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Pedal-powered odssey to visit laoxiang During April this year, in one of the blizzard-lashed passes of the Qilian Mountain, in Northwest China's Gansu Province, a truck driver, after hours of driving without seeing a soul, got out of his cab to fetch water. To his surprise, a man of big build, with knots of black whiskers, and dressed in a strange garment, suddenly emerged in front of him. "Hello friend, could you take a photo of me and my bicycle?" asked the man. The truck driver was taken aback. And without a word, he rushed into the cabin of his truck and fled. Chen Qi can retell a number of such surreal encounters during his epic 5,000-kilometre cycling journey into Kazakhstan. Despite the harsh environment and punishing schedule, Chen had an important mission: He wanted to see his laoxiang, the Chinese colloquial expression used to describe one's fellow hometown folks, who have lived for several generations in Kazakhstan. The villagers are descendants of insurgent Muslim and Han peasants during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In 1877, driven by Qing government's repression, they left their homeland in the Guanzhong area in the central part of Shaanxi Province. After a long tortuous journey, they settled down and built their new homes in what is now the eastern edge of Kazakhstan. They called the place Yingpan, meaning "a camp to settle down." The settlers have retained a deep attachment to their native place, a characteristic of most Chinese living overseas. They have provided a rare case for anthropological study. More than 120 years after the exodus, the villagers still stick strictly to the customs set up by their ancestors. Besides Russian, they speak Chinese in a perfect Shaanxi dialect, even though most do not know how to write Chinese. Chen said he was immensely touched by the settlers' story ever since he learned about them from a report in the Chinese media in the late 1980s. "Many people here in my homeland were aware that there is a distant group of Shaanxi people living in remote Central Asia, who are nostalgic about their homeland," Chen told China Daily. "But because of the inconvenient travel facilities and poor communications between China and Kazakhstan, we have not been able to establish a closer relationship between us as both sides had hoped." Chen grew up in a village in Guanzhong where his ancestors have lived for dozens of generations. The area is a place with a profound history and culture. In the middle is situated the ancient city of Chang'an, known as Xi'an today, which served as the capital for 13 Chinese dynasties. People living there are particularly proud of their forefathers and native place. The limited communication between Shaanxi Province and the "Shaanxi village" finally prompted Chen to make the dramatic decision of taking a trip to visit them by himself, and by bicycle, after he had spent more than 10 years to do his homework in collecting information about them. "They are our laoxiang," said Chen. "I wanted to tell them that people in their homeland had not forgotten them. I wanted to tell them: 'Look, here I am, all the way from Shaanxi and I bring with me all the best wishes of their home folks from afar.'" Chinese people believe that since laoxiang share the same ancestors and native place with you, and share the same language, culture and beautiful memory with you, he or she should be deemed as to have a very close relation to you, and be treated dearly. But why by bicycle? "I just wanted to prove that it is not a very distant trip from Shaanxi to the 'Shaanxi village,' as many people might have thought," said Chen. "Indeed, as I wanted to show them, it could even be accomplished by bicycle." Pedalling odyssey But in reality the cycling journey was anything but a picnic. Except for short distance of level road in the Hexi Corridor in northwestern Gansu Province, most of the total of about 5,000-kilometre journey winds up and down through mountain areas, including passing for four times across three major mountains in China's northwest region: Liupan Mountain, Qilian Mountain and Tianshan Mountain. More than 400 kilometres of the road cuts across the thoroughly unpopulated Gobi Desert (gravel laden desert) in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Most of those who first heard of Chen's plan told him that "it is a mission impossible!" But from the very start Chen believed his chances of completion were good. "I simply believed that I could make the trip," Chen said. As a man who served in the armoured division of the army for 18 years, he has accepted strict military training and learned how to survive in the wilderness. And he is a life-long cycling lover. "I used to take off on one-day excursion by bicycle to nearby villages or mountains whenever I got a spare day to spend," said Chen. "And while I was waiting for my passport, for about three months I kept using the two days of the weekend cycling as a means of preparatory exercise." Before he hit the road, Chen took a 720-kilometre trial trip into the Qinling Mountain in southern Shaanxi Province. He had planned to cover the distance in seven days, but his family and friends were surprised to see him finish the journey in five days and in good shape. "So they were to some degree convinced about my physical ability, hence less worried about me," said Chen, who is the father of a 16-year-old daughter. Back in his home village 7 kilometres away from his urban home, Chen is still the man from whom his relatives are used to asking opinions about all kinds of things. Chen regularly cycles back to spend a day with them in weekend. So, when the day came, Chen simply straddled his bicycle, waved his hand to the almost 200 people who came in the early morning to see him off, and set out, just as if he were going to call on a relative's family in the nearby village. He carefully made an itinerary at home, so that all he had to do each day during the 5,000-kilometre marathon was to try his best to make the next stop. Like a wound-up machine, he would set off every morning at 6 o'clock, pedal the whole day and part of the night, and stopped at about 10 pm at whatever small inn he could find. In an average progress of 150 kilometres a day, it took Chen 31 days to finish the whole journey. "The most difficult part of the trip came after I left Dunhuang, Gansu Province, from which the road starts to traverse the vast Gobi Desert," Chen recalled. "I had to brace myself for the extraordinary north wind during those days. Sometimes I had to tilt my body 45 degrees to the right to keep balance. "And in the middle part of that section, I had to ride through a total of about 400 kilometres of unpopulated area. One day I had to cycle until midnight to find a small village along the road. That day I covered a distance of 240 kilometres. "And that's the area where I met a pack of wolves one night. They followed me for some distance and then disappeared. The laoxiang The first person Chen met in the "Shaanxi village" in Kazakhstan was middle school sports teacher Ma Lailai. He was sent by his people to meet Chen in the first Kazakh city after he passed the border, and to accompany him on the rest of the journey - also by bicycle. Another man also coming to meet Chen was An Husai, the leader of the "Shaanxi village" and chairman of the Donggan Association. He drove a car and followed Chen and Ma for the remainder of the journey. When Chen finally got to Yingpan, the place where the immigrants first settled down, a crowd of village people had long been waiting outside the village, holding a long welcome banner. When the villagers saw the laoxiang coming all the way from their native place to see them, many became emotional. Chen was overwhelmed by the village people's cordial reception during the 21 days when he stayed there. Though he lived in An's house, he had never got a chance to dine with An's family. The village people scheduled for him all in advance. They struggled with each other to invite him to family feasts and guide him to visit neighbouring places. The village elders could still remember the names of some sites in the Guanzhong area. Young people here called Shaanxi "my grandpa's province," and crowded around Chen to ask all kinds of things about their homeland. Chen did not encounter a language barrier here. All the people in the village talk in perfect Shaanxi dialect, except when referring to things not existing 120 years ago. All the people here have two names - one Chinese and one Russian. To these people, everything concerning their native land is sacred. An old man in the village has carefully preserved a Chinese painting bought in Moscow in 1959. "We are just like some stray lost sheep," said him. "Nobody knows when we would return back to the herd."
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