Hitchhiking in China, Part 1: A Bold Leap Into the Unknown, One Ride at a Time

When tracing back the origins of the impetus for me to try hitchhiking in China, the seeds of inspiration had been sown over time. There was my old soccer teammate I encountered in Beijing who hitchhiked through the Gobi desert to Ürümqi – the Uighur capital of Western China. There was my close friend Jack, a life-loving polyglot with more adventure tales than a Dumas novel, one of which was his hitchhiking around India. And not to forget, my recently made Colombian friend Juan regaled me with his Siberian stories. I was all set and settled on it. This time around, I would attempt a hitchhiking adventure of my own in China.

Without a real sense of how long hitchhiking takes, I started making some rough estimates. Currently, I was in Guilin and planned to spend the next two weeks here, after which I would give myself ten days to return back to Shanghai. Given this distance is about 1,000 miles (15 hours straight driving), my plan was ambitious to say the least. I would need to cover 100 miles a day. That being said, my Gobi desert friend told me how he would often hitchhike with Chinese truckers, covering massive distance each day when lucky. I was banking on something like this.

Two weeks later, I found myself saying goodbye to my new friends in Guilin and actually being in a position to act upon these fantasies I had been espousing for quite some time now.

Based on my research and discussions with the other hitchhikers, I would start by trying to catch a ride near a highway. A gas station near the main highway out of the city would theoretically attract those people who were filling up before the long haul to a distant land. From the city of Guilin (桂林市), I needed to go northeast. Changsha (长沙) was a 6 hour drive and Nanchang (南昌) was a 9 hours away. These were my targets originally. That being said, the idea of jumping from ride to ride, not knowing where you will end up but always making steady progress in a general direction, appealed tremendously to me. I wasn’t picky, and my only real goal for the day was to get a ride that took me out of Guilin. 

I pulled out Baidu Ditu (百度地图), China’s version of Google Maps, and found a gas station that was nestled under the entrance ramp of the main highway. Stepping on the bus that delivered me to this new and uncharted point on the map, I felt a quiet sense of significance taking place as I disappeared into the crowd of passengers. No tourists ever took this specific bus route, and soon I would enter into a part of China only inhabited by genuine locals. A range of fleeting emotions passed over me, and I felt keenly alive.

Getting off the bus, I noticed this new neighborhood was very industrial. I think that most of Guilin looks like this when you get out of the touristy city center. After five minutes of walking, I reached the gas station, lamenting my heavy bags that carried Christmas presents for my family upon my return to Seattle. This gas station was at once a highly significant frontier post and a meaningless uniform location chosen at random. It amuses me to think that the clerk inside had no idea how much importance I was placing on his work-a-day pump.  Based on the suggestion of one of my Guilin friends, who patiently listened to all the details of my hitchhiking plans, I pulled out a piece of paper to hold out for arriving vehicles to see. On it, I wrote in crude pen: “搭车(免费)”. Hitchhiking (free). 

I stood by the exit of the gas station, smiling and trying to appear calm, while a million thoughts raced in my head. What if the police shows up? Everyone is staring at me. Does that car look want to pick me up? Should I approach them? How do I know if the driver is safe?

Despite my constant overthinking, one car indeed was staring at me. The man was filling up his car but wore a half smile, and his countenance exhibited confusion and curiosity. I made eye contact with him several times and presented my sign to him but decided to wait and see what would happen next instead of approaching him. Eventually, he pulled up to me and rolled down his window. He was a young man of around 30 years old, and it turned out he had a wife and two kids in the car as well.

They asked me if I was hitchhiking.

I answered that indeed I was.

They eagerly and proudly explained they knew what that was, but that older generations would certainly have no idea what I was doing. They explained they were driving to Xing’an (兴安), and that I was welcome to ride with them if I wanted. Of course, I had never heard of this small provincial town before, but I hastily looked it up in my map and saw it was in the general direction of Shanghai and about two hours away.

I couldn’t believe it. Two minutes into my first hitchhiking attempt, and I already got a ride! This journey was going to be a breeze.

To be honest, I was pretty nervous while speaking to the family, but also thrilled to be hitchhiking for the first time (especially with people as safe as them). Because of this, I disregarded the man’s warnings that they would need to make a stop during the ride. I thought he said he needed to go to his car dealership, but I assumed I was misunderstanding the thick dialect of Chinese being spoken. So, I shrugged my shoulders, agreed and got in the car.

Sure enough, after about 10 minutes of driving, wherein all passengers excitedly expressed the amazing phenomenon taking place with a haphazard array of questions and platitudes, we pulled up into a BYD car dealership.

BYD is a popular Chinese brand of car, and its car dealerships look essentially like any other car dealership in the world. This seems to be a universally standardized thing for some reason. And yet, pulling into this dealership was one of the most bizarre events in my time in China. I asked my Chinese paternal driver why again we were stopping here.

“As I explained to you before, we will be needing to stop to fix our car, but after that, we will be heading straight to Xing’an!”

With that cleared up, I joined my family as they dropped off the keys to the mechanic. I was their new, temporary family member; a friendly martian who joined them on their weekend antics while I passed by on route to another planet.

For the next three hours I sat around, talking with the family and some bewildered customers, drinking free car dealership water, and pinching myself to make sure I was awake to not miss a moment of this. I was faintly aware of the fact that I was not making good time en route to Shanghai, but the novelty of it all greatly outweighed any concerns I had about timeliness. Overall, I just reminded myself to go with the flow and see how this would all turn out, laughing innerly as I went. 

Finally, the car was ready. We all boarded in again, and after a drive through the automatic car wash, we were on the road again.

Sitting in the back with the two kids – a girl around eight years old and a boy around five – I quickly realized I don’t have much patience for children. The boy was flailing around, putting his feet all over my backpack (which contained all the possessions I owned) and gargling ice tea. Periodically, his sister would give him a smack, shooting out drips of ice tea all over the car and dangerously close to my backpack. I looked on anxiously while getting to know Wang Ping (王平) and his wife. You tend to gain deep insights into yourself (like not being very patient with kids) when traveling alone and encountering bizarre events outside your comfort zone. I quickly quelled my irritation, however, by remembering how kind this family was in taking me in.

After what felt like only an hour, we had arrived in Xing’an. It was already evening, and while I resigned myself to not getting too far on the first day, I had accomplished my first hitchhiking ride and met the Wang family along the way. Little did I know, the town of Xing’an would have some other surprises in store for me as well, including one of the oldest and most overlooked historical sites in all of China. Read more here.