Since shortly after I first came to Asia I have been toying with the idea of taking my bicycle with
me when I travelled to other cities. But, even though I regularly travelled to Beijing I never got
around to figuring out how to go about doing this.
I hate Beijing traffic with a passion.
I generally dislike traffic in Chinese cities but for the cars, trucks, and busses of Beijing I
reserve a special kind of hatred.
I've heard that in the last year 100 new cars have been added to the streets of Beijing every week.
I believe it.
Two weeks ago I was going to Beijing for something important. It took me just under three hours to
get from my home city to Beijing by train. When I arrived it was raining lightly.
I learned after my first trip to Beijing that taking the taxi is expensive. A few trips later I
learned that the bus takes about the amount of time as the taxi.
I caught the 703 bus at the train station and switched to the 106 at Qianmen. More than two hours
later I got off the bus and started walking. It took the same amount of time to go a few hundred
kilometers by train as it took to go across the city of Beijing by bus. The Friday night rush
plus the rain did not equal the usual saying "stop and go traffic" but instead equalled "stop and
stop traffic."
I'd had enough!
I was taking my bike with me to Beijing. If it went well I was going to take my bike with me when
going touristing to other cities.
I had no major problems getting my bike deposited at the cargo depot in Shijiazhuang. I would have
preferred to take my bike on the same train I was going on but this didn't seem to be an option. I
also would have preferred to lock my bike's rear wheel before leaving it but they insisted that I
leave my bike unlocked with the keys in the lock.
When I went to pick my bike up in Beijing I was most annoyed to find out that someone had STOLEN MY
BICYCLE *LOCK*. My unlocked bike was untouched. But my keys and the lock had been taken.
Bicycling in Beijing is wonderful. The major roads have the spacious bike lanes common to any
sizeable city in Asia. But, prosperity (in the form of cars), decent bus service, and the subway
have combined to make long distance bicycling uncommon. Even at major intersections it was always
possible to get my bicycle through the light in one cycle. Sometimes in Shijiazhuang because of the
sheer volume of people on bikes it has taken me two red lights before I have been able to make it
through the intersection.
The city is mostly flat and the feng shui influenced harmonious grid pattern of north/south and
east/west streets makes it difficult to get lost. As long as I knew where north was, I could wander
off on an interesting looking side street while still continuing in the right direction.
I made it across the city in about 90 minutes or two hours. I wasn't keeping track. Given the
traffic and time of day that I was riding this is about the same amount of time it would have taken
me to go by bus. But, I now had a bike with me. I could go where I wanted when I wanted for free. I
wasn't constrained by bus routes. My wallet wouldn't suffer the damage of taking a taxi.
(The busses in Beijing seemingly run everywhere. But the signs are all in Chinese without pinyin.
After my experience of getting lost in the Chinese countryside when I took a suburban commuter bus
by mistake I have mostly stuck to a few busses going only a few places.)
Everywhere I went in Beijing that weekend I went by bike. It was really nice. It was incredible
having such freedom of motion. I took great pleasure in catching up with the same cars at every red
light and often eventually passing them.
Now I'm back in Shijiazhuang. My bike is at the train station waiting for me to go pick it up. It
has been there since this morning. The only problem with shipping my bike is that I cannot put the
bike on the same train I go on ... and the cargo trains stop in every single hamlet. I have an
acquaintance who once took a cargo train by accident after dropping a friend off at the airport. She
made it back to London before he made it back to Shijiazhuang.
I don't know if I will take my bike with me to Beijing again. It was really nice having a bike in
Beijing but the trouble of not having a bike for a day on either end of visitng Beijing is rather a
nuisance. I suppose I will eventually try to find a way to take the bike on the passenger train or I
will find someplace near the train station where I can store my bike when I'm not in town.
-M