The Peace Correspondent (8 page)

Just outside the city, a small, roadside stone marks kilometer 0 of the Burma Road slanting off to the right, 1,000 kilometers to the border. A major WWII battle along this road that left hundreds of Imperial Japanese troops dead is now a pilgrimage spot for their descendants, but foreigners are only allowed to go as far as the ancient city of Dali.

Mid afternoon, we stop for tea and a saucer of the region's famous walnuts on a hill overlooking a small lake inhabited by a dragon. No one fishes there now, especially since the dragon ate six Americans from the Flying Tigers who were boating there many years ago.

Three hours out of Kunming, the approach to the Stone Forest has a festive, carnival air with colorful minority peoples crowding the road, decorated horses and buggies for hire and Bactrian camels on hand to pose for tourist photographs. It is at once both exotic and a Chinese Coney Island, Niagara Falls or Brighton. These geographical oddities have been amply commercialized; there is a Stone Forest Post and Telecommunications Building, Stone Forest Dining Room and a Stone Forest Store selling Stone Forest souvenirs.

Outside the Stone Forest Hotel compound, Sani minority women press cheap chinoiserie on all who wander out: pandas on velveteen pillows, deer-in-the-forest school of art bedspreads, and matched, black-velvet paintings to grace suburban American bungalows. A flock of flirtatious minority maidens follows us through the streets, pestering us in a strange tongue, proffering tea towels “two for one” and demanding “how much?” They offer to escort us through the forest, and duck playfully, squealing “no pic, no pic,” when we try to photograph them. A particularly fair and flighty girl points at a pile of fresh horse dung on the ground, saying “pic, pic,” and they scatter, bright and noisy as jungle birds.

In the fantastic limestone forest, we are like two-legged ants crawling though an immense, petrified sponge cake, through caves and up the twisted stone “trees.” But the imaginative Chinese
see more than sponge here. To them, the shapes are warriors and maidens, peacocks, mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Even with the noisy Chinese families and intense Japanese, it is an eerie piece of aberrant nature, with a sense of both remoteness and the tourist bubble.

The forest caters to the Chinese love of posing for family snapshots in famous settings -- or at least aboard a Bactrian camel. Commercial photographers here provide period costumes (Ming, Ching, Ping?) for formal souvenir pictures, much like the “roaring twenties” and “gay nineties” outfits available in booths in North American fairs and festivals.

At sunset, we slip into part of the forest not yet opened to visitors, to catch the faint red glow of light on the fantastic rock shapes. In this light, it is like a badlands setting for a cowboy movie. The sun dies quickly, plunging the petrified forest into darkness. A silvery full moon hanging over a pagoda atop a tall rock “tree” sets a classic Chinese scene. Only one who has touched the great scribe's pen of could adequately describe its compelling beauty.

IT begins as a distant rumble, like rolling thunder from somewhere over the hills. The din grows to a threatening, deep-throated, hide-your-women-and-children roar, and a pack of leather-clad bikers comes raging through, like an invading horde on glittering metal steeds.

Chopsticks stop between bowl and mouth, hoes halt in mid swing, children run from schoolhouses, thousands stop along the road to stare at this strange, clamorous sight. The Hong Kong Harley-Davidson motorcycle club is on the road, and it is the strangest thing anyone has seen along the China coast since “foreign devils” were let into the country.

These are not the bad-ass outlaw bikers of legend, the “one percenters,” as glamorized by Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones or Hunter Thompson in Hell's Angels, “The strange and terrible saga of outlaw gangs.” This is the new Malcolm Forbes breed of bikers; executives, company directors, financial consultants and lawyers as at home at a seat in a boardroom as slouched low in the saddle of a raging, thundering Harley-Davidson.

The Harley Owners Group (HOG) is an organization of like-minded bikers, dedicated to Milwaukee iron. The Hong Kong branch is a cosmopolitan collection of bikers affluent enough to spend from $90,000 to $160,000 (US$12,000 to $21,000) for machines not built for the confines of city roads.

They hunger for the highway where these big bikes belong, to get out and ride free. So, after months of negotiating with Guangdong International Sports Tours, the HOGs have organized
the first ever Hong Kong to Shanghai rally, eight days and 2,300 kilometers through northeast China over roads that probably haven't seen a foreign vehicle since before World War II.

It is a multinational biker gang of Hong Kong Chinese and American, German, British, Canadian, Swiss, Swedish, Dutch and Malaysian expatriates. Riders have come from Europe, the U.S. and South Africa. Two bikes have been air-freighted from the U.S. and one from Holland for this historic run.

At dawn, midweek in early October, the riders are out in an Esso service station near Hong Kong's Western District polishing the chrome, checking their machines and slapping on stickers from Esso, the trip sponsor. The smell of oil and exhaust and hot metal smothers the reek of Fragrant Harbor, and this could be a gas station in Middle Town America, with a bike gang gathering for a weekend run. Connie, the only woman rider, a Harley dealer who flew her Softail from Los Angeles for the run, is dabbing on lipstick before pulling on her helmet. Steve, Asia's Harley representative, is showing off the police bike complete with siren and flashing red and blue pursuit lights that he brought from Milwaukee to demonstrate to the Hong Kong police.

For executives and financiers, they are a bulky bunch. Peter is a six-foot-six German outfitted all in black, from boots to T-shirt to fringed leather jacket. Reed, the safety officer and lead rider, chapter chairman George, Peter, an aircraft engineer acting as the volunteer mechanic, and most of the other riders are above average size, especially for Asia. While corporate Hong Kong strides purposefully to work, the HOG riders blast out of the Esso station with roaring engines and squealing tires, bound for China and the free, ride-like-the wind adventure of the open road.

Not exactly. Within sight of China, they face their first obstacle. The Hong Kong driver of the support truck carrying the bags, compressor, tools, spare parts and tires doesn't have a permit to enter China. The assemblage of 24 bikers, a half dozen riders, support cars, van and truck grinds to a halt, while the organizers sort out the bureaucratic problem. Finally, the truck is
allowed to back up to the middle of the bridge and the Chinese truck that is to accompany them from here backs up to meet it, and they transfer all the gear across.

While the Hong Kong border guards are tense and officious, panicking at the sight of a camera, the mood changes across the border. It is like the circus had rolled into town, with friendly Chinese officials gawking at the bikes and posing next to them for photographs while the bikers cool off with Budweiser beer from a duty-free shack. One uniformed soldier asks the typical Chinese question, “How much do they cost?”

Now the born-to-ride-free bikers face an unpleasant reality. The Chinese will only let them ride in a convoy, with a police escort. Much later, only a few renegades will get to ride solo. The police hold back all the traffic through town while they assemble the convoy, with much shouting and instructions. Lead biker Reed blows his whistle so often, the other riders joke that he will start blowing the whistle to announce that he is blowing the whistle. After much confusion and shouting in English and Cantonese, the cavalcade departs.

For the entire length of China, the convoy screams through towns and villages with a wedge of police motorcyclists in front, then police a car with screaming sirens and flashing lights, followed by Harleys in full, window-rattling roar. These aren't just motorcycles, they're American Harley-Davidsons, the ultimate macho machines, bikes with soul and style. There are a dozen different models, Softails, Sportsters, Fat Boys and Electra Glide Classics, bikes more expensive, with bigger engines, than most Japanese family cars. The big, classic 80-cubic-inch V-twin engines give the bikes that power and the distinctive Harley roar, so different from the agitated sewing machine whine of lesser bikes. Although once disparaged as Hardly-Go Davidsons, these are HOGs, not rice burners (Japanese motorcycles). “I'd rather see my sister in a brothel than my brother on a Honda,” says a diehard Harley slogan.

There is no thrill quite like the surge of power that comes from
the slight twist of the hand throttle, and 700 pounds of menacing machinery almost lunging from under you and thundering away, with the satisfying rumble like a jet launched from an aircraft carrier. The club's stylists ride in the Harley highway slouch, copied from Marlon Brando or Lee Marvin in The Wild Ones, or maybe Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, depending on their age. They sit low in the saddle, arms loose and relaxed on those wide handlebars, legs forward, pointy-toed boots stretched way out resting on the highway pegs, giving a relaxed, ice-cool posture.

The style hasn't changed since the 1950s song Highway 101:

“He wore black denim trousers

and motorcycle boots

And a black leather jacket

with an eagle on the back.

On the muscle of his arm

was a red tattoo,

A picture of a heart

saying ‘Mother I Love you.'

He had a hopped-up cycle

that took off like a gun.

That fool was the terror of Highway 101”

With all the confusion, it takes all day to make the 87 kilometers to Huizhou City, the first stop. Dinner is a banquet with local officials, with formal welcoming speeches and toasting with the fiery local liquor. At one table, Harley rep Steve and Peter, the mechanic, are deep in technical talk, of belt drives, gear boxes, drive trains and “How about them ramjet manifolds?”

At another table, a rider with a “Ladies of Harley” crest on her denim jacket is discussing the Hong Kong store selling Harley regalia. The Harley symbol, the all-American eagle, wings outspread, beak open fiercely, is worn on leather jackets and saddlebags, T-shirts, hats and rings and etched on bike parts. Hong Kong Chinese Rider Wilson goes whole hog with a Harley cap, sweatshirt and belt buckle. He claims to own HK$50,000 worth of Harley wear -- including his wife's underwear.

Another rider is reading a Los Angeles magazine article about the new American phenomenon, Rich Urban Bikers (RUBS). It says that Harleys are for people who like to look in the mirror, and he concedes he spends more time polishing the chrome than riding.

Some members are sensitive about the Hong Kong Hog's upmarket image. David, an English engineer, complains, “In Hong Kong, they always ask ‘How much does it cost, and do you get your amah (maid) to wash it for you?'” He has no amah.

Not everyone is enthralled with Harleys. The Dr., who is accompanying the rally in a support car, rode on the back of a Softail this afternoon. The laconic surgeon reports in an accent that is more Harley Street than Harley-Davidson, “Well, it's like riding the back of a motorbike, really.” Yet he is eager to ride a bike for the final entrance into Shanghai, and a week later, back in Hong Kong, he is reported to be shopping for a Harley-Davidson, one of the converted.

From Huizhou, the bikers follow the coast north through old treaty ports, stopping at Shantou (Swatow), Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Wenzhou (Wenchow), Ningbo (Ningpo) and Hangzhou (Hangchow). Beyond the crowded factories of the economic zone, the road winds through classic Chinese countryside, with traditional stone and mud houses with shingle roofs. Long-horned water buffalo spooked by the raging motorcycles are kept from running onto the road by the rope through their noses. Barefoot farmers work the fields with primitive wooden hoes, plows and ancient foot-powered irrigation pumps with crude wooden buckets.

It is white-knuckle biking through China's chaotic traffic. Roads are crowded with buses, bicycles, peddle rickshaws, three-wheeled walking tractors (oversized roto-tillers meant for the rice paddies). Farmers pull huge loads on two-wheeled carts, carry produce on bamboo poles on their shoulders or haul hay bales so big only their scrawny legs show underneath.