28 Nov 06
We're not going anywhere in this E-Class - our transport, office and companion for the next four days and 1000 or so miles between Lanzhou and Beijing - until we've figured out how to make our iPod connect to the audio system. That involves tuning the radio manually, but the radio does not want to be tuned manually, it wants to skip from station to station. With all due respect to Chinese local radio, thanks but no thanks.
We need to find a gap between stations so that we can beam the iPod's 1.21 gigawatts of reassuringly Western pop tunes into the car's sound system using our iTrip. No amount of pressing and twiddling will do it. We seek help. And who's the first person we should see when we look around the car park of the Lanzhou Sunshine Plaza but Johannes Reifenrath, who has an incredibly appropriate job title: head of global communications.
Of course he doesn't have the foggiest idea either, but this man is clearly possessed of supernatural competence, as well as looking like Mika Hakkinen's younger, fitter, better dressed brother. His mere presence in the car is enough to make the radio suddenly start doing what we want, and so, suitably tuned in and psyched up, we're ready to go.
Lanzhou is where the Yellow River (or Huang He) meets the Silk Road, and has for centuries been a crossroads for traders travelling between Tibet, India, central China, Siberia and beyond. We rather like the idea of being part of that great travelling tradition. Hey - we're not tourists. This is work. This is exploration. Behind us, the experiences already recorded by Shahmanesh-Banks, Collier, Simister and Rutherford. Ahead of us we have the prospect of Beijing, with its Forbidden City and quite possibly some dragons, plus the Great Wall, and... and there it all goes a bit vague. What else is there? It can't all be rice fields and nuclear power stations, can it? Let's go and find out.
