Still climbing mountains! Time so for some more strange vehicles. The small three wheelers are dirt cheap, dirty, and dangerous.
But in many villages they are also the only motorized vehicles that can actually go up the mountains and therefore alone those small machines are very important for mountain-village folk.
The higher you get the less cars you see. The small Wuling and Chang’an minivans make it to pretty high but in the end they also have to leave it up to the mighty three wheelers.
One at work, loaded with construction materials.
My very own Beijing-Jeep, 2.5 four-cylinder, made in 1998, still goes like stink.
Shifeng.
DFAC, Dongfeng.
Cool sticker on door.
Small tractor, very common in the countryside. Two-cylinder engine. Unknown brand.
Three-wheel motorbike. Brand: Dahong (big red), English name: Ducar.
Unknown brand.
A fine Isuzu truck, 2.6 liter diesel. Made in China, they made zillions of ‘m, still widely in use everywhere up country.
A dog attacked me right after I took this pic, so I ran, couldn’t see the brand. Those mountain villages inhabit 10 dogs for every human being.
Nicely drawn pics on doors have to keep the evil spirits out. Still very common to see in the villages, but these days rare in the big cities.
Back in Beijing tomorrow…
And therein lies the market for basic, affordable, four wheeled pickups. Although I guess some more road building has to happen first.
Thanks for showing us those crenellated mini-Great Walls seen all over the northern countryside as written about by Peter Hessler.
Hope you had fun there.
Just a small note on the English use of the apostrophe. It denotes the deletion of letters. Thus you can only say ’em as this means the th of the word “them” as been omitted. You can never ever say “they made zillions of ‘m, ” The use of ‘m does not exist in the English langauge.