In Lonely Planet it says: “Hitching in China is rarely free… Some drivers might even ask for an unreasonable amount of money.” Well, I have different story to tell, and it is mainly about the astonishing Chinese hospitality. I have just spent the last 6 weeks travelling (and hitching) in China, and the outcome deserves a short account.
It all started along the Mekong River (Lancang Jiang) in western Yunnan province close to the Burma boarder. Together with three other tall boys, we hoped to hitch from south to north along this untouched part of Yunnan. We started in tropical rainforests and followed the turquoise river north. Ten days later, we found ourselves in the Tibetan part of Yunnan surrounded by 6000 meters peaks. (This adventure is a fairytale on its own.) The hitching in this area is fairly easy. We mainly hitched on the back of open trucks. The only problem is the time. There are few cars in some parts of the valley the roads are very bad. We (I have to admit) took some local buses every now and then to reach the next town. The journey can be done without buses, but it demands gear to sleep outside. Anyway, paying was never a question when we hitched. On the contrary, people were more than happy to have four foreigners singing on the back of their truck.
Yet another adventure was my comrade John and my goal of hitching from Kunming to Shanghai. (2800 kilometres, ca from Norway to Rome) As there were no train tickets for over a week to go home to Shanghai, this was our only option. Buses are quite expensive and of course relatively boring. This hitch was very different from the dirt road hitching in the Mekong Valley. As the roads we chose were mainly highways we could not depend on local farmers and their goodwill. For this reason we were quite sure it would be an impossible mission. Hitching is after all an unknown concept in China. Well, 6 days later we were driven to our doorsteps in Shanghai and we practically did not spend any money. (Is there anyone out there who has done this any faster? I am tempted to call it the unofficial record…)
If there is one thing we learned it is that the hospitality one gets if being invited to a Chinese home also applies to a Chinese car. Our driving friends refused to let us pay for anything. Over the six days we were hitching our drivers gave us hotels, food, alcohol and endless cigarettes. (Hitching without smoking is very very difficult as excepting or offering a cigarette is the ultimate icebreaker) It is in other words simply fantastic to hitch in China.
The challenges are basically the same as in Europe. Finding the right spot is probably the main one. After finding the correct road out of town and a strategic spot, we never waited more than an hour. Another challenge is to deal with all the people who harass you telling you are crazy if you want to travel without paying. We quickly learned to ignore them with a smile - we knew they were wrong. Each time a driving friend would soon stop and take us into to the horizon. Remember to write a good sign. As there is no general hitching culture, the sign was in our experience what made the drivers stop. Make sure you have a good road atlas so you can locate and write an appropriate destination. I would not worry about the authorities. We once hitched with a cop and another time some cops stopped only to tell us that we were in a bad spot. Lastly, hitching without any knowledge of Mandarin seems very difficult. But it is worth a shot, everything is possible in China. (Except not smoking of course.)
All hitchhikers. Come to China! It is a dream.
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