Wade Lajlar just sent over an update from his recent trip to Beijing where he finished sixth in both dirt and park. Get the official word from Wade after the break.

“The trip started with a direct 13 hour flight from Chicago to Beijing. I ended up with five seats to myself which made for a pretty relaxing time. The flight landed in Beijing pretty late, and after going through the usual BS at the airport I found a guy holding a sign with my name on it. Once we picked up a few other dudes the real driving experience started; every time I set foot in a vehicle I felt like my life would end and, yes, every thing you’ve heard about Asian driving is true. The next morning Catfish introduced me to Kane Wang. Kay is the Godfather of BMX in China, nothing happens with out him knowing about it. He’s such a rad dude and I ended up sharing a room with him while we were in Beijing. After meeting up with the rest of the crew, we headed over to the Olympic stadium to check out the courses.

The park course was pretty fun had a few interesting lines, but the dirt was wild and crazy bumpy. The set up had a big step down roll-in to wood/metal lips, dirt landings, and a big wall ride at the end. The event was pretty cool overall; BMX was the main event and it was the first time action sports had ever been broadcasted live in China. The National Sports Network had it playing to over 1 billion people in China. We even caught a bit of it at Hooters the next night. Pretty stoked on finishing 6th in both park and dirt, brought home a ‘lil cash and some black market goods.

After the finals, the event had a big after party for everyone. They had a bunch of food, tiger beer, and Catfish got to spit a freestyle on a legit stage in front a legit crowd. It was pretty epic, and we were all on stage backing him. After a day of touristy stuff and marching on the Great Wall, we took the bullet train down to Shanghai. Kane and his family own a youth hostel and BMX website called CN BMX. He put us up for the last few days of the trip. Shanghai was awesome! I got to eat some of the best street food of my life, met some of the raddest dude, and got a chance to ride SMP. Everything was scary big there but tons of fun to fly around on. The last two day of the trip rained so we naturally spent most the day bartering at the black market. By the end I was getting pretty good at swindling the merchants. Brett, Rob, and I were the last to leave so Kane’s mom took us out for one last Chinese dinner before heading back to America.

All-in-all my trip to China was awesome. I can’t thank my lady Lindsay, Catfish, and Kane enough for connecting the dots to make it happen.” — Wade Lajlar