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I remember that road across the mountains from 20 years ago: I had stuffed myself with sour grapes the day before and my bowels were screaming… 6, maybe 8 hours to go, that is if a truck does not have the malignant idea to break an axle in a pothole and create an impossible traffic congestion. I’ll never make it! Already my sphincters are cramping.

Thousands upon thousands of worker ants are hauling stones & displacing dirt. The sight is amazing. Over tens, maybe hundreds of kilometers, the rice plain is cut open and the mountains ripped apart to make space for the highway. This comes at a price: the old road, already battered is beyond repair; the tarmac is gone, the potholes are pools of uncertain depth and the traffic, increased with the trucks, three wheelers and wheelbarrows of the construction site is indescribable. It will have to do, until the expressway opens.

Good news: the driver agreed to skip lunch to make good on the way. We won’t have to stop & I won’t have to face a mountain of shame, humiliation and embarrassment  in a public toilet (yes, these are “very public” in China). Bad news: a truck lost its load of pipes; the things are scattered in a neat pile in the middle of the road; the traffic only goes one car at a time, alternatively from each side; no crane in sight.

2 hours to go!

I managed to catch some sleep, I don’t know how much, while our driver made progress… The colic is back with a vengeance; I feel pains in parts of my tummy I didn’t know existed! That pain has a color: it is yellow and green… pretty much the same color as the force 9 disaster if I let go… I chuckle at the though that in that case, it will have an odor too… but it is not funny.

I am white, or green, or whatever; drenched in cold sweat. We are in the suburbs of Ningbo, the road is better, we may have 30 minutes to go… I still won’t make it, no way I can make it! It is unbearable! Why am I here? What brought me there? I don’t know… the only thing that matters is to hold on!

We have arrived someone says; passport, cash – USD please, (China is in an “accumulation of the green stuff” mode at that time), Public Security Bureau card to fill in, my key… why is the elevator so slow? My mind has separated from my body – I don’t feel the pain any longer – It is drifting ahead, opening the way, clearing the obstacles, so, at last, I can make it in an “explosion of relief”…

YiWu NingBo Expressway

On Thursday evening, we came back directly to Ningbo from YiWu; we did not go to HangZhou. It took us the best of two and an half hours on a magnificent highway… Of course, I had not stuffed myself with sour grapes, I’ve learned that lesson long ago.

It has become A LOT easier to do business in China in the last 20 years!

We went to Hangzhou on Saturday and are still there; we will be returning tomorrow. Following Friday’s intense session at the dojo, I decided not to train Saturday afternoon in HangZhou; instead we went to LongJing, the China capital of green tea. I climbed the surrounding mountains in the company of 2,000 ducks! I’ll post that story tomorrow.