Never say never...

What a week it has been…Singapore, Chongqing, and after a long haul yesterday, back in the good old USA. It’s 00:38 hours here in Los Angeles right now, and I’m still on China time (which would be 3:38 tomorrow afternoon over there).

Yep, I’m wide awake. I’ll be out of kilter like this for another 3 or 4 days. Trust me on this…this ain’t my first rodeo and that’s how long it takes. I thought I might as well take advantage of my jet lag and post a few photos and tell a story or two about this most recent adventure in Chongqing.

First, a few food photos from the Business Center at Zongshen. You guys and gals tell me you love food photos, so here we go…

Okay, enough food photos for a bit (I’ll show you a few more later in this blog). Back to the story. On Friday afternoon, my good buddies Sean and Robby (and I) hopped in Sean’s Chinese-manufactured SUV. It’s a nice vehicle that reminds me a lot of my Subaru CrossTrek.

I grabbed a few photos from the passenger seat on our ride through the Chinese countryside outside of Chongqing…

Robbie, Sean, and yours truly were on our way to lunch. Sean told me we were going to a restaurant known for its chicken.

First, a photo of Sean, me, and Robbie…

And a few photos as we entered the restaurant…

The way it works in China is you select your dinner, and then you get a fresh chicken.

Now, when I say “fresh” in the context of this blog about our lunch a day or so ago in China, it has a different connotation than how we think of “fresh” in the US. When we say fresh, we mean maybe it’s not been frozen for too long.

When the Chinese say fresh, well, see for yourself…

Okay, so maybe the day didn’t go so well for the chicken.

The lunch sure was good, though!

After that memorable lunch, Sean drove us to General Chiang Kai Shek’s home (one of his four homes, actually). It’s located high on a mountain top overlooking downtown Chongqing. It was a tough hike to get to the very top and it was hot and humid, but the climb was worth it. We were rewarded with a commanding view of downtown Chongqing, where the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers join. You can just make out the city through the haze…

It was a cool thing to see. The first time I ever visited Chongqing about 5 years ago, I knew it was a special place and I always had this idea I wanted to come back and photograph the city. I could spend a month here doing just that.

Chongqing is an amazing place. With a population of around 34 million people (that’s larger than the state of California), Chongqing is one of the world’s great megacities. The city is centered where two of the world’s great rivers (the Jialing and the Yangtze) merge. It was the capital of China during World War II in an attempt to get the seat of government further away from Japan, but the Japanese bombed the hell out of the place anyway. The Chinese built a series of underground caverns and tunnels to protect their people from the bombing (just like the British did in London during the war).

I feel incredibly lucky just having had the opportunity to visit Chongqing. Like I said, it really is an amazing place. Surprisingly, most Americans have never heard of it.

After the visit to General Chiang Kai Shek’s home, it was back downtown for us. Here’s a photo from Sean’s car as we crossed the Yangtze River on one of Chongqing’s many magnificent bridges…

We were headed to Shir’s motorcycle accessories store, teahouse, and moto gathering spot. You may remember my description of Shir’s place in Riding China. Shir is something of a mystic, a soothsayer, and a prophetess in the Chinese moto world. Yep, I’m completely serious when I describe Shir that way. Our ride leaders consulted with Shir prior to our leaving on the China ride last year, and they did so the night before the ride. The other guys told me it was for luck and to get Shir’s blessing for our ride, and I guess it worked. We had a great time, nobody crashed, and all went well on that wonderful adventure. It was kind of funny…Joe Gresh and I thought both Shir and her teahouse were magical, and one of us commented that we’d probably never see it again.

Well, never say never. It can come sooner than you might think. Here I was headed to Shir’s teahouse again, and this time it was for an interview.

When we arrived, my good buddy “He” was waiting for me. He’s name is not pronounced like it’s spelled. It’s pronounced “Chwah!” and the pronunciation has to be very forceful to sound right. He is the guy who created the video of our ride last year.

Sean staged a photo of He and me arm wrestling…

The arm wrestling photo is kind of funny in the sense that during the ride, He (“Chwa!”) always wanted to stop to get more video footage, and I always wanted to keep going. I thought the whole video thing was a first class pain in the butt while we were doing the ride, but that just goes to show you how little I knew. When I saw the finished video my good friend He had created, I was blown away. It was first class in every regard and I was grateful that they had done it. On the off chance you’ve never seen the video, here it is again…

It seems our ride across China made Gresh and me famous in China, and a Chinese news outlet wanted to interview me about the differences between riding in China and the US. They were also very interested in Riding China, and I had an opportunity to plug the book.

Imagine that!

That’s it for now, folks. It’s nearly 2:00 a.m., so I think I’ll try to get a little sleep and get back on a US biorhythm schedule.