DJ - Welcome to China. The fourth day of the motor challenge from Peking to Paris is complete and the 1954 Packard is running well. The team is a bit weary. Four days on the road in China makes you almost think its been four weeks. We have a 24 rest period here in the city of Lanzhou. We're sort of like Gulliver's Travels. We're out here discovering and finding things that one doesn't even know exists. Today we discovered a city of 5 million people, Lanzhou, the capital city of one of the 31 provinces of China, Gansu. Here in North China, lots of people, the terrain very much like the western part of the United States only it's populated, unlike many of the states with wide open ranges in the US. Going to give you our location and then Carl is going to come on and give you his update. We're 1200 miles from Peking, the capital city of the China, reminding you there are 56 nationalities that make up this extraordinary country. That 1200 miles represents approximately the distance from the Midwest to the West Coast of the United States, to give you some dimension of the space. However, we've only completed about one third of our travel across China, we have two thirds to go over the next several days. And, we've completed one tenth, we're told, of our total trip from Peking to Paris. This is day four. Our car seems to be performing well. We have a rest day here in the city of Lanzhou. Now here's Carl with his comments.

CS - It was a steady contrast today as we left inner Mongolia and headed towards Tibet, across the sand dunes and following the yellow river. We drove past the largest manufacturing plant I've ever seen in my life, a steel plant that was probably three miles long. After that as we climbed higher and into the sand dune country, we came across a herd of camels, these are the two humped camels, running in the fields without bridles, so they looked wild to me. It was a temperature change as we got up higher and quite a change from the millions of people that we've seen yesterday. Tomorrow we rest here and the next day we head up into the foothills of the Himalayas where there aren't hotels and we'll be camping out for the next couple of nights as we drive and approach the 15 and 16,000 feet above sea level passes that we have to go through. Cars are running fine. We're making some friends. There's people from 22 different countries and they all have one major thing in coming, they are very adventuresome or they certainly wouldn't have attempted to go from Peking to Paris. I think I've said enough, so here's Don.

DJ - Well the things that you see traveling in China are so extraordinary that you wonder, when you explain these things, if people are going to believe you. So let me pose a question, "Would you believe?" and then you kind of think about if you see what we saw. Would you believe, for example, there are hundreds of miles of asphalt pavement in China and the border of the asphalt pavement has bricks lining the distance of the highway, brick end to brick end along hundreds of miles across China? Would you believe that in many parts of China they paint the stripes on the highways with a piece of string and with a board using a paint brush to paint the stripes on the center and the shoulders of the highways? Or, would you believe that they build roads of the interstate modern standards that we have, very excellent roads, but they do it with shovels and lots of people? Would you believe that they still use steam locomotives and that it is a thrilling sight looking at a steam locomotive operating to this day here in China? They also have very high speed and very efficient long distance electric trains. Would you believe that the Chinese authorities in inner Mongolia declared part of the day a holiday and encouraged people to come out and to see the passing convey of cars and that we were nearly mobbed, not just us, but all of the cars, passing through at various stages of the journey, by, we estimate, half a million to a million people throughout several hundred miles across the part of China that we just traveled? There's a lot of "Would you believes?", and we'll continue to comment on those as we go along. It's kind of hard to believe some of these things until you actually have them happen to you or you see them yourself. You wonder how our friends and family are possibly going to believe it themselves.

We did reach an elevation today of 8,000 feet. We want the mechanic crew to know that and that car performed really very well at the 8,000 foot elevation. We still have some carberation problems which, with the help of the fellows from Birmingham, Alabama, are going to get solved. We want Alan Bobillot to know that the latest innovation is use the fan off of the heater system to remove the shroud and to let the fan blow air, particularly when the car is in idle and standing still, to move air across the Holly carberator. We think that might eliminate some of the vapor lock and heat conditions that are building up underneath the hood of the car. But otherwise we are underway and at speed the car is performing just as planned.

Many of participants in the event have begun to jettison weight and contents of their car. The German cars today gave up their prized small portable refrigerator, a toll chain and a tool box. People are beginning to rethink the weight contents of the cars because the amount of weight affects both fuel consumption and the ability of the cars to clear conditions that exist on and off the highways. We're anticipating there's going to be a lot of off highway travel as we enter into the Himalayan Mountain chain. All is going well. One of the cars for the US had a difficult day today going off the road. The 1919 Marmon driven by the Kleptz's from Dayton, Ohio got off on the shoulder up in the high country where there is sand dunes and the car rolled down off of the highway. With a lot of help, it was brought back onto the highway, but then the drive shaft to the vehicle failed for the Kleptz's later in the day and they had to be towed into Lanzhou. They do have a spare one and, like so many of the competitors, are able to endure and to recover and to get back into the road challenge. The number one car has withdrawn. That car driven by the Honorable Lord Montagu of the UK, is a very old vintage Vauxhall automobile. We told you how the fan went through the radiator. They were able to fix that but the car, as it traveled on, just was not able to stay underway. So Lord Montagu has joined up with the Mathesons, who are driving the Rolls Royce limousine, and he is able to carry on as a passenger. However, his mechanic and co-driver, Doug Hill, was requesting and asking for a ride with someone else so that he might carry on the journey. But for everyone, taking on extra weight is a major consideration and a possible impediment to completing this arduous trip. At this time, it doesn't appear he'll be able to do that. We'll be seeing how many cars are in the competition tomorrow. It's difficult when you're out traveling to know how it's going with all 92 cars that are still in the event. Sort of like being on the golf course and not knowing how the other players are performing. We're currently at par, that is to say that we've met all of the requirements for departing on time in the morning at 5:30 AM and arriving on time in the evening. So far so good for the 1954 Packard operated by Carl and Don.

We have a special plan here in the next 24 hours for the update report that we want to make you aware of. We're going to be joined by some fellow participants in this journey, who want to take advantage of the Internet and of the update phone network to share their views and to communicate with some of their families and friends. In the next 12 hours, Burt Richmond is going to come on. He is from Chicago and he's driving a small Citroen, a French car, two cylinders, which had the misfortune yesterday of having a front shaft collapse. He was able to have it welded and repaired and get back underway. But it was precarious at the time that it happened. He's going to be here on the update 12 hours from now. Following him, 12 hours later - tomorrow morning you're time, Pat and Mary Brooks from Iowa are going to come on. They are driving a wonderful Buick Woody station wagon sponsored by General Motors of China. They're going to be speaking, not only to their family and friends, but also to a group of school children in their home state of Iowa who are following their trip and they'll be able to get an update on the Internet by accessing the New York to Paris 1997 web site. We are excited that you'll hear the views and experiences of these other participants in this very rare and very special event.

China continues to be amazing. We want to try to give you an objective account. 23 million people live in this province of Gansu. There are 31 provinces in all of China as in the number of states in the United States. Well that's our news from here. We're getting a chance to rest up and that's a welcome relief before we carry on. We still have two thirds of China to experience and we still have a long way to go before we arrive in Paris. So we'll be sharing much, much more in the days ahead. I'll say good-bye and thanks for joining this update report with Carl and Don, reporting tonight from Lanzhou in the north central part of China.