Our Guy in China

2 November 2016

Episode 1

In this three-part series Lincolnshire lorry mechanic and motorcycle racer Guy Martin will explore China, the modern day workshop of the world. He will be ignoring the usual tourist hotspots and instead looking for extreme experiences to satisfy each of his passions. It will reveal a side of China normally unseen. Lincolnshire lorry mechanic and motorcycle racer Guy Martin is famous for his love of drinking tea, hard graft and oddball physical challenges.

He’ll meet the families who live in a scrap yard, drink in the tea house preferred by China’s billionaires and attempt to set a new record for cycling across the longest desert highway in the world – all while trying to work around the government minders assigned to watch his every move.

In this first episode Guy will follow the trail of the Yangtze River. His adventure begins in the fastest growing city in the world - Chongqing. With a population of 30m it’s four times bigger than London, and is the largest motorcycle producing region in the world. Keen to see how this manufacturing powerhouse operates, Guy works in a factory to build his very own electric motorbike. He’s surprised by the lack of automation - everything is assembled by a skilled workforce – and realises it’s symbolic of the wider Chinese economy, where 30 years’ unprecedented growth has been sustained by a giant workforce.

After riding his new motorbike through the congested city streets, past brand new cars that are little more than counterfeit versions of Western designs and taking an improvised shortcut through a building site, he encounters the "Bang Bang Army", a group of aging porters who rely on a simple bamboo pole and immense brute strength to haul loads around the docks. Guy is keen to lend a hand but can’t shift the 200kg load without falling over - much to the amusement of the experienced Bang Bangs.

His next stop is the world’s biggest public convenience. The Porcelain Palace is a curious result of the rush to build Western-style infrastructure. Guy’s verdict on this collection of 1000 toilets? Not worth a detour, but worth calling in if you’re passing.

Further exploration along the Yangtze sees Guy lose his trademark sideburns in a backstreet barbershop, before tasting the produce from a farm that fertilises its crops in the traditional way with human faeces. He then arrives at the pinnacle of industrial tourism, the Three Gorges Dam. The world’s biggest hydroelectric powerstation relies on a man-made reservoir that stretches the same distance as London to Edinburgh, and has moved so much water that it’s slowed the rotation of the Earth. Guy finishes his visit by joining a group of Chinese pensioners on a sight-seeing trip, marvelling with them at the dumper trucks that helped build the dam in the dam’s open air museum.

Finally, at the end of the Yangtze, Guy reaches Shanghai and the biggest shipping port in the world. Guy is amazed that a shipping container leaves here every two seconds, a fact that helps make China the world’s biggest exporter. Guy seizes the opportunity to ship his electric motorbike back to his beloved hometown of Grimsby before jumping on the high speed train to continue his journey to Beijing.

Episode 2

In the second episode in this three-part travelogue, Lincolnshire lorry mechanic and motorcycle racer Guy Martin explores China’s capital, Beijing. He ignores the tourist traps and follows his own often eccentric passions to reveal a side of China not normally seen.

 

He travels from Shanghai to Beijing on China’s 200mph bullet train – covering the same distance as John O’Groats to Land’s End in less than six hours. He immediately trawls Beijing’s back streets to find a bicycle shop and buys a “Flying Pigeon” – the most produced machine in the world. Under the reign of Chairman Mao this was the only approved mode of transport for workers, with some 500 million built. Guy pays £18 for the rudimentary, old-fashioned bike and takes it for a high-speed pedal through one of the world’s most congested cities, challenging his film crew to try and keep up with his sight-seeing tour.

21 million people live in Beijing and less than half use public transport, leading to a rush hour that can last for 11 hours and smog that has been likened to a nuclear winter. The Chinese government is doing everything it can to encourage more recycling and discourage the use of cars, so Guy heads to a local subway station to use a “reverse vending machine” – where 20 plastic bottles can be exchanged for a ticket for the underground rail system.

It takes him to a local scrapyard, where Guy meets the families who live on site earning a living by processing old cars. He’s pleasantly surprised by the yard’s efficiency and cleanliness, and spending the afternoon helping out by operating the cranes and machinery is Guy’s idea of the perfect holiday.

Inequality is a huge problem in China with 1% of the nation controlling 50% of the wealth. Keen to see how the other half live Guy visits the epicentre for rare and exotic supercar sales, Tuning Street, as well as the building site for what will be the tallest building in Beijing, the ChinaZun skyscraper. This will be the pride of the city’s financial district and Guy helps out with the construction of the top floor, shrouded in smog, some 300m up in the sky.

And how do China’s rich relax? They head to the immaculately manicured suburbs and hire a historic town house in “Billionaire’s Row”, shipped brick by brick from South China, and indulge in a perfectly made cup of “cha”. Guy, who drinks 20 cups of tea a day, is treated to the elegant experience of having his green tea made for him with an ancient kettle by an expert teacher. “You’d be disgusted by the state of my mug back home,” he confides. 

On his final day in the city he rises at 4am to join the hordes who run like fans at a pop concert to witness the daily raising of the national flag at Tiananmen Square – a public display of patriotism that Guy feels puts the rest of the world to shame. In true Guy fashion his time in Beijing concludes with a race. Noticing the ingenious street engineers who use car batteries to make rickshaws electric powered, Guy challenges “the Nigel Mansell of rickshaws” to an impromptu race around the tight and twisty backstreets, the famous Hutongs.