain so thoroughly that now I realize he has no idea what it is. He’s unlikely to have ever seen the Golden Gate Bridge, even in pictures, and has probably never heard of San Francisco. It’s pleasing, though, and finally, he nods and smiles. And I feel better to have given him something, and maybe someone who knows about it will come along and tell him what it is.

I ride off in a daze, still unwilling to believe my good luck, and it’s not until miles later I realize I ought to have asked him to make me a spare.

I have also forgotten how I lost the original key. I glance down to see the new one vibrating in the cylinder. What a fool I am.

Pulling over, I put the bike in neutral and set the foot brake. There must be a string somewhere, a shoelace, something, but I can’t find it so, for now, baling wire will have to do. I twist one end of the flexible wire around the key and the other to the handlebars. It’s not an elegant tether, but it’ll do for now.

Thanks for reading this chapter of the China Road Motorcycle Diaries, an adventure memoir in progress. Here’s a note about how this area has transformed.

When I’m finished publishing this beta book here on Substack, I’ll release it as an ebook and print book as well. So I’d love to hear your comments about the story—your impressions, your critiques, to make the book the best it can be. Just click the red LEAVE A COMMENT button here.

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08: A Change of Plan

Carla King — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:47:06 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

Chapter 8: A Change of Plan

A million new drivers, two gangsters, and a birthday plan

I take a deep breath and relax into the rhythm of navigating switchback after switchback in the warm mountain air. The rising sun tells me I am heading generally westward. I have time. There is no hurry. Exploration requires patience and a willingness to linger, to push past comfort zones, and succumb to curiosity.

Another valley, another mountain, and another, and another, and halfway down the next descent the tarmac deteriorates into a narrow byway riddled with potholes and then it’s all dirt for 8 kilometers—or maybe the odometer has quit again—and then road—a study in constant erosion and sporadic repair. Mostly, I travel in second and third gears, averaging about 40 kilometers per hour. In the measurement I’m used to, this translates as 25 miles per hour, which seems impossibly slow.

I remember my grandparents, newly married in 1929, who drove their Model T across America, tootling along at a top speed of 35 miles per hour (downhill and with the wind behind them). They started in Boston and west of Chicago the country lacked paved roads and even motels. The automobile needed daily maintenance, and there was the ritual finding of fuel, food, and shelter—if only their tent—to consider. In the west were days of seeing few other humans, and adventure: Mountains, forests, deserts, and frontier towns with curious residents. Their faces turned to my grandparents whose well-worn vehicle with its customizations, its repaired canvas rooftop and battered luggage and layers of dust, begged the question: Who are you, and where did you come from?

They stopped frequently. Repaired and resupplied. Got familiar with the locals. Accepted invitations and ate the food. Didn’t panic when a wheel came off or the engine dropped out onto a railroad track. I loved their stories and I feel them with me. Wherever I am, I silently shout into the heavens, Are you watching?

My road deteriorates into nonexistence at the valley floor, once again leaving me to pick my way across the rocks. I wonder what locals do in the rainy season when the floods violent tumble scatters these huge boulders downstream. Do they stay home above the water line, cozy with their provisions? I see no trace of villages or agricultural efforts, only wilderness. Pondering, I come to the conculsion there must be an alternate route somewhere, and a bridge.

It’s okay. I have a full tank of gas, the auxiliary tank is full, and it’s early yet. There’s no reason to think I won’t find civilization by the afternoon. So for now, I’m happy to pick my way across these dry riverbeds. I’ve become used to scanning the far side of the valley, searching for a worn indentation where truckers have crossed. Sometimes it’s obvious. Other times I’m left to pick my own route, standing up on the pegs to spot the sharpest rocks that could dislodge or crack the skid plate, the protective barrier between the ground and the engine. Pale quartz and feldspar flare across the riverbed, and in the unobstructed sun mica glints like fish scales where water trickles through. The glare flattens the land into blinding white. Shadows vanish. Suddenly it’s impossible to judge the size—or the sharpness—of the rocks.

Illustration by Carla King using AI (ChatGPT/DALL·E)

Because their edges have not yet been smoothed by erosion, I have to be especially cautious. These rocks don’t roll, and the bigger ones simply dig themselves into the riverbed instead of moving, blocking my progress. I’m confident enough to wiggle myself out of most stuck situations, and I’ve got a pry bar to rearrange rocks if it comes to that. Not to mention reverse gear—something most motorcycles don’t have, but on an eight-hundred-pound sidecar rig it can mean the difference between escaping a bad decision and spending an hour wrestling the bike by hand. Still, getting stuck would just be embarrassing. And how long might I have to wait for a blue truck to pass by? And would he help?

07: A Country Market

Carla King — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 01:16:17 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7.99/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a subscriber. Thank you!

Chapter 7: A Country Market

A Country Market 河北省

I turn west, away from the brothel, rumbling past the now lifeless gas station. I give a silent thanks to the woman who helped me find shelter, no matter how strange, and ride up a series of switchbacks. Pulling off to the side of the road at the top of the hill, I look down at the brothel in its U-shaped configuration. There are some other buildings nearby, also cheaply made from concrete blocks and plaster, scattered on the flat area of dry dirt between the canyon and the road.

It really would be a perfect escape, the setting for a fishing lodge or a campground. But the only travelers in China seem to be truckers.

I breathe deeply and then start to laugh. My first night on the road and I spent it in a brothel. A brothel!

Now that I’m on the road again, the motorcycle rumbling beneath me and my westward journey ahead, the brothel has taken on a mythological quality and proof of the axiom that truth is stranger than fiction.

Riding on, the landscape alternates from mountainous to gentle hills and back again. Occasionally, clusters of huts constructed from mud and straw stand like villages you’d see in a movie set of medieval times. Hay-scented smoke rises lazily from clay pipes sticking sloppily out at angles from red-tiled roofs.

At the descent from another rise the landscape unfolds below me. Another farm tucked into a valley, the sun just warming the earth, steam rising from the dirt. An old man pulls a plough through a field jigsawed into the available space. He is too poor even to own a beast, the leather straps are harnessed to his shoulders. I proceed up and around another hill and down the next set of switchbacks, the engine idling easily, and remember the old man at the crossroads yesterday. Where are all the young people? Shouldn’t they be taking on this work?

At the top I can see hundreds of peaks fading into infinity. Where am I? I had no idea there would be all this empty space here. As the sun gradually erases the satiny morning haze it reveals a mountainscape of jagged peaks that bite into the skyline like pointy crooked teeth. Down another set of switchbacks the teeth fall from view and then the crazy crooked mountain peaks stab the sky again, then there’s another valley, and another roller-coaster rise with a view of the peaks, and more of them, fainter beyond. I’ve ridden forty kilometers, the odometer says, and I realize it has started working again, for now.

I pass another old man in the uniform of old men in China—indigo blue pants, jacket, and cap. He holds on tightly to a wheelbarrow piled high with neatly-stacked twigs, straining backward to prevent it from rolling too fast down the hill.

Another whiff of smoke, and then all wilderness again—only mountains and trees. I had imagined China as one continuous mass of humanity, farms, factories, and cities from east to west, north to south, and a continuous stream of people. Here it is a simple life. Harder, poorer, limited in every way. It feels centuries from the time I am from. I allow myself, for the moment, to enjoy it. After all, I am just passing through. A time traveler, smug in her assurance.

Navigating still more zigzaggy roads, I finally crest a summit over a vast, curving valley with a floodplain a few miles wide at its widest point, littered with rocks—some boulders the size of suburban family homes—giving a hint of the power of the previous season’s flood. The sun reflects on a few trickles of water that nourish the young plants that glow green in the vast field of white and gray.

Below me, a very new, extraordinarily massive concrete bridge—four lanes wide—spans at least 200 meters of an arroyo. From the south, a ribbon of shiny black tar pours from the crevice of a mountain pass, intersecting the bridge and my small, rough byway, and proceeds importantly westward. The road is so newly laid I can smell it from here. I think of what’s coming for this valley— the trucks getting larger, the middle-class buying cars, this rough byway eventually smoothed into something efficient and forgettable.

Distracted by the surprise of the big new road and the big new bridge, it takes a moment to process the activity on the flat rise on the other side of the bridge, next to a stand of enormous shade trees, dwarfed by distance. The adjacent flat is crowded with five neatly spaced rows of tables—perhaps a dozen tables per row—piled with goods and produce. From here the scene is in miniature, I can only see colors and shapes that may be vegetables and animal cages.

I wonder how all these people got here when a shiny new gray bus emerges from the south-curving valley to answer my question. It comes to a slow stop at the bridge, letting off thirty or forty people to shop at the market.

With a sigh of relief, and a sympathetic rumble of my stomach, I realize I’ll be able to stock up on supplies for the road ahead. I ate my last banana and mung bean cake this morning.

Waiting for the crowd that just arrived by bus to disperse seems prudent before I make my appearance, which is sure to cause a commotion. I turn off the engine, enjoying the silence and the sunshine, and the scent of sweet dough that rises to mingle with the smell of tar and smoke and manure and dust.

Nobody seems to see me coming as I putt over the bridge and into the shade of the stand of trees. I back the motorcycle in—it always seems prudent to face out for a quick getaway—between a dilapidated three-wheeled diesel truck and a donkey hitched to a cart. The sound of the unfamiliar engine makes the donkey nervous, and it prances in place, rolling its eyes, then brays and bucks, lurching backwards and knocking the cart into a tree.

06: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Carla King — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 02:45:12 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

I’m publishing the book here as I write and revise it, one stretch of road at a time. Free subscribers can read selected chapters and follow the journey from a distance.

Monthly subscribers ($7.99/month) read the full manuscript-in-progress, join the chat, and take part in monthly live conversations as the book takes shape.

Annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript and access to live and recorded conversations.

Patrons ($179/annual) also receive a special-edition print copy of the finished book.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public—but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

Chapter 6: The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I wake at dawn in a brothel in the mountains of northern China and lie still, listening for trouble.

There is none.

No boots in the hallway. No fists on the door. No whispered negotiation outside my room. Only the distant rush of the river and the faint ticking of cooling metal from the motorcycle below.

I had wedged my alarm in the doorjamb before sleeping, as I always do.

No one had tried it. No one had knocked.

I had been told, more than once, that if I disappeared it would be an international incident. China watched its foreigners closely. I had arrived loudly the night before, in a roar of steel and exhaust and foreign plates. I am not invisible.

Now the building feels less menacing than shabby.

I reach for my flip-flops, careful not to make contact with the floor—a puzzle of dark splotches on thin blood-red carpet. The morning light reveals yellow stains from moisture on the walls and mold caked on the bathroom tiles. Shattered tiles mark where the plumbing was routed through to the sink and shower. Drowned bugs fill a puddle of stagnant water in the opposite corner of the basin because the drain, inexplicably, sits at the highest end.

I uncork one of the green plastic thermoses of hot water the girls fetched for me the previous night, and smile when I find it is still steaming hot. I grab the coffee-making paraphernalia and, lacking a table, set things up on the floor. I'd picked up ground beans at a Beijing Starbucks and carefully pour a little hot water into the filter to let it soak, enjoying the ritual and the aroma of normalcy, before adding the rest to drip into my thermos.

In the bathroom, where the fluorescent light is the brightest, I check my skin for bedbugs, pleased to find no telltale bites or rashes, though I’m shocked at how puffy my eyes are. Riding a motorcycle for so many hours in one stretch is never healthy, and I am also still recovering from the effects of Beijing’s coal dust pollution.

My mind drifts back to Beijing, where my expat friends are probably still tucked into their luxurious, American-style beds—filtered water and filtered air at home, filtered water and filtered air at work. Maybe they will think of me on their way to the office today, or this weekend when they ride out to the Ming Tombs on another of their forays into the countryside. I’m sure they will check my website and their email for news, but they won’t find anything from me today.

I dress and carry my coffee down the hall, passing other rooms where pairs of male shoes sit neatly outside each door. They are black leather and so carefully polished that I think they cannot possibly be truckers’ shoes, though I have seen that people are oddly formal here. The little yellow pots of water are now on the other side of the hallway. I peer in cautiously. They don’t look like chamber pots, but there is something in them. What can it be? I look closer to see globs floating on top of the water, and realize they are spittoons.

Suppressing a gag, I hurry outside. The courtyard is empty except for a Chinese motorcycle leaning against the opposite wall. There are no trucks in sight. No other vehicles at all. I surmise the drivers pumped themselves back up with amphetamines and continued on their route, which does not bode well. But who belongs to all those pairs of polished black shoes?

The sound of rushing water calls me. It takes some exploring, but finally I find an unlocked door that lets me out of the enclosed compound. It leads onto a natural terrace where a powerful river rushes below my line of sight, having carved, over millennia, a deep horizontal gorge. Straight across, a cliff rises hundreds of feet above my terrace. The morning sun catches streaks of gray, brown, and rust where constant moisture drips down the stone into the canyon. The cliff is topped with a forest, its greenery lush and trembling in the moving air, which makes the canyon seem to undulate as it curves away and disappears into dense vegetation. I gape at it, a little dizzy, and mesmerized. The edge calls to me and I approach as near as I dare—there are no guardrails—and breathe the ionized air deeply into my lungs. I have a strong desire to crawl to the edge and look down upon the rushing waters, but suddenly I fear it, or something, and an impulse to leave overwhelms me.

05: A Dubious Refuge

Carla King — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 23:21:39 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

In 1998, before highways webbed the country and before China’s middle class filled the roads with cars, I rode an antique sidecar motorcycle alone through the north—across provincial borders, into villages without signs, through dust and doubt and long stretches of silence.

This…

04. Seeking Shelter for the Night

Carla King — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 23:02:09 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you want to read along as each chapter is written—seeing the book take shape in public—you can join as a monthly subscriber ($7.99/month), with access to the full manuscript-in-progress, chat, and monthly live conversations.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

< Previous Chapter

Chapter 4: Seeking Shelter for the Night

It doesn’t matter if I’m lost. I need only head west. And it’s not like I’ve never been lost. Getting lost brings good things. I remember my first solo motorcycle journey, so long ago, when I put my maps away and followed the sun, turning off onto small roads that led to dead ends or wonderful crumbling medieval villages. But that was France. I was escaping a marriage gone wrong, wandering in defiance, in self-defense. Still, it was a revelation. The smell of lavender, the bustle of village markets, coffee, campgrounds filled with European travelers, and the freedom to change my mind, to stop for a while, to turn down an interesting-looking road, without having to negotiate with anyone else. There were beautiful, remote places to explore in France, but people everywhere. It wasn’t anything like this, in China’s Hebei province.

Rockfall from a cliff above surprises me—my god, this is the same road, now so far above me, that I rode just minutes ago. My wheels must have loosened the rocks, or the sound of my engine, which ricochets and reverberates in this narrow canyon. At the bottom, the road deteriorates into rubble and a muddy creek that would have been difficult to cross on two wheels, but on the motorcycle I simply bump and skid along, confident on the three wheels.

Then the mountain pushes me around a bend and onto the banks of a dry riverbed sparkling with mica-dotted granite that strikes my eyes, painfully bright, even through my sunglasses, under the clearest, palest blue sky. I sneeze, the rock dust irritating my nose. This could be anywhere. Mexico. Arizona. Morocco. Greece. There is nothing here that screams, China! It is wilderness, but still silent. The lack of people, birds, mammals, reptiles—it bothers me.

It’s a half a mile of nothing between me and the next mountain range rising just as steeply as the last, where the road must continue, mustn’t it? The floodplain stretches wide and flat, deceptively peaceful in the dry season. Its center is scattered with fist-sized stones and the occasional car-sized boulder, remnants of flash floods that must roar through here during the rains. The sandy banks are etched with the memory of moving water—wind-blown, crusted, and tufted with dry grasses and scrub. The far range looms ahead, granite cliffs blurred in the pale sky, and I scan the banks for any sign of a road threading its way up and out and a movement catches my eye, a blue supply truck emerging on the other side of the riverbed. My first emotion is relief. People exist! The world hasn’t ended, after all. I turn off the engine and watch where the driver crosses. If this is the main road through Hebei Province I may be headed for a more arduous adventure than I’d bargained for, a thought that both frightens and thrills me.

I keep my eyes on the truck as it skirts the edge of the riverbed, noting where it lurches over the rocky bank. I wait as it begins its slow, monstrous crawl toward me, tilting jerkily left and right, its tires slipping through river rocks—many the size of basketballs. The clatter of stone against metal nearly drowns out the groan of its overburdened suspension. Medium-sized by American standards, this truck is the backbone of the rural Chinese supply chain—small enough to navigate narrow roads, tough enough to muscle through terrain like this. I saw trucks twice this size on Beijing’s ring roads, but since leaving the city, only these.

The driver, close now, guns the engine and roars up onto my side of the riverbank, scattering rocks in every direction. Once the danger of scattershot passes, I toe down into first gear, chug around him, and give a wave. He doesn’t wave back—just brakes to a stop and stares, a cigarette drooping from his lips, one hand on the wheel, the other casually patting the side door like it’s a well-behaved horse.

But he’s shown me the path to the road up the next mountain. I let my three-wheeled steed lumber over the edge of the bank, with scattershots of rocks ping against the engine guard and the bottom of the sidecar. The rear tire slips in a pocket of sand and spins, but with a quick jerk of the handlebars I get traction and accelerate, heart racing, to jounce over another stretch of rocks. It is a long and bumpy ride to the other side. I aim for the same spot the truck entered and accelerate up and over, spraying glittering rocks behind me in a clatter.

I’m not a stranger to this kind of bike, having blogged about my trip around America on its Russian cousin, the Ural, only two years ago. Since the age of 14, motorcycles have been my escape vehicle. In the 80s, I made a living as a freelance technical writer and spent the time between contracts traveling by bicycle or motorcycle. Thanks to my rural upbringing and position as first-born child to an engineering and mechanical father, I was also well-versed in simple engine mechanics and problem solving. So I’ve never experienced that barrier of fear about breaking down, helpless by the side of the road, though it happened plenty of times on my trip around America with the kindness-of-strangers type of results.

The simple air-cooled piston-driven engine, a classic German design, reliable and easy to repair. Photo by the author.

A few breaking down scenarios run through my mind as I make my way across the riverbed, hoping one especially big rock didn’t puncture the engine guard, because a hit to the oil pan could empty the crankcase and definitely get me stuck. And who knows when the next truck might pass this way?

It’s a tension-filled heave ho over the edge and out of the riverbed and onto a very bad road but a road nonetheless, formerly paved but now cratered with asphalt ridged potholes. I stop to wipe the sweat from my eyes, and unsnap the first few buttons of my leather jacket. I know it will be cooler at the top of this set of switchbacks.

It’s slow-going, mostly in second gear, as I crest one ridge, then another. At each summit I see that the landscape is endless: mountains upon mountains, their slopes thick with deciduous trees of emerald green, others topped with bare rock cliffs, with sharp granite claws scratching into the pale blue sky. I cut the engine. Silence envelops me. Again, no sound, no car engines, no tractors, no bleating goats or lowing cows. No birds, no insects. Not even a trembling leaf. I peer into the woods—no peasants gathering sticks, no signs of life. A sweaty chill prickles up my back. I crave the screech of a cicada, a chirp, the shape of a turkey vulture overhead. But nothing moves. The absence of fauna in all this flora strikes a jarring chord—something here feels off-key.

I feel a kind of loneliness I don’t usually feel when I travel, and I want to name it. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust my intuition, to follow it without question. But this isn’t danger I’m sensing. Just... discord. Not a threat, not yet. But something worth mulling over.

Dismounting, I walk around to the sidecar for some water and a bite of mooncake purchased that morning, a substantial snack of pastry and mung bean paste and sugar that I’ve come to enjoy. I like the thick buttery crust and the slightly gritty feel of the sugared mung bean paste. Fat, sugar, protein: it’s China’s power bar, and it gives me an instant energy boost.

And then I name the threat. It’s not people—it’s nature. Sure, almost everyone is afraid of people. The warnings roll in like clockwork the moment I mention a solo journey: Be careful. You’ll get robbed. Raped. Kidnapped. Sold into sex slavery. Axe murdered. Don’t you know how many bad people are out there? But the truth is, statistically and experientially, it’s not people I fear. It’s terrain. Weather. Disease. In Switzerland, I was hospitalized during a bike trip for a bladder infection that turned serious. In West Africa, I got a life-threatening case of malaria. The data backs me up: travelers are far more likely to be injured or killed by road accidents, drowning, exposure, or plain old biology than by crime. But crime makes the headlines. Nature creeps up on you slowly, quietly, and with total indifference.

Before I set off again, I check the fuel tank. The Chang Jiang holds nearly six gallons, and I’ve got a 2.6-gallon auxiliary can bolted to the sidecar. This is as good a place as any—and while there’s still light—to transfer it. I hoist the metal can from its holder and splash the precious liquid into the tank. The scent of gasoline, sharp and slightly sweet, hits me like a balm. Safety, in a can.

Back on the road, I do the math—not because I love numbers, but to ward off panic. If I’m getting about 30 miles to the gallon, and I’ve already burned through five, that’s 150 miles—in eight long, bone-jarring hours. With the two gallons I just poured in, I’ve got maybe 60 miles left. Two more hours, if I’m lucky. And then what?

It’s getting dark, and I’m sure that the town I’ve targeted for my first night is so far away I might as well just stop thinking about it. The going is slow not only because of the potholes and badly banked curves but because the asphalt occasionally ends without warning.

Where could I be? I could have looped back to where I began. I could be far away. I remember how the land looked in daylight; the jumble of pyramid-shaped mountains covered in soft green foliage jutting through the landscape, the crumbling hillsides, the plunging cliffs.

I pass a tiny village where the windows of mud huts are covered in thick, oiled paper glowing orange with the flickering light of cooking fires. Exhausted, I consider stopping but are they friendly? I might cause an uproar. Do they have food to spare? A bed? Certainly not. Gas? No. Not a vehicle in sight. My thoughts loop on the problem of where to sleep that night and on the problems that haven’t yet arrived. In the background the engine rumbles. I’m still working out its idiosyncrasies. I don’t yet know this machine well enough to take comfort in its working noises, its hard clunk down from third gear, its slight pull to the left.

Shadow trees fly by and another small village appears. This one is more promising. Civilization, finally. I shift down, slowing in anticipation of the many potholes a village brings, and a small animal suddenly bursts into the road. A rush of adrenaline prepares me for hard braking, for swerving or impact.

I hold my ground, trusting my instincts. I can’t tell if the side of the road dives off into a five-foot ditch or heads straight into a two-foot wall. Staying my course, the animal races alongside me. Improbably, others join in. Finally, I recognize them as piglets. We travel together down the road for several long moments of dark indecision. I hold my breath while they grunt and squeal hysterically, invisibly. Several times it seems that they will move off the road and out of my way, and several times it seems they will run under my tires. Finally, I gently let pressure off the throttle, decelerating very slowly. The engine noise changes, and in response, one piglet lets out a sudden, long, high-pitched squeal. The others squeal in response and follow it off the road into darkness.

Heart racing, I’m alone again. If I’d hit a pig, if I’d killed it, I’d certainly be willing to pay, but what kind of excitement would it bring? And what is justice like in this remote country? I take a deep, calming breath and put a fleeting image of angry farmers surrounding me with pitchforks out of my mind. Did anyone witness this near miss? Probably not. The village turns out to be as tiny and poor as the last, so I pass it by.

Finally, the dirt road smooths out. I dare to accelerate, nudging into third gear despite the thickening night, eyes scanning for anything that might jump out from the shadows — pothole, piglet, person. Where is the moon? I realize I haven’t seen it since I arrived. Not in Beijing — the smog swallowed everything.

Miles slip by, and suddenly I notice my fingers still locked in position, hovering over the brake lever like I’m bracing for disaster. I force myself to breathe — deep, deliberate. I’m forgetting to breathe. I’m cold. The icy night air leaks up my sleeves, down my collar, between my helmet and neck like a thief. My hands throb from hours of gripping the clutch and brake of this stubborn, dragging beast of a machine. I’m alone in the pitch-black backwoods of Hebei Province, and I’m starting to feel it in every joint, every nerve.

That near miss with the pigs makes me question the intelligence of my decision to make this trip at all. Now that I’m really doing it, it does seem more than a little crazy to be traveling alone, illegally, on an unreliable motorcycle in a country where I can’t speak the language. My rudimentary Mandarin worked in Beijing, but if that peasant was any indication, it won’t be doing me much good here in the countryside.

“I’ve been here before,” I say out loud. “I’ve been here before.” Not this road, not this night—but this feeling. The doubt. The questioning. That old familiar ache: Why do I do this? Why leave comfort, predictability, love? Why push into the unknown again and again? It’s a thought groove, worn deep over the years. And yes, it’s been hell on relationships. But I don’t want to go there right now. I can’t afford to go there—not with Michael, not with the weight of his ambivalence and mine. Not here, not now.

All of me needs to be focused on this road. On staying upright. On staying alive. And maybe that’s exactly why I do this. Why I keep doing this. Because out here, there’s no room for anything but the present. And living fully in the present—that sharp, electric moment—is rare. People spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours on retreats trying to reach this state. I want to say: skip the yoga mat. Head out into a country you barely understand, without a plan or a safety net. You’ll start living in the now really, really fast.

Ten kilometers of empty road passes between villages and the road is suddenly beautifully paved, then just as suddenly narrows, deteriorating into dirt and gravel with a stomach clenching thunk. I wasn’t ready for that, and I slow down. The dark shapes of trees hover above on either side. Long ago Kublai Khan traveled through China and was dismayed at the unbroken monotony of the roadways. He ordered that trees be planted along every roadside to give solace to travelers.

The trees do not give me solace as my headlight shines on one after another after another white banded tree trunk giving me the impression that it’s they who are moving past me and I am sitting still like an actor on a movie set, the wind machine blowing in my face.

What does give me solace is the sudden appearance of two gas pumps under a brightly-lit shelter. Is this heaven, or just fluorescent lighting? In the distance beyond stands a building strung with white lights that I pray is a hotel. I pull up to the pumps and cut the engine. With some effort, I twist off the gas cap, hoping the station is not closed, and after a long, tense moment a woman peeks out of the doorway of the shack at the edge of the concrete pad. She hushes the two small children that peek out behind her and walks toward me. Garishly illuminated under the fluorescent lights, she approaches, slowly, but not timidly. She wears pink rubber pool sandals with opaque knee-high hosiery that leave a sharp dent halfway up her calves, and a boxy lime green dress sprinkled with large white polka dots.

I dismount, trying to decide how to talk with her. It seems my vocal cords are frozen, and I’ve forgotten every word of Mandarin. She smiles and, without asking, chooses the 85 octane, as the only other choice is diesel, and inserts it into the tank. With a hard metal click, the liquid splashes with a sound that tells me I was very close to empty. Ahhh. The sweet smell of 85 octane.

“Luguan?” I finally ask. I’m drunk on gas fumes and relief, and I think I might have asked her three or four times by now. Yes, she nods, still nods, still smiling, but she’s saying “binguan,” not “luguan.”

A luguan is a trucker’s dorm. A binguan is more like a motel, and usually more expensive. I have little choice, but ask about the price anyway. I’m on a tight budget, counting on spending less than five dollars a night, which I was told to expect.

Yes, yes, she says—twenty yuan.

I’m surprised. That’s about two and a half dollars. Good news.

I pay her—about the same as a gallon of gas in the U.S.—and head down the road. She explains carefully, using both words and gestures, that it’s important not to ride straight toward the lights. I should follow the road to the left for a while, then cross right at a bridge.

I trundle off in the direction she showed me, following the invisible path her hands had traced under the buzzing blue glow of the gas station lights. The land is flat and indistinct—no markings, no contrast, just the soft press of darkness in every direction.

Then I feel it before I hear it—a sudden wetness in the air, cold and unmistakable, like the breath of something moving below. A moment later, the roar rises—low and furious. I ease off the throttle.

I’m on the edge of a gorge.

A deep one. A sheer drop, straight down into blackness. I come to a full stop. My heart kicks hard against my ribs. I would never have seen it. Not in this darkness. If I’d ridden straight toward the lights, I might have sailed right off the edge and never known what hit me.

Shaking, I continue forward, scanning for any sign of a crossing.

And then I see it.

The bridge.

Wooden. Narrow. Barely wide enough to carry one of those big blue trucks. It stretches across the canyon like a dare.

I hesitate. It looks rickety, unfinished—more suggestion than structure. The River Styx comes to mind. Will I ride my steed into the arms of Hades? It feels like a choice, but I have no will to argue. The only way out is through.

I rev the engine and go—fast, tense, gripping the bars as if they’re the only thing tethering me to life. I brace for the collapse, for the fall, for the scream that would follow. But it holds.

Wind lashes up through the gap, cold and wet, wrapping around my ankles, crawling into my sleeves, needling into my face. The river below thrashes and roars.

And now it’s over. Solid ground again. Quiet. The hectic fury of the river is trapped behind me, contained in the gorge.

I’ve crossed over. Ahead is a long wall and an enormous gate, swung open, welcoming me in. I ride slowly under a concrete archway into the compound of the binguan. The parking area is a wide, flat expanse—enough for several trucks to turn full circles. At its edge, a long, L-shaped stucco building sits low against the dark.

On the long side, a glassed-in hallway reveals motel-style doors in even intervals, each one painted a garish, glossy red, glowing under bare white light bulbs.

I switch off the engine and unfasten my helmet strap with cold, stiff fingers and sigh happily, though my back aches and my left ankle throbs from the constant shifting. I tuck my helmet, gloves, and scarf under the sidecar cover and dismount, only vaguely aware of the rush of people emerging from the door in front of me, which must be the office.

I step away from the bike, allowing several people to push it closer to the building. They’re women, and I’m surprised, because they’re dressed so nicely and still, pushing and shoving the heavy bike with quite some expertise, one of them even pulling in the clutch and clicking it into neutral, with another working the brake as they rock it backward and point it to roll away from me.

This makes me a little uneasy but right now my senses are overwhelmed. My forehead itches, my hair is stuck to the skin. I scratch my scalp, feeling a profound gratitude for having found this place, for the reward of having pressed on without panic. It’s dark, and cold, and smells of dirt and cigarette smoke, but I’ll soon be safe and warm.

Two more women gently clasp my right arm, and talk excitedly to each other. Now, here it is. This is the excitement I expected would greet a foreigner in such a remote place. They look up and smile at me and I smile back down at them, all glossy haired and lipsticked.

Turning back to the motorcycle, now all the way across the enormous parking lot, the women are arguing about its placement. They shout, point, and finally come to a decision, and park it into the elbow of the L in the L-shaped building. Then, all four moving as one, they turn and head back toward me. I remember not to worry. I have all the important things with me in my jacket pockets and a waist pack. Passport. Credit cards. Cash. Lip balm. Sunscreen. Phone numbers.

Rolling my shoulders, I take a step toward the door, only to meet the gaze of a dozen more young ladies dressed in the same pyjama outfits. This is just too funny. They really overdid it with the maids I think. They stare, I smile, and they burst into giggles, covering their mouths with their hands.

I hear a man’s voice inside, and several of the women turn to call out to him excitedly, between more giggles and shy glances. I must look terrible. My skin must be so dirty, my eyes racooned from my goggles. Dry lips. Flyaway hair, most of it out of its braid. No wonder they’re giggling.

They come closer and I can feel the heat of all their bodies and their smell, which fresh, like jasmine and mint above the cigarette smoke. It’s impossible not to smile at them. So pretty. Their black eyes flash. But so much makeup! Young women love their makeup. They don’t need it, but it’s a fascination. A ritual. I remember doing this with my friends in high school, and work friends, in the bathrooms, trying out lipstick colors, helping with eyeliner. These young women must do their makeup all together before work.

They laugh some more, and then there’s the man’s voice again, and suddenly they grow quiet, and lower their eyes, heavy with liner and false lashes. The lipstick is ridiculously thick, and their satiny pajamas are a lurid shade of peach.

A horn blares across the river and the man inside the office shouts. Then comes that strange, hollow quiet—the kind of silence that follows when a very loud television is abruptly turned off. My ears are ringing. From hours on the motorcycle, maybe. Or from the roar of the river I thought I’d left behind.

I feel confused, dull-witted. My body is in shock from the long ride, from the sudden stillness after motion, from the relief of finding gas, the tension of the bridge, and now all these people, all at once—the perfume, the cigarette smoke, and maybe the lingering gasoline fumes from my tank, which might be overfull, or from the auxiliary can, which I’m suddenly not sure I tightened properly.

And then it comes to me.

These young women aren’t maids at all. And this isn’t just a truckers’ motel. Well, it is—but it’s also a brothel.

A brothel, I repeat to myself.

I’m spending my first night on the road in China in a brothel.

Next chapter >
Find the China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

Thanks for reading these chapter of the China Road Motorcycle Diaries, an adventure memoir in progress. When I’m finished publishing this beta book here on Substack, I’ll release it as an ebook and print book as well. So I’d love to hear your comments about the story—your impressions, your critiques, to make the book the best it can be. Just click the red LEAVE A COMMENT button here. Thanks so much!

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NOTE: Non-credited images generated using AI from the author’s original description.

03: Lost in the Hebei Province Mountains

Carla King — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:39:00 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

< Previous chapter

Chapter 3: Lost in the Hebei Province Mountains

I am lost. Not just turned around, not just briefly disoriented, but profoundly, viscerally, truly lost—the kind of lost that rearranges your sense of time and place. I’ve wound my way through narrow canyons and over jagged peaks, across dry riverbeds wide as boulevards, and up to this high, lonely mountaintop. Here, I finally switch off the engine, and pull off my helmet. The sudden silence roars in my ears., and all I hear is the soft ping of metal cooling, the whisper of wind in through the trees.

The sun is bright but the air is crisp, and my black leather jacket begins to trap the heat of exertion and rising fear. Sweat prickles at my back. I sit still, perched on this antique beast of a sidecar motorcycle, surrounded by the vastness of northern China. And yet—no people. No distant voices, no truck engines, no farm dogs barking. Just trees, sky, and silence.

This is China, I remind myself. The most populated country in the world.

So where the hell is everyone?

It’s terrifying. And thrilling. Like slipping into a dream you can’t control—both liberation and trap. I’m unmoored, and it excites me, this blankness, this sense of being dropped into a story I haven’t read yet. It’s rare, this feeling of complete unknowing, and I’ve chased it across continents. And I’ve caught it again. I stare at the roads ahead. And they stare back, indifferent.

I exhale, a nervous laugh escaping my lips, trying to decide among the three roads that branch from this point. No signs. No clues. Just alternate futures, unpredictable, each of which may change the trajectory of my life. The three roads are unmarked, and not one seems more or less traveled than the other. One thing is clear though. Each road winds farther into the mountains. They may even meet again at the valley floor. For now, my map is useless. The last village is too far behind to turn back. The gas gauge hovers near empty. The sun is sinking.

It’s not a disaster. I have a sleeping bag, food in the sidecar, and China is safe—or so I’ve been told. But I don’t want to spend my first night on the road camping in a ditch or picking my way through the forest to find a less exposed place to sleep. I need to keep moving. To find a real place to settle in. I laugh aloud. It seems ridiculous. What now?

The roads are a network of crumbling asphalt meandering through mountains that rise sharply in lopsided humps, baring their jagged rocky teeth to the sky. Spring-green foliage crawls up even the steepest slopes, as if creeping away from the shadows already growing dark in the crevices. The air is fresh with all the green smells of a forest, but no sound. Did the sound of my engine frighten the birds? I haven’t seen even one bird, a squirrel or, come to think of it, any of the typical roadkill of home, in Europe, Africa, Mexico.

I’ve left the coal-soaked atmosphere of Beijing far behind me—farther behind in spirit than in distance—separated by the Hebei province border and these ever-deteriorating roads that prohibit all but the sturdiest vehicles from passing.

The air is fresh and cool in the sparkle of a sunny spring afternoon. It should feel benign, or even cheerful, but the viridescence feels like a creature. I keep looking around me and behind, scanning the mirrors, searching for something unseen. A while back, a single blue supply truck picked its way through the potholes and passed by. The driver, chewing a cigarette, stared and did not return my enthusiastic wave. But still, it was a small reassurance—I was not alone.

The last village, hours behind me, is now swallowed by the jagged mountains, as I am, as the sun begins its slow descent. I take stock. The gas gauge is dangerously low, but there’s a four-liter fuel tank affixed to a holder on the sidecar, just in case. Now, ahead of me, those three vanishing threads snake around the mountain, none seeming a more likely candidate than the other. I don’t want to turn back.

I pull the map from the sidecar and smooth it out across my knee, tracing my route with a gloved finger. My map shows no indication of this three-pronged fork in the road, at least in the area I thought I was traveling. Thinking back to my last turn, where I sat laboriously comparing the characters on my map to the characters on the road sign, did I choose the wrong way? I search the topography for clues. Nothing on the map matches the landscape before me. No crossroads. No markers. Just mountains and more mountains, stretching endlessly in every direction.

So many options, but the roads twist around and around in the mountains west of Beijing. All I needed to do on this months-long trip was to head West, so I persevered.

The creak of a wheel pulls my attention to a figure approaching from the road farthest left. Or perhaps he just stepped out of the woods. It’s a peasant, shirtless despite the cool mountain air, dragging a wooden handcart piled high with freshly cut branches. His cotton pants are ragged, his cap is tilted low over his deeply lined face. His muscles, lean and corded, strain against the weight of his load as he inches forward.

At the sight of me, he halts mid-step, his grip tightening on the long handles of the cart. I am an alien in his world, an apparition in a black leather jacket, jeans, and sturdy motorcycle boots, straddling a hulking black motorcycle with sidecar packed for a months-long journey.

I raise a hand in greeting and carefully intonate, “Nee how ma?”

He lets go of his cart and walks carefully toward me, staring, and I push my visor up, speaking more slowly. “Nee how ma.”

Still nothing. His eyes, bright but sunken, rake over me, expressionless. His gaze lingers on my jacket, my boots, my gloves. He circles the bike, taking in every detail—the thick tires, the smooth black lump of the sidecar, the rare black license plate that allows me to cross provincial borders.

I clear my throat and hold up the map. “Wah may loo la?” I try. “I’m lost.”

No recognition. Either he doesn’t understand me, or he doesn’t care to answer.

Image generated by AI.

The silence stretches. He steps closer, peering up into my helmet as if trying to see my face properly. I realize suddenly that I am not just lost in his country—I am lost in time. This man is a relic of a China that the cities have left behind, a world untouched by progress, where strangers do not appear on roaring machines and women do not travel alone.

The man is tiny, a miniature, well under five-feet tall. I do the math. It is 1998, and the famine was at its worst between 1959 and 1961. If he was 5 years old in 1958 then he is only 55, but looks much older, shrunken and bent from work and nutritional deficiencies. Citizens of this age are survivors of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward—misguided policies that led to the starvation of between 30 and 50 million people. This man and his peers somehow lived through it, and the hardship and malnutrition show. His face is deeply lined, his eyes watery and bright, sunken in his skull, something I notice when he steps closer to peer up into my helmet.

I repeat my question, rattling the map as I tap at a town name in Pinyin—the Romanized characters printed beneath the Chinese pictograms. But I can’t pronounce it correctly. It finally occurs to me that it is very possible the man can’t read. Still, I shake the map again, pointing and repeating: ‘I’m lost. I’m lost.’ But he doesn’t even glance at it. He stares at me with the bald curiosity of a child, yet without any seeming desire for interaction. It’s unnerving. I’d been stared at in Beijing, but this is absurd. The man acts as if I am a statue in a wax museum. As if I am not even real. After peering into my helmet, he studies my jacket, then bends down to examine my jeans and my boots, and straightens to inspect my gloves with the same intense scrutiny. When he finishes this inspection, he inspects the motorcycle.

After a few more tries at communication, which he ignores, I stare back. I am beyond frustrated. He won’t answer me because he’s put me in the category of alien. And I feel alien. Androgynous. Possibly even inhuman. I might have arrived in a flying saucer instead of on this machine. Well. Why not take the opportunity, I think, to study him as thoroughly as he studies me? So I stare, memorizing him.

His face is brown and leathery and sags from his cheekbones. His lips are full, his skin is sunburnt and wrinkled, and sparse long hairs sprout unchecked from his upper lip and below his chin. The blue cotton shirt he wears is worn to veil-like transparency and, unbuttoned, exposes a thin collarbone, defined ribcage, and impressively muscled abs. His blue pants are frayed, landing just below the knee and cinched at the waist by a dirty rope. He wears a faded blue cap, a relic of Chinese military surplus, its shallow visor shading his eyes. On his feet are imitation leather slides, cracked and thin with wear. His ankles are heartbreakingly delicate, even fragile, as are his wrists. His fingers are gnarled and stiff with age, yet he is clearly strong—his ropy muscles a testament to a lifetime of labor. The cart is piled high with small tree branches, their limbs tangled into each other, perhaps to be used for kindling or for garden stakes. The sweet smell of the freshly cut branches mingles with the acrid scent of the man’s sweat.

I exhale and fold the map, shoving it back into the sidecar. If he won’t help me, I’ll have to choose at random. I tell myself it can’t be far to another village, no matter which direction I’m headed. After all, this is China. The country is only slightly larger than the USA but has over four times the population. There has to be a town of some size somewhere nearby, no matter which road I choose.

I hop onto the seat and give the peasant an enthusiastic “bye bye”—a phrase that sends Beijing teenagers into fits of giggles and mimicry. But the man only stares, jaw slack, mouth open, unmoved by my attempt at humor or connection. The Chang Jiang roars to life, shattering the silence as I steer onto the middle road, chosen for no reason other than it seems marginally newer than the others.

In my mirror, he remains motionless, still watching. I’m shrinking in his view—and he in mine—as if two timelines briefly intersected, brushing past each other before veering into separate futures. For a moment, I imagine we’re time travelers, catching glimpses of alternate lives we’ll never live.

In my mirror, the peasant remains motionless, still open-mouthed, still watching. I’m shrinking in his view—and he in mine.

One more look as the road bends again. Gone.

He’s disappeared from my world and I from his, and I feel like a time traveler whose navigation system has gone awry.

The mountains envelop me once more in their deep green shadow, muffling the sound of the engine. Its strong, regular cadence lulls me into a meditation and I wonder, will my intrusion here create a cosmic ripple that, like the proverbial butterfly, has the potential to balloon into a typhoon? My worldview is reshaped now, by a single, conversationless meeting of a living being who without doubt survived the history book horrors of the cultural revolution. It is a first quiet shock of many that will occur on this journey through a world so far from my own in distance and in spirit. What does he make of me? Perhaps for him, I am a ghost from the future on a machine from the past.

Will he sit at his table tonight and tell the story of the alien he saw at the crossroads? I have no one to tell, besides my journal tonight. So I tuck our encounter in a corner of my mind that is safe and pure, so as to record it on the page, and return to the wonderment again and again.

Next chapter >
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02: The Reconnaissance Trip

Carla King — Mon, 26 May 2025 10:34:09 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

< Previous Chapter

Chapter 2: The Reconnaissance Trip

In Beijing, there’s no sign with my name, no smiling face. Just cold gray concrete and the hum of unfamiliar voices. Rick has an important meeting, Jim is out of town, and Teresa is out of the country. But I have instructions: Take a taxi to the Subway sandwich shop franchise Jim owns. Get the motorcycle key from the cashier. Ride to Teresa’s. Get the key from the shopkeeper in the little store on the ground floor.

At the Subway sandwich shop, the taxi driver giggles as he helps me put my bags in the sidecar. Inside, it looks just Subway at home, but with Chinese characters and an odd, not-quite-Subway smell. The girl behind the counter hands me the keys. Curious about the food, I purchase what I think is a turkey and cheese.

Back at the bike, I don my warmest jacket, gloves, and strap on my helmet. To my relief, it starts right up, and I head out onto the empty four-lane road.

My map of Beijing is tucked into the sidecar, but I don’t really need it, as Rick’s directions are good. Teresa’s building is the tallest in the area, I can easily see it in the distance. It gives me the confidence and leeway to wander a little and get lost. I’m careful about the bicycles—there are a gazillion of them—but they weave around me gracefully and predictably. Boys pedal three-wheeled bicycles stacked with coal pucks, or jerry cans, or vegetables, or snacks, or bales of hay. A strange, frequent sight is the old men who sit in twos and threes on park benches, each of them with a caged sparrow, listlessly watching traffic.

Beijing was made capital of all China in 1267 under Kublai Khan. The Forbidden City was built back then, too, but everything else is of 15th century vintage, with constant additions and alterations. Beijing in 1997 has five ring roads and the sixth is just starting construction. The roads seem strangely empty, but I remember that few of its 13 million citizens own private cars. There are lots of trucks, some buses, taxis, government cars, and on the inner ring roads, the millions and millions of bicycles.

A few signs are in English, and I pass by the wide expanse of Tiananmen Square before I even realize it’s Tiananmen Square, distracted by the hundreds of tourists divided into groups of ten to twenty people. Every group member dons color coded caps and the place is awash with bobbing heads of yellow, red, blue, green, purple, turquoise, white, navy, lime, peach, or lavender. They move like pseudopods around the nucleus of each guide, orbiting in a colorful ballet of order and oblivion.

Despite my Subway sandwich tucked into the sidecar, I can’t help but stop when I smell steamed buns, and pull over to buy some from a vendor on the sidewalk, who is almost invisible behind a curtain of fragrant steam.

I buy six, and have no idea how much they cost, so I simply extend my hand with some coins exchanged at the airport. Later I’ll figure out I paid about 25 cents, and they were delicious, much better than the Subway sandwich.

From there, Teresa’s high-rise is only about five minutes away on wide streets designed for cars, trucks, and busses, that still seem eerily deserted except for the ubiquitous bicycles. I circle a couple of times around the building before I spot the narrow entrance down to the basement garage, which is so dark I have to pause and let my eyes adjust. In the US this would be unnerving, but apparently crime in China is rare. Especially crimes against tourists. I was told that the risk of being caught is too high, with a common punishment the loss of a hand for a thief. This gives me an uncomfortable reassurance.

The apartment building is enormous, with a central atrium rising all the way up to the top floor, and balconies prettily planted with vines. I find the bodega, and the busy shopkeeper sees me and grabs the keys, simultaneously ringing up a customer. Briefly, I wonder how she knew it was me, but then, doh, really, who else could I be?

The elevator is fast and my stomach lurches and in seconds, I’m in the hallway of her floor, with gray carpet and identical white doorways that give it a sterile feel. But entering Teresa’s apartment is entering a different world, a warmly furnished world full of Balinese treasures and fabrics, mostly from Asia. It makes me even more eager to meet her when she returns in a few days. For now, I just want a shower and a nap.

In the bathroom mirror I’m shocked to see a layer of black sooty grime on my face, and remember that a few people had mentioned the sticky pollution from coal smoke. “Wear a mask,” they advised. “Or you’ll be coughing and snorting black gunk the whole time you’re there.”

The next evening, I met a few members of the Chang Jiang gang at a German hofbrau near the embassy district. Rick turned out to be exactly what I’d expected from his emails: a likeable midwesterner with a boy-next-door kind of vibe. We sat at one of the rustic picnic-style tables, and someone ordered a pitcher of Heineken.

“You could ride around the countryside and talk with people about Hong Kong,” one man said. “But Hong Kong isn’t all that’s going on here. It’s overshadowed by much more dramatic changes.”

“There’s going to be an explosion of new cars on the road next year,” another said, describing how the countryside would change once that happened. Rick had already explained this to me, but I let them tell me, and relate their experiences. Rides to the wall, to the Ming Tombs, to the coast. I loved hearing about the rural areas, the small roads, the slow pace, getting glimpses of village life, and I was eager to go.

The other guys were half-apologetic that they couldn’t come with me. “We’d love to do this ourselves, but we’re not writers, and anyway, we don’t have the time, with our jobs,” one said.

“So we saw your American Borders trip and said, hey, that’s the woman for the job,” said another, clinking my glass.

Still another said, “We figured if anyone could handle a Chang Jiang and Chinese bureaucracy, it’d be the woman who rebuilt a Ural with a Leatherman.”

I was about to remind him I had a full toolset on that trip, as I’d expected to stop for all kinds of repairs, but decided to let him keep the fantasy. I liked it, myself.

Then we talked about logistics. Yes, they might be able to get me a Chinese driver’s license, but even if they couldn’t, I should go anyway. The black plates Rick mentioned were for important government officials only, who were allowed to cross provincial borders. The normal blue license plated vehicles were restricted to operating in their province only.

“The black plates give you guanxi,” one guy explained. “You’ll be perceived as important, and local authorities will be scared to confront you.”

“Except in the Shanghai area,” Rick was quick to add. “Beijing is backwards compared to Shanghai right now. Shanghai is savvy to laws regarding foreigners, and I know riders who’ve had their bikes confiscated.”

All in all, despite the risks, I was very happy they’d invited me, and it still felt like a dream.

And then they told me we’d be camping on the Great Wall this weekend.

“Wait,” I said, nearly choking on my Heineken. “On the Great Wall? As in literally ‘on’ it?”

Rick’s grin widened. “You’ll see,” he said, and the rest of the Chang Jiang gang burst into laughter. “This is going to be good.”

We motor up and out of Bejing and into the countryside, where villagers are busy harvesting and selling their autumn produce by the road.

And now, at the wall, I’m standing under a section of the Great Wall empty of tourists, as we unload our tents and sleeping bags and camp stoves from our sidecars as if this is the most normal thing in the world.We’re about three hours northwest of Beijing, on a stretch of wall that curves along mountain ridges like a stone dragon frozen mid-flight. The watchtower beside us is crumbling but solid, its ancient bricks worn smooth by centuries of weather. Below us, the valley disappears into evening mist.

From where we’ve parked at the base of the tower, we climb the dark steps inside and up to the top of the wall, which is as wide as a narrow country lane. And this is where we set up our tents.

“Remember that camping trip Jiangshan organized?” Rick says quietly as he sets up his tent. He glances over at Jiangshan, who’s busy with his own gear but might understand more English than he lets on. “Beautiful mountains, clean air, perfect ride...”

The others nod and smile, remembering.

Rick continues. “Up in the mountains he took us to this abandoned asphalt parking lot surrounded with working streetlights. Couldn’t understand why our faces fell flat when we saw his ‘perfect campsite.’ We were all standing there with our sleeping bags, staring around at this well-lit pavement, while he’s gesturing proudly at how level and convenient it was.”

“Very Chinese solution,” one of the other guys adds quietly. “Why would crazy foreigners want to sleep on bumpy ground in the dark when there’s perfectly good flat, illuminated space available?”

“Camping is completely foreign to Chinese villagers,” Rick explains. “Most of them are already roughing it with coal stoves and hand-carried water. The idea of sleeping outdoors voluntarily makes no sense to them.”

But this—sleeping on the Great Wall itself—makes perfect sense to us.

The wall here is about twelve feet wide, with plenty of room for our small camp. The surface is uneven ancient brick, worn smooth in places, crumbling in others. I pitch my tent alongside the others, on the flat top of the tower.

Nice campsite, huh?

As darkness falls, the temperature drops dramatically. I layer on everything I brought—fleece under my leather jacket, neck warmer, gloves—but the cold still seeps through the stone beneath me. It doesn’t matter. This is stunning. I keep looking around at the miles and miles of wall, the miles and miles of mountains, and the sky as the sun sets and the dark falls, with the moon, not yet visible, but making itself known with a shimmering white light at the horizon.

The group busily sets up cooking areas for chopping vegetables, frying, boiling water, and grilling. I look forward to dinner, which is obviously going to be some kind of Chinese-American-Euro fusion. The group speaks mostly in English, but there is Dutch too, and Mandarin.

I’m not the only one who gazes out in awe and wonderment at the view, at the isolation and desolation. “In winter, this place is brutal,” says David, a teacher who’s been in Beijing for three years. He startled me a little, and I jumped. I was so deep in imagination, and shivering a little, too. He must have seen it.

“We came out here in February once. The wind cuts right through you.”

I can believe it. It’s early autumn, and the mountain air has teeth. I move to the cooking area, next to a grill, to get warm. Everything smells so good. Everyone is happy, enjoying the outing. There’s something magical about being here after sunset, in this secret location. I suddenly feel a great affection for this group of people I don’t know at all. It’s a familiar feeling, unique to travelers, I think, who know they will only be together for a short time. Relationships are accelerated. Small talk is nonexistent, and you get to know people quickly.

We gather for dinner, standing along the edge of the wall, which serves as a natural counter. Dinner is a melange, as I’d suspected, of cuisines. There’s a delicious stir-fried lamb dish with green peppers and onions, a dish of chicken wings, another of ribs, and a stack of hot dogs. For dessert, I’d brought a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and a velvet bag of Ghirardelli chocolate. We drink and laugh and watch the white moon rise above the horizon, its ghostly white light resolving into a bright ball growing huge and making the sleeping snake of the wall visible again.

We sit quietly for a while, appreciating the moment and I become ever more aware of the weight of history—soldiers, peasants, emperors, ghosts. The air buzzes with dreams and echoes.

We clean up and crawl into our tents, and soon, the silence is profound. I lie with my head at the zipper of the tent, looking up at stars that are visible away from Beijing’s light pollution and coal dust, I try to imagine what this place was like when it was an active military fortification.

Soldiers would have slept in the watchtowers, taking shifts on watch duty. They would have lit signal fires to communicate with distant outposts. In winter, they would have huddled around braziers, fighting off both the cold and the constant threat of Mongol raiders.

I knew from my research that the wall didn’t actually keep the Mongols out. Genghis Khan’s army just bribed the guards to let them through. Then the real bloodbath began.

I shiver, and not just from the cold. Lying here on stones that have witnessed centuries of warfare, I feel the weight of history in a way no museum or textbook could convey.

Around midnight, I wake to perfect stillness. The temperature has dropped even further, and I’m warm in my sleeping bag. But the silence is profound—no wind, no sound at all except my own breathing.

What woke me? Was it the moon, nearly full, on the wax or wane? I don’t know, but I feel the pull. I wrestle myself out of the sleeping bag as quietly as I can, tug my boots on, and crawl out of the tent. The cold takes my breath away, and so does the view.

Moonlight illuminates the wall as it snakes across the mountains, each watchtower a dark silhouette against the sky. The entire landscape is silver and black, ancient and eternal. This is what those soldiers saw on their night watches—this impossible construction crawling across impossible terrain, testament to what humans could accomplish when they decided something was necessary.

I had no idea one could just ride up to an abandoned section of the wall and set up camp. Somehow, I figured the rest of it, beyond Badaling, was crumbled away. That evening, we’d talked about The Wall a lot. How it was built in sections to protect cities, and later, connected. How you really cannot see it from space, as it’s too narrow and follows the contours of the mountain ridges. You can’t even seen it from a jet plane. It’s made from local stone, so it blends with the surroundings. But that doesn’t make it any less impressive.

I walk to the next tower, and then the next, thinking about the workers who built this section—peasants conscripted for the massive project, many of whom died in the process. Their bones are said to be buried in the foundation itself. I’m literally walking on their graveyard.

My boots echo on the stone as I walk to another tower and stop again, though I feel I could walk forever, with the wall pulling me onward, its a long gracefully journey to the east, snaking atop the mountain ridge, undulating into the distance. The light of the moon reveals each tower as a human construct crossing eons of mountains.

Image enhanced by AI.

The early walls were built over 2,000 years ago, before Jesus was born, and when the Roman Empire was at its peak. They were connected in stages up to 400 years ago, when the Ming Dynasty fortified and rebuilt most of the sections we see today to defend against Mongol raids from the north. At this time in England, Shakespeare was writing his plays, and in the Americas, the Aztec and Inca empires were being conquered by Spanish conquistadors, while further north, indigenous peoples had no contact yet with Europeans.

I am a time traveler. I am one with the soul of the wall and all the beings who have been here before. My mind travels, to all the walls I’ve seen before. The cruelest walls. The Berlin Wall and the wall at the Mexican border. All the walls, all the borders, with their intentions to keep people out or in. The physical embodiment of an unwillingness to dialogue, negotiate, to share. I have always struggled with the concept of borders, knowing that in some cases, they are necessary to protect against the forces of evil, but also knowing that in most cases they are there to keep others from the natural migrations that drive people from places of scarcity to places of abundance. I know that here, Kublai Khan led a bloodthirsty quest of acquisition, and I didn’t blame China for wanting protections, but still it makes me sad. It makes me think of war. Still, it is awesome, in the sense of the word that inspires both wonder and dread—a monument to what humans can build when driven by fear.

Finally, I make my way back to my tent, crawl in, and sleep peacefully. In the morning, we pack up camp and have a leisurely breakfast, enjoying the warmth of the sun.

And then we head down, to pack our sidecars. There to greet us, are a group of deceptively shy women in “I Climbed the Great Wall” sweatshirts, to sell us the kind of tourist junk nobody really wants. We understand that this is our price for camping on the wall, and join the game of negotiations.

In the morning, buying trinkets

Finally, I see something I want. A tiny, toothless elderly woman has a big basket of gourds carved beautifully and inked with characters from Chinese legends: pig-men, goddesses, robed women with triple-stacked coils of hair. The gourds are small, and fit in my palm, and the carvings are intricate, elegant, and skillful. I agree to buy a few, and then another few, and we bargain.

I think I have done a good job of negotiating, a skill honed from years of traveling, and gotten the best of the deal. That is, until the old woman grins so broadly that her top and bottom gums show pink and wet, and all her wrinkles become deep crevices in her sun browned face. Still, her eyes are bright, as she laughs, shaking a gourd I’d rejected, and places it against my chest, a gift to carry home, more than just a trinket—maybe a story, or a memory, or a bit of her spirit.

Yes, I over paid. And yes, it was worth it.

Over the next days, I wander Beijing, seeing the sights, picking my way around the new Olympic stadium just being built. When Rick can get away, I ride with him through the countryside where villagers are threshing corn by laying it on the road for the trucks to run over.

Rick showing me the backroads south of Beijing, the farmers hard at work.

Time passes quickly. Teresa comes home and we become fast friends. She dreams of joining me, but President Clinton will visit next year and the whole embassy is busy with preparations. On top of that, Madeline Albright will arrive ahead of the president, and Teresa will be her guide. So it’s impossible. And besides, my trip will be somewhat or entirely illegal, and a State Department employee can’t be part of that.

I meet Jim at his shop on a Beijing back street, and see his fleet of Chang Jiangs—some in full restoration, being outfitted with BMW engines. His wife is Chinese, and they have a young son. He’s ridden his BMW-Chang Jiang all over China and Russia.

With Jim Bryant

I love being part of this group of expats. Between Jim with his local connections, Rick at General Motors, and Teresa at the embassy, all with their insider knowledge and networks, surely they’ll be able to get me some sort of special permission. We decide on spring—only six months from now—for an open-ended journey of two to four months.

The Chang Jiang gang has been wonderful hosts, and now I am consumed with the idea of seeing the China they describe: stunningly beautiful landscapes, primitive, full of history. There is so much to do, and if winter wasn’t coming, I might have taken off right then, damn my life in San Francisco and Michael, all of which now seems so far away and, I fear, destined for disappointment.

Damn the objectors. This is me. And I will always, always choose adventure.

And sure enough, six months later, I’m back.

Next chapter >
Find the full China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

Thanks for reading Carla King Writes! This post is public so feel free to share it.

01: Departure

Carla King — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 02:40:00 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.

< Prologue

Chapter 1: Departure

With some difficulty, I navigate the bags into the terminal doors, one in front of me, one behind. Wow, I think. Just wow. I really cannot believe Michael just kicked me to the curb like that.

But I have a job to do. First up: get these massive bags checked in.

Motorcycle gear is bulky and awkward—it requires an extra-large bag to carry it all plus normal clothing. It’s cold in Northern China, so I’ve packed for that, which adds to the bulk. But I also have a second extra-large bag because Jim Bryant, the man lending me his motorcycle, asked if I’d bring him some parts. The box he sent is heavy and shaped weirdly, requiring another suitcase. Luckily, I found a huge gear bag on sale at REI—perfect, with a spot that seemed made for a motorcycle helmet, sturdy zippers, and a wide opening for awkward gear. I’d brought all the cash I felt comfortable carrying, expecting a hefty overage charge.

The SF International terminal is enormous—hard floors, sky-high ceilings, everything echoing. Voices, announcements, footsteps, roller bags. Everyone seems to be yelling at each other. Chinese is a tonal language, and I know from living near Chinatown they aren’t really arguing, it’s just the inflections needed to be understood. Still, they sound angry. Then punctuated by laughter and hugs and obviously tender goodbyes.

The line is short—I’m early, as usual. I’m a head taller than all the shiny black heads around me. By the time I drag my bags to the counter, my heart is pounding from effort and nerves. I’m the only non-Chinese in this part of the terminal.

The China Air woman glances at the two enormous bags, looks around for my companion, then raises her eyebrows. “Lone?”

I nod. She nods, accepting without apparent surprise.

As we go through identification and destination, I attempt to understand her broken English and try out a little Mandarin, which results in a smile and a sentence that makes no sense to me. I’ve studied Mandarin but can’t decode anything I’ve overheard in line. Well, I’ll have a few more months before I return in spring for the solo journey—if this trip works out.

She tags the first bag, weighs it, and despite her tiny stature, hoists it onto the conveyor without effort. Then she tags the second bag. I’ve practiced my explanation—motorcycle gear, protective, essential, not negotiable. But she doesn’t ask. She sends the second bag down the conveyor without comment.

“Bye bye,” she says, as if testing out her English, and waves her tiny pale hand at the next traveler.

I’d been so ready to pay the hefty fine, to beg for an exception. I can hardly tear myself away. Thank you! I want to say. Thank you! And still I wonder, why am I able to pack two oversized bags without paying extra? If everybody did that—and clearly, everyone has—there’d be no room in cargo.

I think back to a 1993 trip to West Africa, where my brother and I had to wait two weeks on a beach south of Dakar because our bicycles hadn’t been loaded on the plane with us. Would that happen on the other end of this flight? That would be a disaster—I only have a few weeks to test out this idea.

I can’t worry about it. I’m sure somebody would have gear for me if that happened. If I’ve learned one thing from all my travels, it’s that I can do without most of what I think I actually need.

Suddenly alone and physically unburdened, it hits me—I really am going.

Standing on the marble floor of the huge international terminal, with the echoing voices of families and couples and groups chattering excitedly in Chinese, I feel the jolt of real solitude and a growing excitement. I’m stepping off the edge of my life and into something unknown—my favorite thing to do.

Michael’s cold kiss still stings. But my disappointment doesn’t linger. I’m already immersed in a different world.

I head upstairs to the champagne bar, needing at least a little fanfare for this departure. The bubbles, the dry sweetness—it’s exactly what I need. The closure of one reality and the opening to another.

After the second glass, I doodle in my journal and find myself making a sad little list of relationships that have failed because of this itch for exploration. It’s a longer list than I’d like. Turns out, not many men want a partner who keeps leaving, even if it’s only for a few months every couple of years.

My first marriage ended when my husband changed his mind about the life we’d planned together—the travel, the adventure, all of it. For four years he found excuses not to take that motorcycle trip to Europe, so finally I went alone. I was afraid, and angry, and I guess, stubborn, because I went anyway. And it changed my life. By the time I came back, I’d learned to call that feeling excitement instead of fear.

I should have known then. Most people want a life that stays put. I never have.

Michael knew that. I thought he celebrated it.

I drain my glass and head to the gate.

The boarding process is chaos—everyone pushing forward despite section numbers, despite announcements, everyone trying to get ahead of everyone else. I’m shoved, poked, elbowed, and even kicked by tiny old ladies. But having lived in the city, and shopped in San Francisco’s Chinatown for years, I am used to it, and hold my ground.

The Boeing 747 holds about 500 passengers and it is packed. I have an aisle seat so I can get up and walk during the long flight. I’ve brought books—a novel, a travel guide, a tome on Chinese history—but I can’t concentrate. I’ve over-researched, as usual. It’s a compulsion.

Someone lights a cigarette. Someone else opens a bottle of nail polish. There’s yelling, then laughter. Flight attendants intervene. Everyone settles down.

I think about the plan. I’ll stay in Teresa Howes’s apartment. She’s the Agricultural Attaché at the American Embassy and rides in the gang of Chang Jiang sidecar motorcyclists. She won’t be home, but has invited me to stay anyway, in her thirty-eighth-floor high-rise downtown. Rick Dunagan, the General Motors executive, is the master organizer. Between them, they hope to figure out how to get government permission for my solo journey.

The bike belongs to Jim Bryant, an American expat whose shop specializes in BMW–Chang Jiang conversions—prized by expats and nouveau riche Beijingers with a taste for retro military style.

But there’s a cascade of problems. China requires anyone driving to hold a Chinese license. To get a license, you need legal residency. To get residency, you have to get a sponsored job. Then you can take a written driving test—in Mandarin—along with a behind-the-wheel exam. Obviously, that is a bureaucratic wall I can’t scale.

The alternative? Hire a government-approved guide. But that defeats the entire purpose of the trip. I’m not going to check off tourist sites with a minder at my elbow. I need to see real life—the dusty alleyways and hand-tilled fields of rural China—the very places the government works hard to keep foreigners away from.

Why? Because in 1997, rural China is an inconvenient truth. While cities like Shanghai are sprouting skyscrapers and seducing foreign investors, vast swaths of the countryside remain frozen in a Maoist time capsule: no plumbing, no modern conveniences, no private property. Families live on less than a dollar a day. And they are stuck—literally. The hukou system, China’s internal passport policy, ties residents to the place they were born. Without official permission, you can’t move to another province. But many do anyway, leaving illegally to seek work in the booming eastern industrial zones.

Factories need labor, and the government, while officially discouraging internal migration, mostly looks the other way. Industry means money, and money means control—the social contract of the new China. Economic growth brings compliance, and as long as the factories keep producing and the people keep quiet, the Communist Party can maintain its grip while experimenting with capitalism.

This uneasy balance isn’t something they want outsiders to see. Not the labor camps dressed up as factories. Not the shantytowns of unregistered workers. Not the barefoot villagers hauling buckets from communal wells. That isn’t the story China is trying to sell to the West—not while bidding for WTO membership and rebranding itself as the next global superpower.

I was careful to put “teacher” on my visa application, and not “writer” or, god forbid, “journalist.” As a solo foreigner on a motorcycle, poking around places where even Chinese journalists aren’t allowed to report? That was definitely not part of the government’s tourism plan.

Also, it isn’t as if I would get lost in a sea of motorcycles and cars. With only about 10 vehicles per 1000 people—and that includes trucks, buses, taxis, and government vehicles—I’d be quite visible to the population and to law enforcement.

Hukou creates an additional barrier—the law that drivers in Beijing—residents or not—cannot cross the border into other provinces without government approval. “Don’t worry about it,” Rick had said in an email. “There are other solutions. We’ll have it figured out by the time you get here.”

I trust them. This is only a test visit, anyway. I’m excited.

The in-flight map shows us flying over Siberia. A baby cries somewhere in the next cabin. The smell of our dinners wafts through—a slightly revolting aroma that I can’t quite identify. Flight attendants pull carts into the aisles. I order a Tsingtao and try not to think about what Michael will be doing tonight.

This is the last thing I want to be thinking about.

I should be thinking about maps and routes—not the man who doesn’t want me to go.

I can’t get comfortable in the scratchy seat. Finally I put in my headphones, tune in to a romantic comedy on the tiny screen, and fall asleep.

Next chapter >
Find the China Road Motorcycle Diaries table of contents here.

00: Prologue. The Invitation

Carla King — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 18:47:48 GMT

Welcome to The China Road Motorcycle Diaries—an adventure memoir in progress.

This book wants to be told the way it happened: in real time, one stretch of road at a time.

So I’m publishing it here, chapter by chapter, as I write and revise it. The work is reader-supported—made possible by the people who want to be alongside the story as it unfolds.

If you’d like to read the opening chapters and follow the journey from a distance, you’re welcome as a free subscriber.

If you’d like to help bring the finished book into the world, annual supporters ($79/year) receive a special digital edition of the completed manuscript.

And for those who want to stand a little closer to the road, Patrons ($179/year) receive a special-edition print copy of the final book, along with access to live and recorded conversations.

However you choose to be here, thank you. This story is being written in public, but not alone.

Find the full table of contents here.