Hitchhiking In China, Part 3: Battling Toll Roads and the Cold

This is the final part in my series on hitchiking in China. Start from the beginning here.

Let’s jump back to where we left off. I was in Xing’An, having just spent the day with a family who picked me up and took me to this rural town outside of Guilin. It was nighttime, and I was back in my hotel planning the next day of hitchhiking. My goal was to start early and go to the edge of town to catch my next ride to God knows where.

The next morning, I got caught up in some phone calls and before I knew it, afternoon was already approaching. My first mistake. When hitchhiking, it’s key to start early, otherwise you may run out of time and be forced to decide whether to spend another night in the same town or risk catching a late ride out and being stranded.

Out on the road with my crudely written sign, I held my thumb out. The day before, I only waited a few minutes before getting into that family’s car. This time… I waited four hours. Taxis, trucks and miscellaneous carts drove by – all staring as if an alien has appeared before them in broad daylight. Some stopped and asked me where I was going, but they were all traveling only minutes away to the next town. The wind was also picking up and the temperature dropping rapidly. It was late November, and conditions were less than ideal for standing outside all day waiting for a ride. Mistake number two.

After the fifth car asked me why I don’t just take the nearby bus, I resigned and decided to hop on. If I start moving, then more opportunities would come my way, right? That was mistake number three for sure.

The bus drove several minutes through Xing’an before breaking into a clearing and onto a dirt road. We were in the countryside, with farmers tilling the fields either side of the road. Periodically, the bus would pull over to the side after a farmer yelled and waved us down. After about an hour, we reached our final stop, an even smaller town called Quanzhou.

This town, a ten by ten block square, had an industrial look and feel to it. Massive trucks full of demolished cement crowded the road, and towering, dilapidated apartment buildings dominated the sky. I made my way around town for a bite to eat. All the restaurants around me prominently displayed the sign “狗肉”… dog meat. This was the first time I had ever officially seen it in China.

When I chose a restaurant, my morbid curiosity made me ask how much the dog meat was. To my surprise, it was almost 10 times as much as the regular items on the menu. This is obviously a delicacy around these parts. Don’t worry, I didn’t order it! Too expensive.

The table next to me at the restaurant was also really entertaining. The guests were roaring with good cheer and would periodically make loud guttural noises before spitting on the restaurant floor. Then they would gargle their tea; the brown rivers flowing dangerously near my table and bags. They also sucked on the chicken bones and spit them on the ground. Obviously, the restaurant owners had no problem with this type of behavior. I think they were at the table!

After my late lunch, I made my way back to the road. I spent another couple of hours waiting around, freezing in the cold dust of this bleak town. I had plenty of time to reflect and eventually came to the conclusion that this really sucked. Even if I were to stay here for the night, I would need to pay for a hotel without any guarantee that the next day would be a success. I wanted to keep moving, and so I walked to the other side of town and caught the first train east to Changsha.

In the train station, I encountered my favorite Chinese propaganda character again. Lei Feng (雷锋) is a mythical solider from the ’50s. “Study the example of Lei Feng” is the common slogan, as he has come to represent the model citizen of China: modest, selfless and devoted to Mao. This banner reads: “The spirit of Lei Feng is eternal, it is the living embodiment of core Socialist values” and so on. 

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Changsha is another Chinese mega city, with a population of 8 million people. This meant there were hostels I could stay in again. I still had quite a bit of time before needing to be back in Shanghai, so I stayed for a few days, hoping to explore the city. Unfortunately, the weather had turned nasty, and it rained all three days I was there. I didn’t see much and was already burned out from the typical cultural sights that second tier Chinese cities have to offer. Mass city development tends to homogenize in a very boring way. I also learned that an open and present mind, free from longing and homesickness, is also a prerequisite for enjoying a new location.

Still, I wanted to try hitchhiking one more time from Changsha to Shanghai. It was an 11-hour drive and a worthy challenge. The weather, however, would not allow me to fulfill my nomadic ambitions. The freezing rain and punishing winds deterred me as I walked out to the road with my backpack and waterlogged duffel bag full of upcoming Christmas presents.

This time I well and truly gave up, opting for the overnight train back to Shanghai. As punishment for my failings, I bought the cheapest ticket back: a hard seat for the overnight trip. I would just have to improvise where to sleep.

Most Westerners never take this mode of transportation when traveling through China. The very back of the train is home to desperados, farmers, salt of the earth types, and anyone else cheap enough to sit in a hard chair without assigned seating for a dozen hours. I met some fun and crazy people on the way. There was the Baijiu-swigging doctor of Chinese medicine who insisted on getting my Wechat to meet in Shanghai (even though I informed him I was leaving two days later). The farmer who offered me some of his orange, which he opened using a nail clipper. I can’t believe I ate that orange. 不干不净吃了没病! (Chinese proverb: eat unclean food and you won’t get sick anymore). When it came time to sleep, all the free spots in my cart were already taken. I was caught in this never-ending conversation with that doctor and missed my chance to nab some seats. The only spots left were by chain-smoking businessmen. They were either already snoring loudly after a personal bottle of Baijiu (白酒) or slamming down cards with some of their esteemed business partners. Needless to say, I didn’t catch much sleep. One way or another, the night turned to day. I was back in Shanghai and at the end of my unique but ultimately unsuccessful hitchhiking adventure.

Back to my Chinese homebase. The Shanghai train station has become a familiar jump-off point and final destination.

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So what went wrong? Here are the 5 reasons why my hitchhiking experiment failed:

1. Most Chinese people don’t know what hitchhiking is. They would instead point me to the nearest bus or train station. Taxis were a constant annoyance. Pedestrians gawked and smiled. Other hitchhikers I met in the past told me how some generous souls would try to force money into their hands, insisting they just take the train.
2. Cross-country travel, the bedrock of hitchhiking, is extremely rare in China. The routes between major cities have countless tolls, deterring drivers from crossing provincial borders. According to Forbes, the tolls accrued from Guangzhou to Beijing via the superhighways would cost $200 alone! There’s no such thing as the college or family roadtrip in China. People take the train or fly. So what’s left? The only long-distance drivers in China are commercial. Truck drivers. This matches what my Gobi Desert hitchhiking friend told me, who traveled exclusively with Chinese truck drivers.
3. Long-distance drivers don’t stop in rural towns. These truck drivers stay on the superhighways, sleeping at designated rest stops, or hitting major cities to load up on fuel and food. This means the moment I left Guilin, I had already sealed my fate. The chance of finding someone going a significant distance beyond Xing’An was slim to none. The only people on the road were going to even smaller towns, trapping me in a loop until I imagine I eventually reach the smallest town in all of China!
4. Hitchhiking in late November is already much too cold for most parts of China. As I mentioned, the weather was getting progressively worse by the day. I also had several pieces of luggage weighing me down. To really make some distance, you need to enter the superhighways, camping at the rest spots and badgering truck drivers for rides.
5. From a cost-saving perspective, hitchhiking doesn’t make sense in China. Unless you are camping along the road (cutting your sleeping costs), you will pay more by staying in provincial hotels than by just buying a cheap train ticket to your destination. This is especially true since there aren’t any hostels once you get out of the touristy cities.

Well there you have it. My first hitchhiking experiment in China was a failure in the sense that I did not reach Shanghai. However, that week was packed with memorable moments and connections with people I would have never gotten to know otherwise. I will certainly try again. Next time, I’ll bring a tent and go in the summer, ready for the next adventure!