Adventures on the Schizocycle
And the Difficulty of Reaching China's Rural Muslim Peasants
This is a lightly edited repost of an update I wrote on my very first blog 19 years ago yesterday, April 17, 2006, from NW China. It helps to illustrate the “real China” that so few get to see. I’ll be referring to this story in my weekly China Compass podcast, dropping April 19, 2025.
Yesterday afternoon was fun. I took an amazing 4 hour motorcycle ride up an absolutely horrible 'sand and rock' road through some of the smallest and most forgotten villages in China.
If it were not for the motorized Chinese tractors, the sporadic passing motorcycle, and the very occasional sight of a Chinese super-mini-minivan taxi, you could imagine that you were still living in the Middle Ages or even at the time of Christ.
Badly graded dirt roads, homes crafted of mud, stick, and straw, coal-burning stoves, and farmers weeding and tilling their fields by hand or with oxen; these are just a few things that haven't changed here for centuries.
Anywhere Other Than The Same Way Back
After arriving in the village of Jinggou, my original destination for the day, I stopped for a bowl of noodles before looking for another way down off the mountain. The road up was such a pain that I was willing to go anywhere on any road just so I didn't have to go back down the same way I had come up. Luckily, some locals informed me of a second road that headed down the mountain going the other direction.
I finished my noodles and then bought a Sprite (how Sprite gets to Jinggou I am really not sure!) to try and kill the taste of some awful condiment they had placed in my food. China has several of these 'killer condiments'. Its not pepper or salt or anything like that. . .it actually makes the mouth go numb in a way that is very difficult to describe. Not a fun experience at all. The Sprite helped and I was on my way.
Unfortunately, the “new” road down turned out to be about the same quality as the road up, but it was a little closer. I had to go up one hill, then down and around a ridge with some houses on top, down another hill towards a huge ridgetop mosque, then snake down the final switchbacks (about a 1,000 ft. drop) to the valley floor.
All was well until I got about halfway down the final descent. My engine started acting really funny, as only a Chinese motorcycle engine can do. It would act as if it was going to die and I would give it some more gas to try and help her out, only to have the accelerator suddenly 'let loose' and send me careening forward at speeds too fast for comfort.
Talking Myself Off a Ledge
I have to admit that I like to talk out loud to myself when riding a motorcycle in China. I don't know if I do it for my own comfort or just to pass the time, but I am constantly yelling at the motorcycle and/or to the road:
'What genius designed this road anyways!?'
'Who dumped piles of baseball sized rocks right in the middle of the stupid road?!'
'How come a Chinese highway can NEVER be flat!?'
'Why won't you just act like a normal motorcycle for once?!'
Yesterday, as my motorcycle was going back and forth between 'my engine is dying' and 'let's see if we can throw the American off the mountain', I decided to give it a name: the 'Schizocycle'. It was the perfect name, and the bike just kept right on as crazy as ever.
So, I finally managed to manhandle the Schizocycle to the main road at the bottom of the mountain. And as I pull up to stop for a rest at the intersection, the bike finally 'gave up the ghost' and completely died. I called my wife on my cell phone and told her that I might be a while, then tried kickstarting the bike. Nothing. Not even an acknowledgement that I was there.
I walked the bike up the highway about 75 yards to the first motorcycle repair shop I could find and explained to the mechanic that the 'fadongji' (motor) wouldn't start. He started checking things here and there, changed out a few little gadgets having to do with the fuel injector and starter (I don't know the technical terms), then started the bike once to show me that it was fixed. Great! I thought.
Seems Like the First Thing You’d Check
But as he put everything back together and went to start it one last time, all of a sudden the Schizocycle was at it again. This time, nothing. Not even a peep. Back into hibernation. He went back at it, looking and tweaking and trying to find the problem. Finally, a friend of his turned a switch next the fuel tank that is supposed to drain the gas tank, if there is any gas. Nothing. Dry as the Gobi Desert.
Now, let me explain something to you about Chinese motorcycles and their gas tanks. First, there is no 'gas gauge' as we know it in the West. The best method I have discovered is to shake the bike from side to side and listen for the sound of gas swishing around the tank. The louder the sound of swishing, the more gas. Not a bad technique. I had done this just two days earlier and it seemed that there was plenty of gas in the tank, especially for a relatively small (125 cc) bike. Well, evidently I was wrong, and the steep mountain road had drained the Schizocycle dry.
This is, let's see, only the 5th or 6th time I have run out of gas on a Chinese motorcycle. Not bad for not having a gas gauge! I was blessed that somehow the bike only ran out when I made it to the main highway, where their was a repair shop and a gas station. I would have been a long walk over the mountains with an empty gas tank.
The Unfinished Task
On a much more serious note, I don't know how we are going to reach the people in all these Chinese Muslim villages. The villages are so numerous, and the people so scattered with houses in every ravine, valley, and on every ridge or hillside, that it seems a nearly impossible task to be able to share with each person and see real, sustainable churches planted among these people.
So few of us even speak enough Chinese to be able to share the Gospel. I can speak really good Chinese, but the accents and local dialects are so thick in these backwoods places that at times even I feel like a foreigner 'fresh off the boat'. I can't understand them and neither do they understand me. And I speak Mandarin!!!
So, please pray for more laborers, both Chinese and foreign. And pray that God would reveal the strategy that will allow all of these people to hear the Gospel and for His Church to be firmly planted in these rugged Chinese hills.
