Hey Hey to all,

I just returned from my afternoon ride. When I woke this morning I woke to the warm sun streaming through my balconey window. Man, such a beautiful way to greet the day. I spent some of the morning walking around town saying my morning's quota of 'Hellooowwww' and ventured to several of the market places. I didn't need food or anything I just love the feel and the vibe of Asian market places. The noise, the colour the smells, it's all so exciting. As it was such a beautiful day I thought hey, why not the do outskirts photo ride I have been planning.

So I jumped on the tredly and headed out of town.

It's pretty hard to 'want' to go for a ride out there. The photos I have put onto travelpod are from all sides of Baiyin. Only one to two photos are of the same industrial plant. Baiyin is a long city and basically you can ride right around it. The outer road is like a wall and anything cityish is built within. That's the clean and 'nice' area. On the other side of the main road is as I've stated on many occasions, bare hills, dirt and sadly many industrial plants. It doesn't really matter which direction you look there will always be two or more huge chimneys in the distance fouling the air with grayish black smoke. The best way to show it was to use the panorama option on my camera.

The problem with using this feature is that it puts everything 'more' into the distance.

The ride took me around five and a half hours. I first headed west where the factories aren't so many and then came back along the Baiyin Lanzhou Road and headed out east towards Si Long. This is where the read bad stuff is. I headed inland to where the factory workers live. Amongst their housing are little rivers that have turned black from the waste.

The closer to the factories you go the more houses there are covered in a grey dust.

I crossed over the train track that takes one to Urumqi and continued further towards the factories. Here I found an awesome little village made of mud bricks. All the houses were enclosed by mud walls and they were separated by little dirt pathways. It was so strange to ride around. I came across a uni student and stopped to chat with her for half an hour. She was in her first year at Lanzhuo Agricultural University and was visiting her grandmother.

He grandmothers house was a tiny two room house and the view from where we sat was sickening.

We were facing Baiyin and all you could see were factories and grayish black smoke. Her grandmother was born in this village and has never ventured any further than Baiyin. This is all she has ever known and she considers it normal. Her family have tried to move her away but she loves her friends and her village so she will stay, in her little mud hut with views of filthy smoke stacks spewing pollution into Baiyin's air.

Don't get me wrong, Australia is not much better with our levels of green house gases and our stubbornness with the Kyoto Agreement etc, I guess what I'm trying to say is it's really the sight of a Chinese Industrial Plant that amazes me. When you put many of them together it makes for one hell of filthy sight. Around them the land is full of waste that kills anything and everything in its way. There are no pollution laws. All rivers are filthy and fish can be seen floating on some of their surfaces.

Other rivers and streams are lifeless and yellow and even in 2006, there is nothing anyone can or will do about it. People need employment, food and money.

Things are changing in some of the larger cities but way out here in Gansu, it will take more than 'too many' years to implement change. The city dwellers will stay within the boundaries of the main roads and silly foreigners will continue to ride past them in search of somewhere beautiful to be. I know and understand there are worse places than Baiyin but I have never had to live in such an area. I grew up in a clean N green country town. I moved to Melbourne which isn't so bad pollution wise and then moved to the Gold Coast.

Everywhere I have lived has been beautiful and full of the colour green.

Everywhere I have lived has had clear bue skies.

Oh how I miss the colours blue and green!

Noodles and beers to ya...shane
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