SEEKING ADVENTURE? VACATION WITH SOUTHEAST'S PATRICIA VOLP; CAPE RESIDENT BIKES THROUGH CHINA

Trish Volp doesn't believe in ordinary vacations. Her idea of traveling is an African safari or a bicycle trip through China.

Three years ago, the Cape Girardeau resident trekked through Africa on a three-week safari.

This summer, she was planning to go on a hiking trip in the Andes mountains in Bolivia.

Instead, she ended up bicycling in China.

The all-women excursions were arranged through Womantrek, a Seattle company. "They design adventure programs for women," said Volp.

"I had hiking boots and all this great stuff to keep me warm," said Volp of her planned adventure to the Andes.

Then the organizer called and said the hiking trip had been canceled because not enough people had signed up.

So she settled for a bike ride through China.

Volp, assistant vice president for student development at Southeast Missouri State University, said she enjoys traveling with women. As a single person, she said, it's difficult to find people who have similar interests, money and time for such vacations.

"To me, it provided an option of how I could do things I wanted to do."

Seated behind her university desk, Volp appears anything but an adventurer. That is, until you listen to her talk about her travels, and take a look at her photographs of her African trip, which adorn her office walls.

"To me, it was very freeing to have that experience," she said of her African journey.

A committed walker, Volp generally walks a couple of miles a day.

But she said she trained at the university's Student Recreation Center to get in shape for her mountain hike.

Volp said the physical fitness work paid off when she suddenly had to switch gears and prepare for a bicycle trip.

In preparation for the 2-week trip to China, Volp had to learn how to ride a 10-speed bicycle.

Volp left St. Louis Aug. 2, returning home Aug. 19.

The trip to Beijing took about 24 hours, with the flight stopping in a number of American cities and Tokyo before landing in China.

Volp was one of 14 women from the United States and the Bahamas who went on the China trip. The group assembled in Seattle, prior to the flight to Tokyo and then Beijing.

The group spent several days touring Beijing before beginning the bicycle trip through the Chinese countryside. Following the bike trip, they visited a number of Chinese cities, including Canton and Hong Kong.

"We went to Tiananmen Square. We went to the Forbidden City," said Volp, referring to the imperial palaces of the former Chinese empire.

Tiananmen Square was the scene of the pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989, which ended in bloodshed.

The Chinese, said Volp, don't talk about the incident.

"The Chinese are very gracious. The culture is one of respect and reserve, and they don't discuss personal things," she said.

During the trip, the tour group also visited The Great Wall.

Bicycles are everywhere in China. In Beijing, a city of 11 million people, there are an estimated nine million bicycles, she said.

After touring Beijing, the group headed out on a weeklong, 450-mile bicycle and motorcoach trip through the countryside, east from Beijing to Quinhuangdao, a city on the Bohei Sea.

In all, Volp estimated, the group rode about 220 miles on bicycles.

"The area was very, very rich farmland," she said.

Although a large country, only 7 percent of China's land is farmland, she noted.

"Travel is very restricted in China. We were one of the very first biking tours that went through this part of China," said Volp.

"Even the Chinese can't move from one area to the next. They have to have permission and all these papers."

In some areas, local officials refused to let the tour group ride its bicycles, making them board the tour group's bus. "They didn't want the responsibility for us being there," said Volp.

But in many areas, traveling by bicycle allowed the women to meet the common Chinese citizen, she pointed out. "Biking is the method by which we met people."

The women, particularly those who were blonde such as Volp, attracted considerable attention.

"They literally would stare with their mouths open," she remembered. People, she said, would come up and ask to have their pictures taken with them.

"They had never seen 10-speed bikes before (in many cases) and most of them had never seen foreigners."

Volp said they met farmers and even a coffin maker.

"I had a guy try to sell me a Chinese coffin. It looked like an old-fashioned sleigh. He crawled inside of one to demonstrate it to us," recalled Volp.

The Chinese are paid by the government. In Beijing, Chinese are paid what amounts to about $60 a month. They rent apartments from the government for $1 a month.

But she said things are changing. "Now China is kind of opening up and there is a little bit of free enterprise."

Volp said she met farmers, for example, who were making $4,000 yuan, which is equal to about $800 a year.

The homes of farmers were identical. "They build them exactly the same," she said. "Most everything I saw was made with bricks."

Each has a pigsty on each side of the entrance gate to the front yard of the home. The houses are simple, consisting of a few rooms. Each has two, coal-fired, built-in woks. "They use coal for everything."

Volp said they seemingly all had electricity. "Everyone I went into, had a TV going and they all had those Casablanca fans."

But none of them had running water or indoor toilets and they didn't see a need for them, she said. A water pump in the yard provided water.

"The economy is a very controlled one, but it looks healthy," she said. "They have virtually no unemployment."

Manual labor and not machines still fuel the economy. She said the tour group visited a factory where women were painting teacups by hand.

"It looks like what America probably looked like before the industrial revolution."

Volp said that despite advance warning, she was surprised at the amount of pollution and how dusty things were.

She said it was so dusty that she often wore a bandana over her mouth. "The dust was really hard to breathe. It struck me that it was very hazy most of the time."

During the journey, Volp came down with a bad cold. "I had a cold and I was feeling pretty miserable."

So miserable, she didn't feel like pedaling the bike. Volp said their guide took her to a doctor who gave her some medicine. "The total bill was less than $1.50."

In less than an hour, she said, she felt well enough to get out of the bus and resume riding her bicycle.

Volp said there was a constant din. "It was so noisy."

She said there was a constant chirping sound of insects and bicyclists were always honking their horns. "They just honk like crazy to tell you they are coming."

Now that she's back home, Volp is once again thinking of hiking in the Andes. "That is my dream," she said.