Bicycles

Parking garage at the Foreign Experts Guesthouse.

First and foremost, they were bicycles, not bikes. Upright, grandfatherly, they were the black steel Oldsmobiles of the cycling world: bell on handlebars, single gear, two-spring seat, rear carry rack.

Second, all the video footage I’d seen didn’t begin to paint the picture: bicycles were everywhere.

Two kinds: personal or truck. Technically the trucks were tricycles, one front wheel for steering and a low platform on two oversized wheels behind. Wide as a kitchen table, the platform could support stacks of chicken crates or vegetable boxes or cooking oil tubs higher than the cyclist’s head. Truck bicycles moved slower, riders pumping at the extended chain stretching back to the rear axle.

Personal bicycles weren’t much faster. With an economy that rewarded neither speed nor initiative (I once came across a vacant government-run hotel that claimed to be full because the staff didn’t want to clean up after guests), on their bicycles people took their time, all the time, as if every trip were a stately outing. This may have been partly defensive: slower bicycles could stop quicker when drivers darted through lanes of bicycle traffic (right of way belonging, of course, to the mode of transport less likely to sustain damage). But mostly, casual pedaling seemed the mode of a generally relaxed mindset.

As an American I had trouble adjusting. Typically I wound in and out of slower bicycle traffic: an aggressive cyclist.

Learning to ride a bicycle was a larger rite of passage in China than in America (imagine if our children earned their cultural badge of independence, driving, at the age of six or seven.) Another rite of passage was having a bicycle stolen. Some of my students had lost two or three, prompting most families to buy used bicycles. A steel ring bolted to the frame could be locked around the rear tire to prevent it from turning, but that didn’t stop someone from carrying away the entire bicycle.

Safety lay in numbers. Bicycles could be parked anywhere, but a lone bicycle was an inviting target. It was worth a little extra walking to use a bicycle parking lot – usually a designated area near a building entrance, attended by a guardwoman wearing an identifying armband whom you paid several mao (dimes). Locating your black steel bicycle among dozens of other black steel bicycles could be a challenge; I looked for the peeling yellow sticker beneath my seat, plus the pattern of paint scratches on my handlebars.

With so many used bicycles on the streets there was a constant demand for repairs — and no shortage of repairmen, who could set up shop on any corner with one crate of tools and supplies, and a second to sit on. My preferred mechanic was Yang Jin Yu, an elderly gentleman who serviced staff and student bicycles on campus. Frequently my spokes popped out, or one pedal would flop around funny, or my handlebars would loosen and rotate, giving me reason to stop by his nook almost monthly. I was one of his regulars, the cheapskate American who’d bought a tired steed at only ¥110, yet he treated me like a celebrity. Yang was far more patient with my broken Mandarin than any other person I encountered. And he never accepted payment from me, no matter how I tried to press money into his hand or slip it into his tool crate.

* * * * *

At the age of 76 my grandfather died of no disease, just a general failure of health. In his last year he could barely walk down the hall.

The former chair of Lin Da’s Foreign Language Department, a professor emeritus who still lived on campus, was 76. Every Saturday morning he hopped on his bicycle and pedaled down to Tiananmen Square and back – three hours round trip. The fact that he and my grandfather were the same age has always struck me.

Rarely did I see overweight people in China, or even stocky people. This must have been due in part to daily walking and cycling. Of course Beijing had cars and taxis (more taxis than cars!), but it was nearly unheard of for an individual to own a car, and taxis could be expensive.

Often I saw families of three riding together on their bicycles, or groups of friends. Or a husband pedaling with his wife sitting sideways across the rear rack, back leaning over one side, feet dangling just shy of the spokes on the other. Sometimes the wife also carried a small child: an entire family on one bicycle. (Later in the year, when my mother visited, we tried this, me pedaling with her on the back. It was awkward at first, but we got the hang of it.)

A handful of times I saw a rider with two bicycles: riding one bicycle one-handed, with the second hand stretched over to steer the other. Perhaps a friend had been dropped off at the train station, or a husband had picked up his wife’s bicycle from the repair shop. (Imagine the convenience: similar situations occur in America with cars, but I’ve yet to see a person driving two cars at the same time.) I tried this stunt too, borrowing a friend’s bicycle for the experiment, but I couldn’t get the hang of it.

The Chinese were so adept and comfortable on bicycle I wished I could try an experiment: line up forty people around the perimeter of a football field, then direct each person to cross to the position diagonally opposite theirs, everyone starting off simultaneously. In walking toward their destinations, all forty would converge in the center of the field around the same time, and would need to alter path and pace to avoid collision. Not very difficult – any set of forty people would manage it on foot.

But I believed the Chinese could also manage it on bicycle.

Rite of passage.

Parking lot.

Xi Zhi Men intersection, a circle within a circle: one traffic circle for cars, the other for bicycles.

Xi Zhi Men intersection. From Google Maps it’s apparent this intersection has since been radically redesigned.

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