Hitch Hiking, China

My previous experience of hitch hiking is a quick 5 day trip from London, UK to Vilnius Lithuania; 7 countires, 12 cars, and around 2000km. This time I definitely expected there to be some difficulties, mainly the language barrier and the image I have of China in my Western head; people feeling under pressure to conform to the governments rules and regulations, and just not being as open to things they don’t know – such as 2 strangers on the highway.

Safe to say I was completely wrong in my assumptions.

Our hitch hiking journey in China started in Kunming, Yunnan Province, where we had been staying for a while to get our bearings before heading North-West towards the Tibetan boarder in the mountains. Being in central Kunming was no use for us, so we caught a 7Y per person bus to the outskirts of the city where we started to try and hitch from a Pay Toll point… the local security guards didn’t like our proximity to their workplace so we were soon moved on. We then double checked out map and found a perfect spot at a slip-road onto the main highway which leads directly from Kunming all the way up to our final destination – Shangri-La. With me standing further forward with a bright pink tshirt, and my boyfriend standing a hundred feet back with a bright yellow tshirt, we had a couple of cars stop but none that were heading where we wanted to go, but all in all it took only 30 minutes to get our first ride 100km to a gas station outside Chuxiong.

This gas station was in a great place, we had the traffic from the highway one side, the guys filling up their cars from another side and people who were using the Services facilities from another. Again, a couple of cars stopped, a couple of cars just showed they were full and couldn’t take us if they tried, and then a car with a family of 3 stopped. We explained we wanted to get to Lijiang – as best we could without any skills in Chinese – and they were happy to oblige. 3 and a half hours, 300km and a quick nap later we realized Lijiang is kind off the highway a little, so we asked to be let out at a cross junction. This caused a little confusion but they stopped and let us out… and this is when the father got out the car and started asking for money. We had explained we had no money but it must have been lost in translation, and we had forgotten about our well-worded note that explained our situation. Luckily after some shrugging from us and some slightly angry words from him and no one actually knowing what the other was saying, he got back in his car and left.

We walked for about 15 minutes from this main highway to an underpass that took us on a road straight to Qiaotou. Again adopting the strategy of me standing first on the slip road and my partner second (he has more experience than me, and the map, and the explanatory note… ) we were in the middle of eating a couple of biscuits when a couple from Beijing stopped, who happened to be going exactly where we were. It took around another 1 ½ - 2 hours to get to Qiaotou, and the couple were really interesting to talk to so the time flew by.

They dropped us at the turning for the Tiger Leaping Gorge trail in Qiaotou and we were on our way for a 3 day hike. Find my blog post about our time at Tiger Leaping Gorge including our camping experience, photos and video!

After a few days wandering this utterly stunning part of the world, we ended up at the end of the trail on a relatively remote piece of mountain road. There are shuttle buses you can take from Guest Houses to Lijiang, Dali and Shangri-La but they cost a fair bit (200-450Y depending on which Guest House and which city you’re going to). We opted to hitch hike out, so walked out of the village a little way and originally tried to hitch hike to Shangri-La along the mountain roads, but after an hour and no one going where we needed to (Haba village was the first stop along the route, 40km away) we switched tactics and within 15 minutes caught a list back to Qiaotou with a very friendly gourp of 3 local men in their minivan.

These guys dropped us right where the couple from Beijing had 3 days earlier, so we walked to the gas station on the edge of the town, which is a fair walk after 3 days hiking, and decided this was a good spot as there was light above us (it was getting dark) and plenty of room for potential drivers to stop. Standing together we waited around 10 minutes until a guy in his late 20s picked us up in his really nice mini van. He said he would take us straight to Shangri-La as that is where he lived.

We had a bit of a hiccup on the way there as a tire burst.

I know nothing about cars, but my partner does, so he helped the guy put on a new wheel. This slowed our maximum speed from 120kmph to 80kmph, making the last 80km take longer than expected. When he dropped us off, our map said Jiantang, so we walked to a main road through the center of town and tried to hitch hike out of the city, so we could pitch our tent and not pay for accommodation, get up early and get going the extra 180-200km to where our map said Shangri-La was. After an hour in the cold and increasing darkness, we got our first car but he was only heading 23km. We decided to stay the night and see how we faired in the morning.

We realized after a quick walk around we were actually precisely where we wanted to be, this town just has 3 different names depending on your map and who you talk to. Read my blog post on Shangri-La itself, including why on earth it has 3 names!

After exploring this wonderful little town, we had to get a taxi out to the main road that leads back towards Kunming. There were no buses and it was going to be dark by the time we got tere if we walked – bad planning on our part. The taxi tried to charge us 30Y even though his monitor said 10Y, so it was a lot cheaper than we expected. Only 20 minutes later we were in one of the shuttle buses I explained about earlier, only this time he was doing the journey anyway so he let us in for free and dropped us, once again, at the Tiger Leaping Gorge entrance in Qiaotou.

We ended up having to spend the night here as it was dark and the roads were quite, and we were exhausted. The next morning, totally revived from a decent sleep in a 50Y room with 2 double beds, we hit the road around 11am in the form of a little Nepalese style truck. These guys were super nice, they stopped to wash their truck which gave us some time to take last minute photos of the valley, then they dropped us at the same underpass road we had picked up the car with the couple from Beijing. We walked a reverse path up to the main highway and before long (10 minutes) we were in the back of another truck with a very loud and angry sounding Chinese man and his friend. They took us to the outskirts of Lijiang in about 40 minutes, where we took a bus into the city.

The next day we got a bus to a small, relativedly unknown village on the edge of Lijiang INSERT LINK called Nine Colour Rose INSET LINK, to see some awesome 3D paintings and just mess around with our cameras. This was actually perfect as it was only a 3km walk through the countryside to the highway we needed. We got up onto the road right by a Pay Toll and waited around 30 minutes before a lorry driver picked us up and took us straight to Dali. I have never hitch hiked a lorry before, but I’m not sure I’ll do it again in a hurry. As my partner described, it was ‘as if this lorry had square wheels’ and the suspention was insane, every bump in the road and you were almost slamming your head into the ceiling of the cabin. After 3 hours and 180km later we were totally shaken left, right and center and headed for bed.

In Dali INSERT LINK we got a bus to the outskirts of town again and started hitch hiking from just outside a Pay Toll, but after 30 minutes and a lot of sunshine later, we moved up the slip road to a potentially-better spot. We waited another 30 minutes and a guy in a Mark 6 Golf stopped and took us the rest of the way back to Kunming (another 300km or so).

We picked up our big bags from a friend in Kunming, had dinner, had a decent nights sleep then got going again on our 1000km journey to Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

As with most things in China, getting out of Kunming itself was harder than expected and harder than it should have been.

Once we managed to find a bus that took us to the right area of town, there was just a slight walk up onto a highway that was completely and utterly dead, with a car passing every few minutes.

After 30 minutes and a lot of laughing later we picked up a car that could take us 30km… at this point anything was better than nothing, so we jumped in with these 2 very official looking business men in their fancy half electric/half petrol car and 40 minutes later were back on the side of this empty road. We waited a further 20 minutes before a couple heading another 30/40km to Wuding picked us up. The guy was explaining we may find it difficult to get cars heading to Chengdu as we were ‘on the wrong road’ but on our map it should have been fine… in retrospect maybe we were on the wrong road as it was just as quiet throughout the evening, night and next morning.

After sleeping in the tent in the pouring rain and being a little soaked in the morning, we waited a further hour before 2 guys and a girl – all in their 20s/30s - picked us up in their people carrier and took us around 100km before dropping us at a slip road for their turning. We walked around 5-10minutes to the slip road that suited us (traffic flowing onto the highway) and waited a further 10 minutes before another group of 2 guys and a girl in their 20s/30s picked us up.

These guys were super helpful but didn’t quite understand the point in the way we travelled, with one of them ringing her friend who spoke English to ask us if we wanted to be dropped at a bus station or a hotel because ‘Chengdu is too far’ and they thought we wouldn’t get there today. I kind of agreed with them at this point, but I had high hopes as so far today was a much better day than the one before.

These guys dropped at at Miyi Services, welcomed us to Sichuan Province and left us to eat our pot noodles.

Half way through my lunch a girl came up and asked in broken English where we were going and how...

After 10 minutes of slightly confusing and broken conversation, with much help from her translator App, we established she was actually going further than Chengdu – which itself was another 500km away – and that she wanted to give us a ride.

Her and her partner were super friendly, spoke conversational English and even bought us food during a gas station break. Finally, 500km and 6 ½ hours later, they spent around 45 minutes trying to figure out where on earth our final destination was as their GPS and ours said different locations. Once they dropped us off, and offered us a mango as a departing gift (an incredibly large, delicious mango) we set off to find our Couch Surfers, in the rain.

This concluded our 10 day, 15 car, 2500km journey in the best way possible; covering 1000km in 12 hours.

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If you have any questions or have any further information about hitch hiking in China, please let me know!

If you’re interested in any of the cities we stopped at along the way, follow the links below!

Shangri-La

Lijiang

Dali

Or for further information on Car Licence Plates in China follow the link.