WU ZHEN, China—Our ’53 Bentley was weaving in and out of lanes on the crowded Shanghai freeway and pushing 80 mph when Jonathon Lyons, donning black leather driving gloves, reached behind his seat and said in a slightly annoyed British nasal: “Where’re my cigars? Somebody give me a cigar.”
The smell of smoke quickly filled the car’s blue leather interior and mixed with the roadway’s unctuous fumes to produce a queasy feeling inside my stomach; after only 15 minutes on the road to Beijing, my breakfast of pork wontons and vermicelli noodles was on its way up.
It didn’t help any when Lyons, cigar moist and clenched firmly between his teeth, gunned the silver Continental R-Type past a row of exhaust-blackened semis until the needle bobbed to three digits.
“You’ve never gone 100 in China before, have you?” he laughed and his eyes danced in the sports car’s tiny mirror. Fifty-six years old, a Bentley fanatic and one of England’s richest men, Lyons still revels in the thrill of the road – and, unlike me, he doesn’t seem perturbed by the statistic we learned that morning: 1 million Chinese die each year behind the wheel. I shook my head no. “Neither have I,” he said.
About 50 people and two dozen other vintage cars are en route with us for the 1,000-mile trip that began Sunday in one of China’s mega-cities and will end two weeks later in another. Billed “The Jewel That is China,” the luxury Shanghai-to-Beijing adventure is part of a well-choreographed tourism and media blitz in the build-up to next summer’s Olympic Games here.It is the fifth classic-car journey that Lyons, a London resident, has organized in places like Jordan and Italy in recent years under the patronage of England’s famous lover of classic cars, the Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. Previous car rallies have taken travelers across China, but none in a style as enviable as this one: with cultural visits to newly developed towns and cities, banquets hosted by local governments, and stays at brand-new five-star hotels along the way.In fact, Chinese law normally restricts foreigners from driving in the country at all, making this an even more unique and insider event. After a one-hour briefing on Chinese driving rules (“!” = care, “!!” = great care, “!!!” = triple danger) by captains Woo and Wang of the Shanghai police, participants received temporary licenses and the three-volume manual with detailed instructions for the trip. And were we ever ready to leave.
Shanghai’s ambitious skyscrapers, classical waterfront and fast-moving, densely populated streets make it the undisputed urban star leading China’s global advance. But the historic “City by the Sea” is also grossly modern and overwhelming, relying on iconic symbols like the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the frenetic shopping atmosphere on Nanjing Road and the magnetic-levitation train that travels almost 270 mph to bolster its “modern” identity.
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Much of old and culturally rich Shanghai has been torn down to make way for this new – and often featureless – metropolis of apartments and businesses. Granted, a post-industrial zone is now a pleasant art gallery district, and traditional neighborhoods like the central Luan district still offer charm with their labyrinthine streets, one-story wooden homes and bustling market stalls.But the toxic, yellow-gray sky covering Shanghai – a city of 17 million with 2.2 million cars currently on the road, 300,000 new drivers added yearly and an annual production of half a million vehicles – ultimately leaves one gasping for air and escape. Which is, after two days, what we did.
As I sat in the back seat of Lyons’ speeding, silver-colored and extremely rare machine (less than 100 models of this Bentley were ever made), I noticed a playful jockeying for road-space going on among eccentric drivers and their vintage cars.
Austrian-born Fred Kriz, a real estate mogul based in Vancouver and Monte Carlo, is here alongside his wife and daughter, driving one of his 64 Bentleys. Lawrence Cohen, a London-based businessman, has brought along Elton John’s spectacularly jet-black, hearse-like 1973 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI limousine. There is a tall Dutchman named Herman de Jong who wears a leather flying cap with the flaps around his ears as he steers his antique 1935 Bentley Derby 3½. And most stunning, perhaps, are the cream-colored curves of Marlene Dietrich’s old 1935 Auburn 851 Speedster, a long and elegant vehicle that belongs to Lord Montagu and is driven by a car museum curator named Doug Hill.
After an hour on the freeway and an hour of westward suburban navigating – during which Chinese onlookers poured into the streets and stared with quizzical, amused faces at our strange retinue – we stopped at the ancient water town of Wu Zhen. Called the “Venice of China” for the dozens of medieval stone bridges that connect the town’s streets and footpaths across a series of canals, the place was a picturesque and stirring discovery.Once a great center in the Yangtze River Delta’s silk trade, Wu Zhen was left for centuries to decay until four years ago when the Chinese government removed all its residents and spent $140 million on repairs and overhauling its infrastructure. The town “re-opened” this spring with cafes and wooden balconies overlooking the water, gondolas filling the canals and lots of high-end accommodations to attract travelers to this ancient – and until now virtually unknown – medieval town a couple hour’s drive from Shanghai.
We have big plans for travel tomorrow, but sudden weather forecasts have announced that “Wipha,” the strongest typhoon to hit the Asian coast this year, will be landing by midnight in the Zhejiang province where we are traveling. The question on my mind – and even Lyons’ mind, I imagine – is no longer how safe it is to be speeding inside a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce in China, but whether storming rain and winds will allow us to even move at all.