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Shortly after I arrived in Beijing last year, a friend in South Korea asked me if I had yet bought a bicycle. As an avid motorcyclist for many years, who has ridden throughout New Zealand, Australia, the United States, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia, I laughed at the thought of riding a bicycle. A self-affirmed adrenaline junkie, I wasn't yet ready to slow down to cycling speed.
Then, as chance would have it, a colleague went home for an extended time, leaving his bicycle behind and telling me I was welcome to use it. The Korean friend now has the last laugh, as he listens to me extol the virtues of bicycling in Beijing and exploring the city in ways not possible using other means of transportation.
My first ride here was in the early evening, the dusk light that is known to experienced motorcyclists as one of the most dangerous times to be riding. The soft half-light obscures smaller vehicles and provides an even stronger invisibility cloak to motorcycles and bicycles than they already have. But, like most things in China, such inconveniences don't slow the locals any. I found myself surrounded by other cyclists, weaving in and out of traffic, dodging cars, trucks, three-wheeled carts, motorized rickshaws and oblivious pedestrians, and marveling at how well it actually worked.
I was astonished that most cyclists didn't have lights, and my own first stop was a cycle store to get a bright strobe light to help myself be seen. I've found that especially useful when pedaling against the flow, something I quickly learned was a norm here where at least a quarter of the smaller vehicles in a lane are likely to be going the opposite way. "Swimming upstream", I tell myself each time I face the traffic head-on.
My next purchase was a loud bell to warn others I was coming up behind them. My need for speed, even on a bicycle, means I'm constantly passing other cyclists, carts, electric bicycles and the occasional horse-drawn cart, and I've learned to also be on constant alert for pedestrians stepping into my path and "parked" cars pulling out in front of me. It's a good thing I enjoy ringing the bell as I come up behind other road users, as its sound has little or no effect on their behavior whatsoever. I think of it as my placebo bell-it has no quantifiable effect but it makes me feel better anyway. Beijing being the huge city it is, I also upgraded my disposable air masks for something that looks like it belongs in a splatter movie-a tangible reminder of the attitude adjustment I make before mounting the cycle and heading out.
As a motorcyclist, I have always pretended there's a price on my head that everyone else on the road is trying to collect, so I'm constantly on the lookout for those trying to kill me.
Here, in Beijing, it's not so much the active road users that are the biggest danger, as there's a certain chaotic choreography in how the larger and smaller vehicles weave and interlace with each other. It's those on the side of the road I find myself watching most. The car door that opens directly in your path, the pedestrian engrossed in his digital device who steps into traffic without a thought or a look, the car whose driver is more focused on finding a park than on anyone else on the street.
Despite all that, or probably because of it, I am hooked on cycling in this city. I relish the excitement of coming up on a bus stop where four or five buses are loading and unloading and pulling out to pass them all before the front one pulls back into traffic. I enjoy slow, sleepy mornings when I can explore the hutong and side streets as the city wakes, and the madness of the evening peak hours when it seems as if most of the city's inhabitants are fighting their way home.
Most of all, I love the sense I have while bicycling in Beijing of being part of the constantly moving, always throbbing, sometimes racing pulse of the vast, vibrant lifeblood that makes up this city.
