The Chinese motorcycle diaries

Encountering encounters

Encounters are a focus of the poems by Nielsen's travel mate, 36-year-old Chinese American Anthony Tao.

His verses liken the function of the Buddhist grottoes in the deserts of Gansu's Dunhuang to a nightclub in a nearby city-namely, enlightenment. And they meditate on how, if ancient statues could see, they'd recognize humans haven't changed as much over the millennia as we may think.

"I wanted to come away from this with a set of poems," says Tao, who hosts the monthly Spittoon Poetry Night in Beijing.

"So, I was sort of trying to wear my poetic lenses to see things, trying to observe, trying to figure out how the various encounters that we had and the various scenery and our experiences could fit together.

"We know the landscapes are very different. But, also, our experiences are very different, too. So, I got a set of poems that's equally diverse."

Nielsen says he knew that Tao, who joined for about 1,800 km starting from Shaanxi's provincial capital, Xi'an, would be able to distinctively contribute to the mission of mapping a portion of western China's people's lives.

"I knew he'd be able to see things I wouldn't," Nielsen says.

"Through him being a writer and editor, through his many years as a journalist and poet, he'd have different eyes and be able to look at the truth and the experiences differently than I would. I was also focusing on the road," he adds, laughing.

Nielsen points out words like "adventurer" and "explorer" conjure images of long-ago expeditions.

"We think things are totally different now. But in reality the things we're trying to do and find out, that's just new frontiers," the 31-year-old explains.

"We're not explorers in the sense that we can go to a mountain range and map it or something like that. But we can map ideas.

"We can talk to people and hear the stories we don't hear. That is, the way I see it, the best way you can get the story of a place-the soul of a place."

They believe the motorcycle set the right pace for them to do this, in every sense.

"I thought that the experience of enduring some degree of hardship when traveling, this exists on the motorbike. And this actually really appeals to me," Nielsen says.

"With a motorbike, you experience the weather, the temperature, the air, everything, in a totally different way than you will in a car or on a train. You're free in another way. You can just travel off to whatever interesting things you see on the landscape."