In Shanghai, it bangs. The Chinese New Year is celebrated devil-style. Clouds of black powder smoke is drifting around the corners and the sky explodes with fireworks. Red lanterns decorate the streets and fire balloons ascend far beyond the skyscrapers. It might scare you from all the noise, even if it's only meant well...

Once upon a time in China lived a monster in the mountains, half-bull half-lion. Every end of winter, when there was nothing left to eat, it crept down to the villages and devoured everything he could find. The villagers lived all the time in fear and terror, scaring the day when Nian again would haunt their village. But one day, when Nian invaded again in a village, it found there children who were burning bamboo poles. The rods burned in the flames with dry bangs. The noise and the flames frightened Nian and it moved back. When the villagers saw this, they light fire everywhere, hung red flags at their houses and made noise all night long. From that day on, Nian has never been seen again. But what was once, could happen again, and so firecrackers will always be ignited and red lanterns will be hanged in the streets at the end of the Chinese year. To chase away the evil and to welcome the good.

The moral of the story is obvious: making noise is good. And we have to get used to it in the next few weeks in China. Sometimes it happens that next to our bicycle wheel ten meters of bang string get off. With a burn speed of "one meter per minute" (source Wikipedia). All the fun then takes ten minutes. And we are right in the middle of it. But this bangs are only "moderately loud”.

As well the honking probably falls into the chapter of Nian's legend. Actually we're used to honking and waving truck drivers and until now it has always been fun. But here in China they only honk, if they are at the height of the cyclist and then so extensively that it almost peppered us out of the saddle a few times. And this only to wish us good luck. This setting is really a fine thing. Indeed, if you extensively press the horn, you must not even pay attention to the traffic. The lucky (noisy) one is safe. That's why you can also overtake at any time. Narrow streets, unobservable curves and fast pace are just blown away with a good portion of noise.

We can't find anything positive on this noisiness and that's why we take the night train from Shanghai to leave the heavily colonized Yangtse basin. In the bends of the Li River, between Guilin and Yangshuo, we hope to find a few quiet corners. The love story about the unearthly singer Sanjie Liu has indeed made the place one of the most important of China's tourist spots, but now in the off season and outside the crowded Top Sites we are alone. The sky is foggy, gray and shapeless. The bamboo boat glides through the diffuse light along sandbanks and cliffs. Mountain fingers enclose the river, old and weathered, each has its own form, its own name. But if we look out now through the ravine, they seem to form a pattern, like waves caressing the horizon. It seems as we glide not only on, but in the water, as if not only the fog, but also the fairytale singing of Sanjie Liu remained hanging in the limestone hills.

As well the land of Dong, hundred and twenty miles north of Yangshuo is far away from the Chinese noise. Here the covered wind and rain bridges span over the rivers connecting the villages with the outside world. They are the hallmark of this minority people, in their shadow generations have walked past, their stone pedestals have felt the water from centuries. They have become time windows. If you look through, you end up in another China. Wooden houses are built in community work, water buffalos are plowing the fields, leisurely and a little bit dreamy. Nothing can get them worked up. Rural people are amazed to meet up with strangers, they stare at us. But they are friendly, more open than the Chinese, we have encountered so far. What a contrast to Shanghai. What a contrast to the pace of life in the large cities.

It's as we would cycle through a silent film with the difference, that someone has not only the sound, but also the subtitles deleted from the movie. We see indeed what happens, but don't understand what is being said. Sure, in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia we could't lead a conversation with the people. But here we can't just talk, but can't read anything more. We try to memorize the first Chinese characters, because in the countryside the street signs aren't written in two languages. The quacking duck, the little table with two legs or the TV antenna - a mnemonic for not missing the next place. Even the sign language is not barrier-free. If we show 2 with the fingers, here it means 7. To fill an empty cyclist's stomach it's certainly not bad, but if we get shown a hotel room with seven beds, it gets more difficult. Despite everything, we're making progress, trying not to be confused with the Ying Yang and searching a place named Pingtang is also funny. However, we must already assume that we sometimes catch the dog meat in the restaurant, because it looks just the best.

China is growing. From villages to towns, from towns to cities. If we hit on our map a small point to stay for the evening, we end up in a city of millions. There is no difference between the places. Everything looks the same: gray, faceless, monstrous. Who wants to inhabit all these buildings? We ride through ultra-modern neighborhoods, all the windows are dark. Nobody can be seen. Entire neighborhoods are built and crumble again, without that somebody has ever lived in. The construction mania extends beyond the cities. Our map is not old. A year or two maybe. However, instead of the small mountain road that is shown on it, we find us on a four-lane highway. Cycling is prohibited. But there's no other road anymore. In China, the bicycle is the main means of transport, but that's simply hidden. We call it the strategy of ignoring. It's uncompromising and fast. Problems are solved in a jiffy. In a valley that is suffocated by the dust of the coal mines, they provide a couple of SPA Hotels and advertise for five star business tourism. The garbage on the roadside is burned on the spot. In this way they have immediately China's cleanest province, but at the next gust of wind all the surrounding hills are burned as well. Since we can't chance anything, we decide to support the system. We ignore the signs prohibiting cycling and ride on on the hard shoulder.

It's unbelievable, but the tactic also engages with us. We get a sinister development thrust. The noisy cities are wonderfully bypassed, ascents are flat and descents never end. It's a long time we have been on the road so quick and trouble-free. It's exactly what we want, since we really want to reach only one place: The snow-covered six thousand meter peaks of the Himalayas. But before we get there, the highways end. The valleys become deeper, the passes higher. But finally it's here.

The whole day we climb up. From the deep and hot Yangtse valley, turn after turn. The muscles burn, the water bottles empty itself as they had holes. Every ascent comes to an end. Eventually you reach the highest point, we know that. Two thousand meters in altitude and one hundred twenty kilometers the speedometer shows. It has become cool. All around us are blooming cherry trees again, the height has stirred up the seasons, forgotten spring dust has settled over the summer. Have a breather, then a final bend. We get off the bike, look eagerly from the pass over the forests, the hills. Wispy clouds are swirling in the sky. Only briefly, but we have seen it, the Yulongxue Shān, the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. The gateway to eastern Tibet. We jump around and shout for joy. The drivers look puzzled. Why? Have not they learned us to take the happiness in volume down?