How To Ride A Bike, In Beijing

I slept surprisingly well for my first night in the hostel and woke pretty early. I decided to avoid the major sights because of my Beijing tour on the 23rd and I set out on foot past Tianiman Square.

I choose a nice quiet park (Zhongshen Park) just the South West of the Forbidden City to read a book for a while. It cost 3 yuan to enter the park (14 yuan is a 1 pound) which was fair enough as the park was well looked after. I picked a bench and chilled out in the sun for a while.

Whilst walking around Beijing I noticed the much talked about Chinese hobby of spitting. While its not pleasant to hear people making that spitting sound, I would say it was no more predominant than in Warrington (my local town centre) to centre on a Saturday afternoon.

After the park I walked around the streets surrounding the Forbidden City and saw men playing chess, strange exercise machines, table tennis amongst many other strange things. I decided to venture into Jingshen Park to get a view over the Forbidden City. It was hard work climbing the numerous steps in the hot weather, but I made it to the top panting and sweating to see the amazing view over the Forbidden City.

After consulting the guide book I headed to the drum tower north of the Forbidden City for another view of the city. The tower marked the centre of the old Mongol capital and the drums used to be beaten to mark the hours of the day.

Around the tower and also in most of Beijing, crossing the road was an interesting affair. Cars don't stop for the "green man" and you just have to go and hope the cars avoid you. Its much like playing the classic computer game, "frogger" without the logs. In Beijing most people, especially Chinese tourists stare at you and you often hear the word "Liowai" (foreigner). It is usually said with surprise more than anything and when walking around Beijing and even through the Hutongs(small streets with shops, stalls, restaurants etc) you never really feel any kind of threat and I'd say the place feels a lot safer than Manchester or London.

In the evening the crazy Polish guy I met, Marish suggested heading to the park with Raphel (his French mate) and two girls from Denmark. I'd already had a large beer and guessed we were walking to the park. We bought a couple more beers from a tiny shop amongst the Hutongs and I jammed them into my shoulder bag with the tops of the bottles sticking out. Marish then broke the news to me that we were actually hiring some bikes and not walking. This came as a bit of a shock to me as I had already seen the state of the Beijing traffic and I started to wonder whether this was a great idea or one that could end in tears.

It was great fun cycling through the Hutongs past stalls, people selling melons, bikes, cars and people strolling along. We crossed a few main roads cycling down them and around the outside and inside of huge buses, at the time I was thinking "I'm sure my insurance doesn't cover this?". I was pretty sure I was going to die or if I was lucky enough escape with only one limb missing. The traffic was mad but for some strange reason seems to work, organised chaos I like to think. The park was cool at night, kites with lights attached flying high in the sky and a large group of people performing Tai Chi in synchronisation. On the way back I felt much more at ease with the madness of the Beijing traffic system and I managed to make it back in one piece weaving past buses, pedestrians and bikes like I'd been doing it for years. We cycled back through the Hutongs dodging people, bikes, cars, dogs and squashed watermelons until we reached the little house from where we hired the bikes.

After all the hard pedaling through the Beijing traffic we bought a few more beers from a little shop in the Hutongs as the owner helpfully grabbed some little chairs and a table for us to sit out on the street. We sat out chatting about international variations and drinking the obscenely cheap beer. On the way back to the hostel at 2:30 we stopped off at a restaurant for dumplings, chilli and vinger, they were amazing.

All in all it was a very interesting evening, but I'm not sure if I'll be getting back on a bike any time soon, well especially not in the Beijing traffic.