Closer to Beijing Life, Closer to Death

For the last three weeks, I've been biking to work at least three times per week. Participating in the great Beijing two- and three-wheeled commute is a fantastically stimulating experience. It really cannot be understood unless you've done it, but I'll try to paint a picture. (An actual picture of me on my Chinese bike will be forthcoming soon, I promise.)

First, you might ask, why am I risking near-certain death on the way to work and absolute certain sweatiness on arrival at work by biking? I can easily afford a few dollars for inexpensive Beijing taxis, or I could pay a small fee to ride a commuter shuttle to the office with my colleagues, or a I could take the bus. But all forms of car transportation are frustratingly slow and unpredictable during rush hour, and the ride to work ranges from 20-40 minutes. Amazingly, drivers manage to endanger a maximum number of people while moving at a minimum speed. One morning, I sat in my taxi for over 15 minutes at a single intersection, all the while watching bikes pass by. Looking around the taxi, I realized it was filthy inside, the air conditioning didn't work, the polluted outside air and the exhaust from the cars around me was stifling, and I was getting aggravated at the driver's inability to move the vehicle forward. I decided it was time to join the bicycles.

From the first moment in the bike lane, it was liberating. The commute is 20 minutes each way, no matter what the traffic. On top of that, I have full control. I can leave when I want and stop as many times as I want along the way home, running errands and filling my bike basket with groceries, and I don't have to pay a new 10 RMB minumum taxi fare with each new leg of the journey.

Best of all, just by rolling outside my gate on two wheels, I joined the community of Beijing residents in a way I hadn't in 6 months of walking, taxi-ing, and busing around. One look at the swarms in the bike lane and you'll know biking is very much a part of Beijing life: small children bike to school (or more often, sit on their parent's lap on the bike - I still don't know how they do that), adults ride to work, old men pull carts with their bird cages to the park, workers haul supplies, young women perch carefully on the book rack of their boyfriends' Flying Pigeons. From the bike, I also have the chance to really observe what's happening on and along the road and get a better handle on the layout of the streets in my neighborhood. I wouldn't call myself a Beijinger, but suddenly I feel like a real resident of the city.

So, what have I seen from my new mobile vantage point? A few observations:

• China really stretches the definition of "bicycle." My cousin David noted, "In Beijing, bicycles are like snowflakes - no two are exactly alike." You've got your ordinary Chinese bike, with flat handle bars, very tall wheels, adorned with any combination of baskets on the front and back, seats on the back and front, a safety - "safety" - light, a bell, and an old plastic bag tied around the seat. Then there's also the bikes pulling open carts full or trash down the bike lane, motor scooters, motor bikes, hybrid pedal-and-motor bikes, and three-wheeled tuk-tuks. Environmentalists might be delighted to see such abundant non-car flora and fauna, but I assure you no victories are being won against air pollution in the bike lane. (Did you see I mentioned open carts of trash and old diesel motor scooters?)

• Biking is far more dangerous than driving. Sure, Beijing's crazy taxi drivers are a serious threat (that bike lane doesn't confer magical safety powers, you know), but the bikers are really scary. Lane space is a commodity to be claimed at any price.
  

• There's no point in going fast. Intersections are the great equalizer. Ah, the Great Third Ring Road Intersection. At rush hour, uniformed traffic monitors, with no particular training, whistle incessantly and wave a red flag in erratic patterns. It's impossible to know what they are trying to communicate, especially when you're 15 yards back from the intersection packed in pedal-to-pedal with a couple hundred of your favorite Beijing neighbors, but you just go when everyone else goes.

• Without a bike bell, you're toast. For cars, the horn is an essential tool of communication. To us Americans, a blast of the horn means, "Look out!" Either you're about to kill me or I'm about to kill you. In China, the many meanings of the horn have yet to be fully cataloged, but a few of them include: I'm passing you on the right or left; you're going too slow; you're going too fast; hello; I have no intention of obeying the light/ sign/ traffic cop ahead; the light is green; hey look! did you see that foreigner on a bike?; you had better stop because I'm going no matter what; you had better go because I'm yielding to you, but I'm really impatient; this red light/ toll booth/ motorcade/ storm/ earthquake/ song/ bridge/ run-up to the Olympics is too long so I decided to make some noise because that might help. It turns out, the bike bell is every bit as adaptable and communicative as the horn. And it's brave, too - I have seen many a trill little bike bell take on a taxi, pick-up truck, or van.

• Finally, a lesson that pops up in almost every aspect of Beijing life: people are nuts. Do you want to know why Beijing bikers push their way to the front of the intersection, scraping my legs and jostling all the little children precariously balanced on the crossbar of their parents bikes? So they can streak across the intersection diagonally in the brief moment between when the light changes and the cars in the left turn lanes from both directions actually reach the center of the intersection. And, those cars in the left turn lanes include buses.