- 10 months ago
Two seasoned YouTube vloggers bike 5000km through southern China's weirdest and wildest back roads. --- 0006-2007_0006-2023
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Short filmTranscript
00:00My name is Winston Sturzel, also known as SerpentZA on YouTube.
00:04I'm Matthew Tai, otherwise known as C-Milk, and on YouTube, I'm known as Laowhy86.
00:09I've been vlogging about China for the past seven years or so.
00:12In fact, as far as I can tell, I'm the original China vlogger.
00:16I vlog out of China in order to show people what China's really like.
00:19Because of vlogging on YouTube, we were able to come together and share our passion for motorcycles,
00:24which led to us opening up Churchill Customs, our motorcycle shop.
00:27We're about to embark on our biggest adventure today.
00:30We're going to be going through five different provinces in southern China.
00:33Guangdong, Hunan, Guangxi, Huizhou, and Yunnan.
00:37We'll be traveling over 5,000 kilometers on our hand-built 125cc motorcycles.
00:42Most people don't think such a small bike is up to the task.
00:45We're out to prove them wrong.
00:46We're going to be riding on some of the toughest roads China has to offer,
00:50eating some of the strangest and most exotic foods.
00:53And we'll have the chance to meet some incredibly interesting people,
00:56including China's ethnic minorities.
00:58No guides, no translators.
01:00We'll show you the real China.
01:06Good morning, Guizhou.
01:11We are heading out of Guizhou and into Yunnan.
01:15The final leg of our epic journey takes us through Yunnan.
01:18A grueling ride takes us to Jianshui, famous for its water and fermented tofu.
01:23We also stumble across a hidden conspiracy deep in the city's wells.
01:27And he showed us where all the pollution is coming from.
01:29We head to the rice paddies of Yuanyang, catching fish with our bare hands.
01:34Got it!
01:36We learn the traditional fire dance of China's Yizhou minority.
01:41I'll just sit here and drink my beer.
01:43And we wrap up our adventure in Kunming, meeting up with our loyal subscribers.
01:48Whoa! So cool!
01:53Wow. That looks awesome.
02:08We are in the iconic rapeseed fields of eastern China.
02:23In China, you'll see statues all over the place of lions and dragons and things like that.
02:28And they actually carve this ball into the mouth.
02:31And apparently, if you can get this ball out, you can have a wish.
02:34It gives you good luck and fortune and all that nonsense.
02:37But I guess it's just not my lucky day.
02:43Not happening.
03:01Are you loosening or tightening?
03:04You're tightening, right? Don't you realize that?
03:07I was pushing it down before and then you're like, no, don't tighten it.
03:11We've just entered Yunnan province, but we're at a very high elevation here.
03:15It's about 1,850 meters above sea level.
03:18So these little 1-2-5s of ours are struggling a little bit.
03:22But we have been through some incredibly muddy roads.
03:25Our air filters were dirty, so I cleaned the air filters. What else did we do?
03:29We also tightened our chains and we added some oil because we noticed
03:33feeding these little tiny engines to get through these roads all day for 12-13 hours a day
03:39is actually eating some engine oil, so these bikes actually needed a severe maintenance.
03:44You know, fixing them up right before the last leg of the journey is probably the best idea.
03:48But yeah, we're ready to crack on, aren't we?
03:50Yeah.
03:51Yeah, let's go.
04:00Where are you?
04:03I can't see him. I don't know if I took the wrong turn.
04:12Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
04:18These roads just went to hell. They were really nice, but the wind picked up big time here in Yunnan.
04:24We took a road, I took the left and Winston took the right,
04:28and the intercom went out because I think we were more than a kilometer apart.
04:32So I rushed to make it back because I knew I took the wrong turn
04:35and basically slid out the back end of the bike and just took a dive.
04:39Thankfully, I didn't use my wrist to help myself when I fell.
04:48I've had some accidents before where I actually broke bones, so I'm happy to be all geared up on this trip.
04:53Especially every day, we're waking up super early, like 5, 5.30.
04:56Getting on the road, riding for 13 hours straight really gets to you.
05:00You realize you have to change your riding style for different conditions, and I didn't do that, so my fault.
05:06I need to make sure the bike's okay now. I think I'm okay.
05:09I'm going to get back on the road and finish this up.
05:30Hey guys, so one thing I've noticed about Yunnan that I really like is the sky is always blue.
05:36And also, we're going through a pretty interesting area where they farm in this red dirt, and they actually call it Hong Tu Di.
05:42Yeah, red dirt. As you can see, the dirt's red.
05:45Blue sky, red ground.
06:00After probably the hardest, longest ride of the trip, it was about 470 kilometers, and some of the worst roads, we finally arrived in a city called Jian Shui.
06:19This city is supposed to be an ancient city, and we were skeptical at first, but then when we actually crossed into the city's gate, we realized it's actually true.
06:27They're very famous for their water here, and we heard something about a special food that they make.
06:31So we're going to go search it out, unpack our stuff, and kind of see what this place is all about.
06:43Some lovely locals appointed us in the direction of a local specialty, which is fermented, barbecued tofu.
06:49I'm pretty excited to try it, and apparently we get to barbecue it ourselves.
07:27I've heard that the water here is pretty good.
07:31Pure water.
07:33What's so special about this water?
07:36It's cold.
07:38Why don't I bring some over to show you guys?
07:40Sure.
07:42Cheers!
07:54Is this your water?
07:56This is warm water.
07:58Can you drink it or not?
08:00Actually, it's a bit sweet.
08:02Is it?
08:03It's a bit sweet.
08:04If it's a bit sweet, it's good. If it's not sweet, it's not good.
08:07Right?
08:08That's right.
08:20Let's try it out.
08:23As far as tofu goes, it's really, really not bad.
08:27The inside is super, super soft, and the outside is a little bit crispy. I like it. It's pretty good.
08:36There's other barbecue selection here. It's not just about the tofu.
08:39And I found some stuff I've actually never seen before in China.
08:42We have all kinds of delicious meats and stuff, but this is the thing that really freaked me out.
08:46This is actual dog's tail, with all the hair burned off.
08:51And I think there's some brains over here as well.
08:53I don't know if that's from a dog or not, but this definitely is.
08:57I don't actually know how you eat that. I assume they put it on the grill.
09:00I won't be trying that today.
09:42Last night we tried that tofu, that strange kind of, those little tofu pillows.
09:47And the guy kept going on about the water being special.
09:50Now, I can't really imagine how water can actually be special,
09:54so we decided we'd track down what the people do and why they're talking about the water.
09:58We searched around the ancient city, and after we crossed through the huge gate, we found this ancient well.
10:03And apparently all the local people come here to fetch all their water every morning,
10:07and it has special properties, such as having liang qi,
10:10which means cooling properties, if you believe in Chinese medicine.
10:14I think any tall glass of water will cool you on a hot day.
10:17Anyway, well, well, well.
10:45Where did the pollution come from?
10:55He's saying all the sewer water from all the houses around here
10:59is going down into the groundwater and obviously into the well.
11:03So he says, of course, because it's higher up.
11:05And he also mentioned that all of the people's houses that originally lived here
11:09get that water every single day.
11:14The guy just said this water is bad for you,
11:17but the others said it's good for you.
11:21It's good for you?
11:22Yeah, it's good for you.
11:24It's good for you.
11:25This water is good for you.
11:27It's good for you.
11:28It's good for you.
11:29This water is good for you.
11:30It's good for you.
11:31It's good for you.
11:35It was an unexpected encounter to meet that guy that told us about the pollution in the well.
11:39We actually didn't mean to film anything like that.
11:41We're not here to judge but it is pretty apparent that that's not the healthiest thing in the world to be
11:46Drinking or eating you just need to open your eyes and look around
11:48And that's one thing about China's you you can't just take people's word for things you have to always explore and see for yourself
11:54China's one of those countries where not everything is as it seems I might think twice about eating tofu
12:00I might think twice about eating that tofu anyway
12:12So
12:16We're about to leave
12:18Jianshui and we're gonna head to the beautiful honey village of Yuanyang. We've heard there's amazing rice terraces there and all kinds of really cool
12:26minority culture that we're gonna see
12:41This morning's roads have been absolutely fantastic
12:43We left the town and as soon as we got out of the town we got into some really nice sort of rural roads
12:48Up here in the mountains been really amazing
12:50We can't wait to crack on because apparently there's some of the best scenery in Yunnan in this little village
12:55We're heading to so can't wait to see it
13:11I
13:13Think it's time to go find some local honey people and see what these guys are all about
13:17Last night we met somebody who told us about this really beautiful scenic area nearby about a hundred kilometers away
13:23From where we were and they said that they had some kind of strange traditions here
13:27And they gave us a number of someone we could meet so we've come here to apparently catch fish in a rice
14:11He'll have a beer and he'll have water. Okay. We'll make a tea tea. Joy. You know, I'll tell someone to get it
14:17Chummy, it's each other. All right. Can I say what was that? You're gonna know you're dog
14:21How about this?
14:22The first person to catch a fish is the winner the loser has to gut and cook the fish for the other person
14:27All right, good deal. Yeah, let's do it
14:31We didn't really come prepared with a bathing suit
14:41I'm more or less ready to go. Okay, so to be fun
14:44Best man win
15:04Scrolling up my leg. Yeah, there's lots of weird spiders and like probably leeches and not too happy about that
15:12It's all it's all part of the game. It's all for the fun
15:18No, they're so fast and so slippery
15:41I got it. It's mine
15:53Got it
15:58All right second place, I'm really tired
16:01But still happy to get a catch
16:05He's got a little mustache. Let's eat
16:12Don't fall over
16:19I got mud everywhere
16:23Dive in. Yeah
16:31To the spoils
16:41You know
16:43Winston you gotta pick your dinner. Oh, I hate to condemn a fish to death. So let's go for this big one over here
16:51Dang Xiao what woman's I make one
17:01Okay
17:03Well when I was a kid, I used to go fishing with my cousins and when we caught the fish
17:07We'd string him up in the in the lake
17:12At the end of the day, we'd get our catch and bring him back home
17:15And then we whack him on the head and we would actually just cut the meat out of it here
17:18They do it a different way. They open it up and they leave all the scales on and pretty much everything inside and
17:25Just barbecue like that. This is the first time I've done it like that
17:36All right, just push it down to both sides, okay
17:41Hey
17:43Chicken leg chicken foot
17:53We're very barbaric today, aren't we? Oh, there's two chickens dude. Second one must be pretty compressed
18:03All right, guys, we have two chickens cooked in bamboo what a surprise I wasn't expecting chickens to come out of there
18:10Seriously, I thought it'd be rice. I thought you'd say rice or soup. Yeah, that's exactly what I was expecting but not two chickens
18:17This is a special kind of tobacco called hair tobacco
18:30It's actually really smooth and very easy
18:39I
18:42Wish I told you that
18:47How you listen
19:00It's getting pretty cold
19:01So I think we should head back to the hotel and actually clean up a bit and then apparently they have a bonfire planned for
19:06Us where we're gonna enjoy some song dance and some more alcohol. How is my fish? Oh, yeah, I'm not bad at all
19:12Well done good fairly good preparation still had a lot of guts inside, but actually tasted great. Awesome. Well, then
19:29Belly full of rice terrace fish
19:31We are ready to watch the traditional honey dancing, but we've gotten a little taste of the music so far and I have to say
19:40Doesn't sound very traditional
20:02I've never been happier
20:15Looks like Winston got into it now
20:31Oh
20:44Hey see milk, they're gonna sing a minority song for you. I just can't wait
21:02I
21:12I'm so happy. They stopped playing that music and actually started to sing an actual traditional song. It's so much better
21:18So much nicer once again the March of Progress
21:21You got some mp3 player speaker down there playing absolute rubbish music, you know, and it just drowns out the real culture. That's
21:28around
21:31You
21:41Morning guys, I'm in Yunnan. I'm currently at the top of a mountain here
21:45My epic adventure with sea milk is coming to an end if you are in Kunming, please come to Jianshi Lake
21:51We're gonna have a big barbecue by a lake
21:54Lots of beer and we'll be talking about the trip
21:57So if you have time, please come hope to see you there and as always stay awesome
22:12Good morning, Yunnan. This is the last day of our triple the last big ride. It's gonna be over 400 K's
22:18We're really excited even though it's gonna be a hard long ride
22:21But thankfully we woke up above the clouds to these beautiful awesome rice terraces
22:57So nice to meet you
23:27Look here can do this
23:40This is how I
23:45Think that's my okay
23:47Cheers
23:53The only reason I actually continue with my youtube channel is for my subscribers
23:57So to do a journey like this and not meet with him really wouldn't make any sense
24:01Our subscribers are kind of like our online family and the fact that they would go out of their way to come meet us
24:06It was just so cool. So incredible
24:17Well mates are our trips over I can't believe it man like 5,000 K's and one two fives
24:22It's pretty much the hardest ride I've ever done. China's insane
24:26Going out there into different provinces and meeting local people and planned
24:30It's one of the most rewarding things you can do you hear this term thrown around a lot the real China, right?
24:36and it was the first time in my life that I actually felt like I saw the real China to be honest because
24:40Every time he crossed into a new province
24:42There was a new language or a new culture a new type of food that we had to try
24:46You can't really pigeonhole China
24:49You can't say this is China in a nutshell
24:51Because it's so vast and it's full of so many different cultures and so many different things
24:55So you have to go out and experience it
24:57The real China is like something that I think most foreigners don't get to see when they come to China
25:01They come on their plane. They go to Beijing. They go to Shanghai the big cities and stuff
25:05and
25:06you know being here so long and being able to speak the language and actually talk to the local people and
25:11Experience all these different local cultures was something really special and something I take home from this entire trip
25:16This is the first of many I hope so. Well until the next time
25:41Oh
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