There we stood in the doorway of our Beijing apartment with our bikes fully--and I do mean fully--loaded. Given our desire to be comfortably self-sufficient in nearly any scenario, given my tendency to hoard things like little shampoo bottles from hotel rooms in the name of travel frugality, given the fact that we were terrified we would never see another supermarket with Western food after leaving Beijing and had pounds of pasta, marinara sauce, and off-brand Nutella in our bags, it was astounding that our bikes fit out of the door. And it wasn't just our bicycles that were overweight; both of us had devolved into the worst physical fitness levels of our entire lives. So it was perhaps a reasonable hesitation that I had in shutting the door with our only key locked inside.

We didn't expect to like Beijing and we certainly didn't anticipate developing an attachment to it, but we did. If it wasn't for the air pollution, we'd say this mega-city could be pleasantly livable. Disturbingly, according to several people, we had not seen anywhere close to the worst air quality compared with the other seasons when more coal is burned as a heat source. Nonetheless, this day was down right gloomy, perhaps a sign telling us it was time to go.

It did not take long to cycle out of the affluent core of Beijing into the industrial outskirts, which felt like we had been teleported to a different planet. Out came recently purchased pollution masks for their debut. We had spent half of a day tracking down some pricey sports-model ones with ridiculous prints (mine is an open shark jaw…stylin'!) and refillable filters. This is a case of cross our fingers and hope that we get what we paid for!

Having gotten our traditional late start cycling that day, we opted to stay at the first farmhouse accommodation that looked open as it got dark, a little before our intended stopping point of the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall north of Beijing. This was our introduction to some of the quirks of budget travel in China. While we did have a private bathroom with a sitter-toilet, as opposed to the more common squatter-style, the shower head was located directly above the toilet (for multi-tasking!?!) and it was BYOTP.

The next morning we "chatted" with the owners while waiting out a rainstorm, then made it up to Mutianyu. Exploring the wall late in the day was truly magical as the crowds had left and we walked along the wall in solitude with it bathed in golden light!

Heading west, we also visited the Lakeside section of the Great Wall, not realizing until after paying the admission fee that you can't actually walk on the wall here and the main attraction is seeing the where the wall was submerged by filling a reservoir. Yes, we love to support the intentional destruction of cultural relics! Well, you win some and you lose some...

Day three of life on the road brought us to the Ming Tombs, and ridiculously close to our starting point in Beijing had we chosen a more direct route. With thirteen tombs and other significant sites spread throughout the surrounding area, it has great historical significance, and a separate entrance fee for each attraction. Therefore, we visited just one tomb of the third Ming dynasty emperor, but not being able to see anything actually tomb-like, it seemed repetitive to the other Ming-era sites we had explored in Beijing. Oh well, you lose some and you lose some more. This is travel.

The next day had intensive climbing as we cycled past the section of Great Wall we had visited via tour bus with the Global Explorers group and past another crazy touristy section called Badaling. It was sizzling hot to the point where we were grateful for the breeze created by the constant stream of large tour busses passing us on the curvy narrow access roads.

Then we reached a several-kilometer long tunnel with a prominent sign prohibiting bicycles. Here we trusted a couple of bystanders who emphatically insisted it was okay to go through, based on our observation that quite consistently wherever a sign is posted, the reality is that everyone does the opposite, and seemingly without any consequences. On the other side of the tunnel through the hills, and free of consequences, it finally felt official that we had left Beijing behind as we faced a dry open landscape heading west.

Pulling in to a small roadside community a bit before dusk, we picked a multi-story building with a row of identical rooms above to begin the search for lodging. A man walking toward the main entrance saw us and paused, looking a little confused, and asked if he could help us, fortunately in English. I explained, "We are looking for a hotel. Is this one?" Nope, it was a government building. When we turned down his suggestion of a brand new 5-star Holiday Inn that looked quite out of place with the rest of town, he then dropped whatever he had going on to drive 20 minutes down the road to help us find some farmhouse accommodation. We cycled behind him as fast as we could while he coasted with his hazard lights on. We have since learned that his generous actions coming from a sincere concern for our well-being were no anomaly in this country, but we will still remember him as a humbling first in a series of acts of kindness from strangers we've randomly met along the way.

As a bonus, we ended up quite close to the historic site we planned on visiting the next day called Guyaju. It is a fascinating site of an abandoned cave dwelling village of which relatively little is known and for now at least, seems off the beaten path enough to avoid the masses we came to expect at other tourist sites. I suppose all that could change with the establishment of a huge and bizarre upscale resort that we cycled by to access the site, also dominating the view looking out from the narrow valley where the caves have been carved in the granite domes. The name of the resort is...Jackson Hole. I kid you not. 

Besides the inevitable pain that comes with suddenly kicking your own butt into shape, after a few days in to the cycle tour, we felt like we were starting to get in to the groove of things. Each time we begin, we have to relearn some of the tips and tricks forgotten since the last time, both the concrete and more abstract lessons taught by this form of travel. At the same time, we were coming to terms with some of the challenges that are new to us. Correctly identifying a hotel would only be one of many more to come...

With our Global Explorers group en route to Oakland, we were back on our own in Shanghai. The first thing we did was check in to our modest hostel where I collapsed on the bed for a long and satisfying nap. Despite this, I still felt dazed as we walked through different sections of the city that afternoon on the prowl for good food. We scored big time with a popular place, still true to its local roots, that made the best soup dumplings ever! Then, surprise, surprise, we critiqued two craft breweries found on opposite sides of the former French Concession. By the time we returned to the hostel, we estimated that we had trekked around eight miles on our exploration of the city that day.

The next day was a mishmash of fun. We started out exploring a multi-floor food mall for breakfast and then took in the fascinating history of Shanghai's rapid growth and projected future at the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Then I dragged Matt, not quite kicking and screaming, to my heaven on earth: a cat cafe called "Cat Eyes," where ten kitties live harmoniously in an apartment converted into a small coffee shop. My dutiful husband only rolled his eyes slightly when I promptly ordered a can of ridiculously priced wet food off of the menu and proceeded to get swarmed by the majority of the feline residents. Since there are at least ten cat cafés in Shanghai, I consider this to be an essential experience to truly understanding the local culture.

Next we hopped on the subway line headed under the city-bisecting Huangpu River and surfaced in the Pudong, where the famous skyscrapers reside. With a decently clear evening, we longed for the 100th floor observation deck perspective of the city but balked at the $25 per person admission. At the suggestion of our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook, we instead opted for three separate elevator rides to reach the Cloud 9 bar on the 88th floor of the Grand Hyatt. Here, we got to enjoy sunset over the city with mere $10 mediocre cocktails in hand (and complimentary spicy peanuts!). While we'll never know for sure if the view was that much better twelve floors higher, our perch above Shanghai seemed sufficiently mesmerizing to us.

Since I do have a sick affinity for tourist gimmicks, I somehow also convinced Matt that we needed to ride through the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel to get back to the Bund side of the river. So that, should you ever travel to Shanghai, you do not need waste your own hard-earned money on the bizarreness of it all, we have included a video here for your viewing pleasure.

Similar to Beijing, we felt that it would take weeks to thoroughly explore Shanghai. After all, it is the world's largest city! Yet that was not to be, as we were zooming north on a bullet train the next morning. Back in our Beijing apartment, we hunkered down for a couple of days of errands, organizing, and the dreaded complete final pack of our bicycle panniers. Of course, all this meant that the launch of our open-ended cycle tour was eminent...yikes!

We sympathized with our group's dazed and confused state of existense as they came out of international arrivals, having been in their shoes just a couple of weeks prior, but could also see that same wide-eyed excitement that their China experience just became very real. That realness would hit them hard the next morning with new extremes of heat and crowds, for Matt and me as well, with our tour's first stop at Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. The group was resilient though and we recovered in an air-conditioned and spacious museum in the afternoon.

The next day would remain as a top highlight of the entire trip. Beijing students that are part of a cultural ambassador program each buddied up with one of the Global Explorers students for the duration of the day. With their proficient English skills, our kids got an education on the history of the Great Wall, popular music and technology, and perhaps most importantly appropriate (or not!?!) Chinese slang. All of this, of course, occured while also climbing the allegedly steepest section of the Great Wall, amongst dense crowds, of course. Little did we know that the wonderful intensity of the day was just getting started. 

After a lunch featuring a local specialty of stewed whole fishand a million other dishes spinning around the lazy susan, we piled in to the foyer of the program's facility for a multi- staged "Sino-American Festival Carnival" complete with an official banner, words of wisdom by a costume Confucious, and TV and radio press reporters. The production was indeed festive highlighting three Chinese holdiays alternating with three American holidays throughout a calendar year, each with an interactive activity. After a calligraphy lesson, painting Easter eggs, making mooncakes, having a Halloween costume contest, making dumplings, and a visit from Santa Claus, and other various lessons and performances, we were both exhausted and humbled by the immense effort that went in to this production, but it was so much fun! As for the results of the media coverage, check out this report from China Radio International! 

The next morning held the most unique and highly anticipated event of our group's China experience. Through the passion of the AFAR Foundation, a major sponsor of the Learning AFAR program, for the work of Ai Wei Wei, we were able to visit him in his hime and studio. He is often labeled a "dissident artist" and regardless of what he is called, he has a fascinating story. If you are unfamiliar with the world's most famous contemporary Beijinger in every place except China, a great place to begin is watching his documentary "Never Sorry".

Approaching the unmarked entrance of his studio, two things immediately stand out: a vintage bicycle propped against a tree with a basket full of fresh flowers, juxtaposed with a healthy population of survelliance cameras glaring down from every direction. Ai Wei Wei puts a fresh bouquet of flowers out everyday as a reminder to the officials who have yet to return his passport after confiscating it as part of the effort to silence his voice and limit his influence.

The Canadian ambassador was just leaving as we arrived and the first thing Ai Wei Wei did was take a picture of us on his phone to post on Instagram (@aiww) while commenting that this was the first group of high school students to visit him. In a barely audible voice, he answered our various questions, but was mum on any information about his upcoming installation on Alcatraz, which the Oakland students will go see in person this fall and we will have to check out from afar. As a parting gift, he gave us each a couple of ceramic sunflower seeds from a previous installation at Tate Modern and the group a complete set of his documentaries. Wow.

Then we returned to the hutong, this time on a bicycle rickshaw tour instead of our own two wheels. We ate lunch in the home of Mr. Wong who regularly cooks for groups touring the hutong as his post-retirement hobby. We also got a tai chi lesson in the street from a kong fu master who studied with Jet Li and crowded in to another woman's home for a traditional papercutting lesson. It was cool to see the hutong from the inside out rather than just passing through the alleyways and wondering what life is like behind the grey walls, even if it was only a glimpse.

Our last evening in Beijing, we had a Peking Duck banquet in the fancy restaurant of our hotel, a delicous send off meal before flying to Shanghai, and a local delicacy that Matt and I were grateful to try without the financial commitment of buying a duck dinner on our own!

While we flew into Shanghai, we did not actually stay there until several days later, first visitng the surrounding "small" cities of only a few million people of Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. In each city, we visited the best of what they are known for. 

In Suzhou, it was a boat ride through the canal, seeing the equivalent community to Beijing's hutong. Then we moseyed through the Lingering Garden, a traditional dynasty era garden with the design and selection of specific plants carrying lots of symbolism. Before departing the city, we snuck in a whirlwind tour of a silk spinning factory where we got to pet the super cute silk worms!

Nanjing had a 20th century historical focus, with a climb up to Sun Yatsen's Mausoleum. He is revered as the father of modern China. The second site was a somber one of the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre, evoking feelings similar to visiting a holocaust museum. An important lesson for our group was seeing how the massacre museum delivered clear messages about the atrocities commited by the Japanese during WWII, but omitted all information about the role of of the Chinese government in creating a circumstance where such a brutal slaughter was even possible. 

Hangzhou is a city known for its green efforts as well as its green tea. We visited a tea farm and sampled some of the finest dragonwell variety money can buy, and for that reason we only left with a tiny tin of it. Ironically, while the city promoting the use of electric cars and bicycle sharing programs, we were still stuck in some of the worst traffic in our diesel-powered tour bus. When we finally got to the famous West Lake for an electric boat ride across it, it was so hazy with regional air pollution that we could barely make out the scenic views! Sigh...

In Shanghai for the last three days of the program, we of course took in the famous skyline view from the Bund, only slightly hazed with air pollution at the time. We also saw a stellar acrobatics show, ate some awesome dumplings, did the obligatory souvenier shopping frenzy routine, and contrasted a solar energy research facility with a state-run petrochemical company's educational exhibit. The true highlight in Shanghai was visiting some senior citizens in an assisted living facility. They were so excited for our visit that we were rushed from room to room with just a few minutes to talk via a translator in each one. Then they put on a performance that rivaled the cultural ambassador students' in Beijing!

The nine days of the program were packed to the brim with all the best that China has to offer. We were worn out at the end of each day and even more so after seeing the group off at the airport, the standard condition I find myself in at the end of every Global Explorers expedition. This is how we know that we made the most of it though.

Even more than the places we experienced, the people are what made it particularly memorable. The whole group of students from Coliseum College Prep and their adult group leaders were so fun and rewarding to work with. The group bonded as a whole instantly making managing of group dynamics a non-issue. They are from socio-economic backgrounds that typically preclude international travel so it was amazing to see this experience resulting in personal insights and hopefully opening up new inspirations and options in their futures. I will never forget watching them kanga line up and down the subway car on the way back from viewing the Shanghai skyline lit up on the last night of the trip. They were turning the passengers' heads, of course, but also making them smile.

We also had two very different, but equally awesome guides from Chinatour.com. Jing in Beijing was extremely thoughtful and articulate, while Peter in Shanghai kept us engaged with his hilarious antics and unbounded enthusiasm for everything. What really pulled the disparate pieces of our undrstanding of China together though were the personal stories and reflections they shared.

But besides missing all these people, we were also grieving the end of having luxurious hotel rooms, prearranged and impossible to finish meals, and a personal guide who could answer every obscure question in fluent English. Just when we had gotten used to travel in China being so carefree, we were back to fending for ourselves...

Once settled in to our apartment, we "bravely" ventured out in larger and larger concentric rings away from it, motivated by the basic needs of food and bottled water. At first we only ate from a strip of restaurants on a commercial street close by. Since our apartment is located in the Haidian, primarily a residential and university neighborhood, we really stuck out as the clueless tourists we were and got our first taste of stares, giggles, and "instant celebrity" photo requests. At the same time, we felt like little shy toddlers pointing to pictures and acting things out to communicate rather than "using our words." We did, however, refrain from throwing tantrums of frustration when we did not get our way, which was often. When we attempted to inquire about the location of a supermarket, we were confused when multiple people pointed straight down at the sidewalk or the floor of a business. Finally, a nice man led us down a set of sketchy looking stairs which opened up into a huge basement supermarket! All of the downward pointing suddenly made sense...

Even though simple things like grocery shopping were genuinely exciting for us, we were also anxious to see some of the famous sites of Beijing. Given the huge scope of the city, we soon realized we would only have time to explore a fraction of it in the coming week. It was time to prioritize, especially because we needed to dedicate about half our time to taking care of business we didn't get done before leaving the States. A few days were spent researching our options for visiting Tibet (required to be pre-planned and approved by Chinese government control), journaling, blogging, and other miscellaneous "life stuff."

Our first sightseeing day was dedicated to taking in the Summer Palace, along with literally 40,000ish other visitors, mostly Chinese. This wonderland of ornately decorated temples, residences, and courtyards was a great introduction to the Ming dynasty era, as was the Temple of Heaven that we visited on another day. We were shut out of the Drum and Bell Towers since they were closed for renovation, but truly enjoyed the haven of peacefulness of the Lama Temple, which according to Lonely Planet is the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet.

I have to admit that I had a few butterflies in my stomach that first sightseeing morning when we negotiated our bicycles into the cramped elevator, not realizing in the moment that the ridiculously fast-closing door would actually be the most challenging part of cycling that day. (In subsequent trips, I got good at aggressively hip-checking the door long enough to wheel our bikes in!) Once on street level, what we witnessed, and then participated in, was a state of no-rules driving, biking, walking, and occasional rollerblading. A Chinese tour guide nailed it when he said, "Traffic signals are just a suggestion. This is China!" We did the ol' follow-a-local routine through intimidating intersections, and learned the importance of balancing caution with confidence. When making a move, one has to do it decisively as any hesitation will just result in confusing those around you, which is far more dangerous than simply keeping narrow margins of space in the miraculously harmonious flow of various forms of propulsion. 

From our daily excursions, we have made a couple of conclusions about cycling in the world's second largest city. First, when there are no (enforced) rules, you can't get mad at other people for breaking them. Things that would result in outright road rage in the US were just taken in calm stride here in Beijing. No one got outwardly angry at me if I cut in front of them, so likewise I did not react if I had to slam on the brakes and swerve when someone darted out in front of me. Secondly, while the infrastructure is in place to make Beijing an orderly city to cycle in, such as a plentitude of designated separated bike lanes, the reality is that a bike lane is never really just a bike lane. It is also a parking lane, a double-parking lane, a place to sell fruit, a place to unload a pile of bricks, a place to smoke a cigarette, a place to talk on your cell phone, and a place to throw your litter. So we decided that all these obstacles make for a real-life video game. In fact, you can even watch us "play" in the video at the end of this blog.

Of course, if you know us at all, you won't be surprised to hear that several of our bike trips were destined for breweries. We were, however, pleasantly surprised with the extent of the craft beer scene, having arrived expecting to find no more variety than Tsingtao-type "refreshing" lagers. Several of the taprooms we visited are located in "the hutong," our favorite element of Beijing. Hutong are traditional courtyard homes that predate the literal rise of mega-apartment complexes beginning thirty or so years ago with the "opening up" of China. A single hutong seems to be designated by the common alleyway of the homes' entrances, so many uniquely named hutong can be found in a small area, which made tracking down the breweries an adventure in and of itself. 

Many hutong have already been destroyed to make way for Beijing's modernization, and surely many more will be, especially as younger generations prefer not to live in such a highly communal situation, and by that I mean a public bathroom outside the home with often times no stalls between the squat-hole style toilet. At the same time,  certain hutong have become trendy spots for cafes and bars, others have commercialized into boutique shopping pedestrian streets. The local government has recognized the tourism value of hutong and responded with targeted "restoration" efforts, which really entails knocking them down and rebuilding in a similar style, but inevitably losing character in their newness. As a visitor passing through, it is easy cling to the preservation opinion, but as a resident of Beijing, I can see how the future of the hutong is much more complex, both literally and figuratively grey.

Anyhow, once successfully located, we first sampled a quality flight at Great Leap Brewing, founded in 2010 and claiming to be the first in Beijing's craft beer revolution. GLB is proud of sourcing most of the beers' ingredients locally, which, assuming their name references Mao's campaign "The Great Leap Forward," is just a little ironic to be associated with a period of anti-agrarian industrialization that resulted in the Great Chinese Famine. Well, cheers to that…or not.

The door to the cleverly-named Slow Boat Brewery's taproom was like a true speakeasy, with a three-inch wide sticker as its only external advertising. When we inquired about the hidden nature of the jovial taproom on the inside, an ex-pat co-owner with a Chinese wife as a business partner explained that in Chinese custom, it is rude to flaunt a business that is doing well, especially as the only one in a very quiet hutong. We had a tasty IPA that was on a special deal as part of an IPA festival week, which we appreciated in particular since Beijing's trendy craft beer at $7-9 per pint does not mesh well with our long term travel budget.

We were excited to try craft beer from a nanobrewery owned by a local rather than ex-pats, until we did. While it seems like the Lark Brewpub has potential, the taps they actually had hooked up had some distinctive "beginner homebrew" off-flavors. So over to my personal favorite Jing A Brewing Company in Sanlitun, the embassy district and haven of ex-pats, to finish off the beer tour of Beijing.

Our arrival in Beijing coincided with a good air-quality window that made our bicycle-based explorations much more enjoyable and healthy. Only when the pollution settled back in did we fully realize how unusually beautiful our introduction to China had been. We opted to ride the subway on the bad days, or even just the not-so-great days. We were amazed that it took almost as long to ride the subway as it did to cycle to many places, and that we could ride as a far as we wanted for 2 RMB (about 33 cents). 

Our longest subway ride was our last day on our own in Beijing before beginning the Global Explorers trip. We rode for an hour and a half to the far outskirts of the city to visit an energetic guy named Shao Ming. He is a fellow cycle tourer, and after trips across China and regions of the US, came back to Beijing and started a touring bicycle brand called Boskey. His tiny apartment is also his bicycle building shop along with his business partners. We connected with him through a network with the unfortunate name of Warm Showers, where folks with an interest in cycle touring can host or meet up with bicycle travelers. A few days earlier, we also went out to dinner with another friendly Beijinger named Victor who gave us valuable advice about cycling across China from his own personal experience.

With ten days to "figure out" China to our credit, we then headed to the airport to greet a group of high school students from Coliseum College Prep in Oakland, along with two of their principals, and still to our great relief a local Beijing guide from Chinatour.com.

It is not often that we arrive to any destination in style, especially a new continent where we know virtually nothing and no one. But there it was, our VIP sign at international arrivals for "Casey and Matt" held by (English name) Amy, our point of contact from the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Shiyan School. As soon as we saw her friendly smile, we breathed a sigh of relief. With the security that there was a real live English-speaking person here to help us, for the first time it seemed realistically plausible that arriving to the second most populous city in the world with two bicycles was actually a good idea. We were dazed and confused from crossing countless time zones. Half of July 7th, our second wedding anniversary, had vanished somewhere between Alaska and Russia. We half-stumbled into the school's van after some creative arranging of our bicycle boxes into it first. 

Some of the students and faculty of the aforementioned attend NatureBridge every January. Upon learning that we would be traveling to Beijing this summer, Ms. Wong generously offered up a teacher's apartment to stay in since the teachers would be gone over summer break. The apartment was not available until a day after we arrived, so the staff really went above and beyond by not only picking us up at the airport, but helping us arrange a comfortable hotel for our first night as well. Besides doing some serious sleeping, we hesitantly ventured out into the surrounding neighborhood for adventures such as buying bottled water and finding a dinner place. We settled on a restaurant with a robot that slices noodles into boiling broth, with absolutely no idea whether this was a normal occurrence or not. It turns out that it was not.

The next morning, we were picked up by the school's driver, Song, in the van again and got to tour the school campus en route to our apartment. It is a beautiful and expansive place, complete with gardens, a table tennis dome, and zoo! Yes, a zoo. Wandering the halls of the Carden Academy division, it was strangely wonderful to see a photo display with our co-workers Jen and Steve in the Marin Headlands along with written reflections about the students' trip. We also got to eat lunch in the staff cafeteria, sampling generously from the extensive buffet line. Still new to struggling with chopsticks as my only option, I was chagrinned when most of the teachers and staff around us pulled out spoons from their personal food containers!

In the afternoon, we moved in to our apartment for the next ten days. We were not sure what to expect, especially as we approached a large complex of buildings that each easily house a thousand people. But when we opened the door to a spacious and nicely furnished two-bedroom place on the 10th floor, we felt overwhelmed with gratitude. This would prove to be the perfect "home base" for settling in to our travels and transitioning to life in China for the next few months.