It was impossible, though, to guess what different foods were going to taste like until you popped them into your mouth. Some things were sweeter than they looked. Others were chewy. Or slimy. Some were delicious. And some were disgusting!
Mitch found it hilarious to wait until Tom had swallowed something before telling him what he had just eaten. “Jellyfish tentacles! Rotten beans! Raw squid in liver sauce! Chicken neck!”
If you’re going to travel round the world you need to get brave at trying different foods. Tom was an expert by now, so he even managed to swallow the jellyfish tentacles with a smile.
Every time he ate something disgusting Tom said “oishi!” Oishi means delicious. It made the chef happy when Tom said it, so he said oishi a lot, even when things were not very oishi at all.
It had been wonderful visiting Mitch, but soon it was time for Tom to hit the road. Bidding the family a heartfelt “thank you”, he climbed back on his bike and pedalled out onto the swarming streets of Tokyo. Cycling carefully but as fast as he dared, it was a relief to reach the countryside again.
Up ahead, Tom spotted the famous outline of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is a volcano, but it hasn’t erupted for 300 years, so its top is covered with a perfect cone of snow. Mount Fuji is the highest spot in Japan and you can see it from a long, long way away.
Cycling was much easier when the sun was shining and the road was free from snow. Tom zoomed along, making speedy progress. He rode down past the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on towards the south of the country.
Between the busy towns, Tom passed peaceful temples, half-hidden on hilltops amongst the trees. There are thousands of temples in Japan. One of the most fantastic is called Kiyomizu-dera. It is a massive wooden structure built almost 400 years ago without using a single nail.
The main hall is surrounded by cherry blossom trees. Beneath the temple’s curved roofs is a broad balcony looking out over a beautiful forest. In olden days people believed that if they jumped from the veranda and didn’t die, then their wishes would come true. As Tom peered cautiously over the edge he was glad that people didn’t try this anymore: it was higher than the roof of his house!
Tom’s favourite area of Japan was Shikoku island. It was wilder and less crowded than other parts of the country. The mountainous Iya Valley twists and turns, following the route of the rivers that carved out the steep slopes. Bridges made from vines are the only way to cross the river. High on a cliff-edge above the valley is a statue of a young boy peeing off the cliff down into the depths of the valley below!
Tom pedalled through leafy wooded valleys, then through groves of orange trees and on down the Pacific coastline. The cycling was fun and easy. He weaved in and out of rocky bays with clear green water and neat white fishing boats. At night he camped amongst the dunes, enjoying the luxury of not nearly freezing to death in his tent.
In the morning, Tom looked out of his tent at the sun rising over the Pacific Ocean. Japan is often known as the Land of the Rising Sun, and its flag has a picture of a rising sun. Somewhere far across that ocean lay California and the many beaches that Tom had camped on as he cycled up the coast of America.
After almost two years following the coast of the Pacific Ocean, it was time at last for Tom to say goodbye – sayonara – to the world’s biggest ocean. It was time to ride across China.
Chaos and Chopsticks in China
The noise hit Tom first. Japan had been quiet and orderly. China was noisy and chaotic. In the streets, crowds of people pushed past each other, laughing, shouting and jostling.
Qingdao, the city where Tom arrived by boat, had shiny skyscrapers just like Tokyo. But away from the city centre the roads were potholed and busy and rubbish blew in the wind. Battered cars beeped their horns and swerved crazily through the traffic. None of this happened in clean, organised Japan.
Tom rode past street stalls – little shacks selling sizzling food cooked on homemade charcoal stoves. The delicious smells of food mingled with the dirty fumes and the stink of sewers.
Tom’s senses were on overload, and inside he was bubbling with excitement. His favourite thing in the whole world was to arrive somewhere new, somewhere surprising, and head out in search of adventure. He knew little about China, but he was excited to learn and explore.
It was much colder in Qingdao than in the south of Japan. Tom wrapped up as warm as he could, pulling his spare pair of socks over the top of his gloves. He pedalled into the countryside. Riding through villages, Tom dodged the goats that strolled around the road as they happily ignored the beeping cars. Passing homes, he glanced through doorways, spotting paper lanterns and hearing the gentle chirruping from songbirds or crickets kept as pets in little cages.
Old men sat round low tables playing mahjong, a game a bit like dominoes. The tiles are slammed down as noisily as possible. Tom waved at a cluster of boys, squatting in a circle playing marbles. He was too cold to stop and join in, though, and too excited.
Here he was, on the edge of the third biggest country in the world, surrounded by a billion people who – as yet – he couldn’t say a single word to. He couldn’t read the roadsigns either, which was a problem when he had thousands of miles to cycle through China. Nobody knew Tom. Nobody knew that he was here. And all these things made Tom very happy indeed. It was new; it was unknown; it was difficult. It was perfect!
Tom always enjoyed sharing the road with other cyclists and there were millions of them in China. All the bikes in China were the same – black and heavy. The men riding them wore matching blue flat caps. Ladies wore masks over their noses and mouths to protect them from China’s disgusting, polluted air. It was the worst that Tom had come across on his ride around the world.
Some bikes were clunky three-wheelers, piled high with stuff to be sold at market. Tied to the bikes were shiny piles of pots and pans that clanked, baskets of chickens (that clucked), and bundles of mops and buckets. One bike even had a pair of grumpy-looking pigs strapped to it!
Everyone stared at Tom as he pedalled past. He looked very different to the Chinese villagers. They were not used to seeing foreigners, and people in China are definitely not shy about staring.
Tom smiled and waved. They waved back and called out, “Ni hao!”
“Ni hao … Ni hao … Hello!” Tom practised saying to himself. He’d just learned his first Chinese word.
Tom had become good at using sign language when he couldn’t speak the language – clucking like a hen when he wanted eggs, putting his hands together at the side of his head and closing his eyes when he wanted to sleep, rubbing his tummy when he was hungry and so on. Bit by bit he managed to communicate with the people he met, despite having no common language.
Spoken words were one thing, but making any sense of Chinese writing was quite another matter. As in Japan, Tom could not read or write a single word. But China was harder than Japan for Tom to travel through because, away from the big cities, hardly anyone in China understood the Latin alphabet Tom knew. This made things very complicated. For example, one day Tom bought a carton of milk. He was very thirsty. He opened it and took a massive gulp. Instantly he spat it out, all over the road – he had actually bought soy sauce, not milk.
Luckily, Tom found some help. He met a teacher who spoke English. Seow Hong helped Tom prepare some cards with Chinese writing on them. When he needed something, he could show the cards, which was very helpful. The cards had phrases in both Chinese and English such as:
“I am really hungry. Please can I buy a big plate of food?”
“Is there somewhere nearby where I can camp for the night?”
“How far is it to the next place where I can get food and water?”
“My name is Tom, I come from England, and I am cycling round the world.”
What other phrases do you think would be useful for Tom? When Tom showed his cards to people they smiled and gave
him the thumbs-up sign, a sign that seems to be understood all over the world. Then they would try to help. China was very noisy and the people did really disgusting spits all the time, even when they were cooking meals. But everyone was generous and friendly.
The young cyclist had one more handy trick to help him communicate. A Chinese journalist interviewed Tom about his adventures in the 50 countries he had pedalled across so far. They had chatted in English and then the journalist translated the story into Chinese. When the article was printed in the newspaper, there was a big photo of Tom and his bike at the top of the page.
Tom cut the article out of the newspaper. He had no idea what the reporter had written, but every time he showed the story to someone, the person read it carefully and then clapped Tom on the back as if to say “well done”. Then they laughed a lot and gave him a big plate of food for free! This was good news, as Tom really loved Chinese food. Especially noodles.
To make noodles, a chef creates dough and stretches it out as far as his arms can reach. Then he brings his hands together so that he has a big loop of dough. Taking both ends of the loop in one hand, with the other hand he holds the loop in the middle so that he now has two fat strands of dough. The chef does this over and over again. Each time, the number of strands of dough double in number. They also get thinner. In just seconds a big piece of dough has changed into 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 strands of noodle. Tom, the hungry cyclist, drooled as he watched. 128 noodles was a feast!
The chef chucked the noodles into a pan of boiling water. As they bubbled away, he grabbed a big wok and threw in handfuls of chopped vegetables, chicken and tofu, followed by herbs and spices. Stirring the food as it sizzled furiously, the chef had Tom’s lunch ready in just two minutes!
As he pedalled through the country, though, Tom learned that not all Chinese food is so delicious, not like the takeaway back home. One time he went to a night market that sold all sorts of weird food: fried scorpions, seahorses, snake, centipede. It was then that he really, really wished he had a banana sandwich!
Another time, after he’d finished a meal, Tom learned that he had just eaten dog! This is quite normal in parts of China, but Tom’s sister Lucy would be very cross if she ever found out. He didn’t think he wanted to eat dog again but had to admit it didn’t taste too bad.
Tom found it hard to describe what dog tastes like. The best way he could explain it was that it tasted a bit like cat …
After so much practice in Japan, Tom imagined himself to be a bit of an expert when it came to using chopsticks. But the Chinese people he met seemed to disagree. Many of the cafés Tom ate in were nothing more than a few stools clustered beside the road. So crowds of people gathered to stare wherever he ate. Traffic jams even developed as cars slowed down to take a look. These were the biggest crowds Tom had attracted since he had ridden through Ethiopia in Africa.
When Tom ate with chopsticks, everyone roared with laughter. And if a noodle should slip from his grasp, this was the funniest thing of all. Cycling round the world had taught Tom not to be shy and he was quite used to people laughing and being surprised at the things he did.
Every country in the world does normal things a little bit differently. In Japan, people touch their noses when talking about themselves; in Bulgaria they nod their heads when they mean “no”. And different cultures have many different styles of eating, from knife and fork, to hands, to chopsticks.
As the crowds chuckled, Tom quietly ate his meal, often studying a map at the same time to work out how much further he had to ride that day. But one lunchtime, he spotted a joker in the crowd. The man was making everyone laugh by miming the way that in Tom’s country people ate with a knife and fork, rather than with chopsticks: slice, spike, eat. Slice, spike, eat.
Everyone was laughing. But the biggest laugh of all came when Tom pointed out to the joker that he was holding his imaginary knife and fork in the wrong hands. The joker was actually doing worse with his cutlery than Tom was doing with his chopsticks. At least Tom had them in the proper hand, even if a few noodles did fall on the floor every meal!
Chinese people also enjoyed the way Tom wrote. It seemed strange to them. When he finished lunch, he always spent a few minutes writing his diary or a postcard home. People clustered around to have a look, peering over his shoulders as he wrote. They had no idea what Tom was writing.
Sometimes the people staring at Tom crowded in a bit too close. This was annoying. He never had any peace and quiet in China. So because he knew that nobody could read English, Tom sometimes amused himself by writing things like “this old man staring at me has got a really big nose”.
Beijing to the Great Wall
China’s capital city, Beijing, was totally different to the small villages that Tom had been pedalling through. Beijing is the bit of China that the rest of the world usually sees, and so the streets are kept spotlessly clean. Shiny skyscrapers soar up into the murky sky. But there is so much pollution in Beijing that in the mornings Tom’s eyes stung. The sunrises are pale lemon-yellow, and quite beautiful through the disgusting thick air.
Higher only than the skyscrapers are the hundreds of kites that fluttered in the sky as Tom rode past. Children in Beijing love flying kites. The kites are often decorated with birds, dragons or scary faces.
Riding into big cities was usually the worst part of Tom’s trip because of all the traffic. But cycling into Beijing was fantastic fun. At rush hour the wide cycle lanes are filled with millions of cyclists, all sweeping along into the city together. It was great to ride in such huge crowds and was also much safer than dodging traffic by himself.
Just as Tom arrived in Tiananmen Square, he felt his tyre go flat. A puncture. Getting a puncture is always a bit annoying, but getting a puncture in one of the most famous city squares in the world was better than usual. In such a crowded city, the world’s fourth biggest square was so big it felt as empty as being out at sea.
Tom sat down by the gate to the Forbidden City to fix his wheel. The Forbidden City was once the greatest palace in China.
You might think that Chinese people would be used to seeing someone fix a puncture as they have so many bikes themselves. But they were definitely not used to seeing a boy like Tom, a boy who was cycling round the world. And so of course a crowd gathered, staring and talking about Tom as he plucked out the nail that had caused the puncture.
Chinese police are very suspicious and don’t like large gatherings; they worry that people might be getting up to mischief. Within minutes the police arrived. They wore big green hats, dark sunglasses and shouted very loudly until they discovered that the cause of the crowd was nothing more troublesome than a young boy fixing his bike.
In Beijing, the streets are busy with people in expensive clothes chatting on smartphones. There are American shops like McDonalds and Starbucks, and lots of expensive foreign cars. Every country in the world has rich people and poor people. But the difference in how people live was more striking in China than almost anywhere else Tom had cycled.
Just one day’s ride away from Beijing’s skyscrapers are villages where farmers plough tiny fields using ancient wooden ploughs. They live in mud-brick homes roofed with clods of earth. These people’s lives have not changed in hundreds of years.
China is becoming richer at an amazing speed, but there are still millions of very poor people. The country is developing fast. New cities are springing up all the time with big roads and super high-speed railway lines connecting them.
Tom cycled into a wide valley terraced with rice fields. Through the valley ran a broad river – China’s famous Yellow River. It was a pale muddy colour, not exactly yellow. But Yellow River is a better name for one of the world’s great rivers than Slightly Muddy River.
His heart sank. There was no bridge! Tom had ridden a quiet, empty road to get here as he liked looking for wilder routes away from main roads. But he had not expected the
road to simply end. This was bad news. Maybe even BAD NEWS.
The road Tom was on was brand new, so it had been a bit of a puzzle as to why it was deserted. But now he understood why he hadn’t seen any cars for days. He was on a road to nowhere.
Tom was stuck. He hated the thought of having to turn round and go all the way back. But there seemed to be no other choice. He could not cross the Yellow River. So Tom did what he always did when he had a problem: he sat down and ate a banana sandwich.
The sandwich cheered him up a bit, but he still couldn’t think of a solution. He put off making a decision by fixing another sandwich. He couldn’t risk using up his precious supply of bananas, so he made a bread sandwich instead.
Bread sandwiches don’t taste very nice, but they are very cheap. Here’s how to make a bread sandwich:
Get a piece of bread
Put another piece of bread on top of it (this is the sandwich’s tasty filling)
Put another piece of bread on top of that
Squash it down and eat it
Tom’s other trick for putting off making difficult decisions was to take a nap. So he rested his head on a rock that looked like a pillow even if it didn’t feel like one, and drifted off to sleep to dream about bridges and bananas.
Some time later he woke to the sound of a spluttering engine. It sounded like one of the millions of smelly little motorbikes that zoom all around Asia. But for once this was not a motorbike. It was an engine on a barge. A barge, on the river. A barge heading his way.
Tom couldn’t believe it. As quick as a flash he jumped to his feet. He leaped up and down and yelled as loudly as he could. Luckily the man steering the boat spotted him. With a surprised look, he turned the boat towards the riverbank and headed for the deranged, dirty boy who was jumping up and down.
Riding Home through Asia Page 3