Cold snap

(Photos of the diary entry can be found at the end of the text).

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A tiny, soon glowing stove tries in vain to fight against the overpowering cold penetrating from outside. A woman and two men are sitting on naked chairs around him, warming their hands. Our “Ni hao” (hello) seems to really scare them. The restaurant owners look at us in confusion. Then a young man takes the initiative, jumps up and leads us in front of a 3 m long and about 1 ½ m high sideboard, in which there are containers with a wide variety of salads, mushrooms, tofu varieties, pressed small fish dough rolls and small balls of mock minced meat. When we arrived in China four months ago, we wouldn’t even have looked at some of the ingredients on offer. The man speaks to us in Chinese, pointing to the large salad tongs hanging over the back of a chair and the 40 cm tall metal bowls stacked on the seat. We understand immediately, take a pair of salad tongs and throw in everything we consider edible. When the bowl is full, we hand it to the man, who watches us with a friendly expression the whole time. He places them on a scale, presses a button and the measuring device spits out a receipt with a whirring noise. He asks for “21 yuan” (€2.94). As the only guests, we sit down at one of the tables and wait. In the kitchen, we can hear people fiddling with the wok over the loud gas flame. “Nimen yao la tang?” (Would you like some spicy soup?) asks the woman who has risen from the warming bowl of oil. “Bu (no) Not so hot,” we reply. She understands and hurries into the kitchen. Just five minutes later, she places a large steaming bowl on the table. It contains everything we previously fished off the shelf with the salad tongs. “Hmm, not bad,” I praise, dipping my Chinese porcelain spoon repeatedly into the broth. While we enjoy our delicious dinner, we are constantly watched by the three of them. It doesn’t take long and more and more people come through the draughty glass door into the sparsely furnished room. “They talk about us,” says Tanja. “Yes, I think they want a photo,” I guess. As soon as we have finished eating, the young landlady, still quite shy, asks if she can have a selfie with us. “Gladly,” we reply to her relief. After the first smartphone session, the ice breaks and each of the newly arrived friends wants a picture with the foreigners who are rarely seen in this city. Meanwhile, lively chatter and laughter echo from wall to wall. One of the young men gets up and puts two more beers on our table. We gratefully accept, as it would be rude to refuse this gift. Then the landlady comes and hands us two oranges. Since we have left the capital and tourist city of Xi’an and the Huashan Mountains behind us, we are obviously back in a region that is rarely visited by tourists.

We also have a high status in the standard hotel where we are staying. The owners treat us with respect and somehow as if we were guests of honor, even though they didn’t want our Ajaci at first. It took a lengthy phone call with Lois, who assured the hotel owner that Ajaci would not bite, bark loudly, trash the room or poop in the corner. It didn’t take long for Ajaci to win the hearts of the owners and staff.

Again, I spent a long time working on the navigation to find a good route for us over the mountains towards the city of Chengdu. It is 21:00 in the evening when we receive the message from Lois that there is no accommodation to be found in the places I have indicated. To save time, she independently chose other cities where we could find a place to stay. One is Shangluo, only about 45 km from here. Far too short for a one-day stage. The following distance to the next town is 145 km. “We’ll never make it. Especially not over the mountains and with the predicted drop in temperature,” I say. It is 10:20 pm when I have worked out an alternative route. Lois promises to check by tomorrow evening whether we can get a place to stay there. “Then we have no choice but to cycle the 45 km to Shangluo. There’s nothing further away that we can reach in one day,” I say disappointedly. “Who knows for…” “Yes, yes, I know what you want to say,” I interrupt Tanja. “There will be a reason why we only have such a short cycling day ahead of us and it’s probably good for something,” I complete her sentence.

At 23:00 I go for the last round with Ajaci. The weather forecast is right once again. At around minus 15 degrees, a cold wind blows through the unlit alleyways. “Well, it’s not going to be a walk in the park tomorrow,” I say to my dog on the way back to the hotel…

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