While China may be planning to send a ship to the moon, most of China isn't even medium technology. Most of China relies upon manual labor (plus a water buffalo) for everything from farming to road construction.
The Chinese can tear up 55km of road, then use manual labor to s l o w l y rebuild. Thus, we had a lot of clay-mud sections to bike, walk or, in the case of the 55km section, bus through. In towns, the roads turn dusty. With the lack of pollution control and the economic inability of the peasants to meet any pollution standards anyway, the black smoke and dust means most locals wear bandanas or masks while cycling and many Odyssey riders have developed the same dry hack I had in Central America.
The farming consists almost exclusively of rice patties with occasional vegetable gardens and taro farming. Taro is that awful stuff the Chinese brought with them to Hawai'i and pound into poi (a purple paste which tastes like chalk). Rice was being harvested as I pedaled from child filled village to child filled village. The harvesting is done by hand and the "thresher" is operated by foot. Wire loops on a revolving cylinder remove the rice kernels. The rice is spread on concrete or plastic to dry. There are no wild birds left to eat the drying rice. Very few animals exist which aren't domesticated. More so than any nation I've visited (except Holland) China with its rice terraces and lack of wildlife is the extreme example of people trying to conquer nature. The Chinese government thinks it is ecologically sound to divert a river so the water can be used for irrigation hundreds of miles farther north. You'd think they were Californians!
The most extreme and most beautiful example of the Chinese changing nature to suit their needs is the Long Gi Rice Terraces. Over two thousand vertical feet of steep hillsides were transformed by hand in the 13th century to terrace steps following the elevation contour lines. Their "roads" are stone paths up which everything except for rice had to be brought from the valley 1500ft below. Villagers from Ping An (pop 1000) still carry seemingly impossibly heavy loads on their shoulders. A new 6km road tore out a lot of the lower terraces so the villagers only have to carry their impossible loads a half-mile. The road also makes it easier to bring tourists to ogle and photograph.
The hike to the top of the rice terraces included climbing another 800 vertical feet into the clouds. Just as I started back down, a little Kahuna magic took over and the clouds cleared to reveal terraces spread out over the hills in physical manifestations of the contour lines normally seen only on a topographical map. It was one of those magical scenes I had only dreamed of seeing before Odyssey2000, the trip of a lifetime.
... and yes! in spite of the trip's extraordinary transportation costs, I will be paying the extra money needed to continue on Odyssey2000 through New Zealand, Hawai'i and California to the finish in Pasadena. I'm sad some won't be continuing. I hope some others will enjoy their own itineraries. I'm really looking forward to a smaller - more positive - group RIDING out the year together. While I look forward to the comforts of home and seeing those I miss, I can't imagine cutting short the best year of my life!
Keeping the rubber down and the spirits high,
Bruce