Eric's Beijing Diary

Last night l was having dinner with Eric and Leander and Lisa, and Eric suddenly got the brainy idea to go to Beihai park. I said, "You want to take the subway to Beihai Park tonight?" He said, "No. Ride our bikes?" Beihai Park is in the center of Beijing, down my Tiananmen, and I was a bit dubious about riding all the way down there and back this late in the evening, but I certainly wasn't going to be the one to throw cold water on the idea. I got on my one-lock bike and we headed out the East Gate and down Xueyuan Lu (College Road).
Beijing is, in many ways, an ideal city for bicycles. It is basically flat. The weather is comparatively dry, and there is not much snow, so if you have a rain slicker for the occasional downpour, there are very few days in the year that you cannot ride a bike. In contrast to the United States, all streets have bicycle lanes. Of course, in America I never had to dodge donkeys and motorcycles, but my point is...OK, a taxi now and then…anyway, when riding a bike in America, you always feel that you are somewhere you're not supposed to be. Bicycle lanes are a novelty, not a standard. Here in China, you sometimes have to contend with an impatient taxi driver in the bicycle lane. In America, there is no lane. You're always stuck riding in the same lane as the cars. This absurd arrangement scared the life out of me when I first got to America, so I rode my bike on the sidewalk, but the police didn't like that.

And the design of bicycles in America always struck me as a bit odd. America just is not a bicycle riding country. I lived in America for 40 years and never had a decent bicycle. I was spoiled, I guess. I grew up in a country where bicycles were for riding, not looking cool. I don't know...maybe I am just old fashioned.

Anyway, as I said, we headed down XueYuan Lu, and began to work our way southeast. The university district where I live is in the northwest corner of Beijing. The northwest corner of Beijing has at least 50 universities. There are more university students in these few square miles than in any other area of the world at any time in the history of the planet. Probably half a million.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, we came to the place where the old city wall used to be. We rode our bikes under the Jishutian bridge, and entered old town Beijing. The streets got narrower, and there was lots of activity. In spite of the fact that this is a large city, this part of Beijing has a "small town" feel to it. It wasn't long before we came to the old palace wall that surrounds Beihai. We parked our bikes, paid our ten yuan, and entered the park. Having to pay 10 yuan to go to a city park is irritating to me, but it is actually an advantage, because it's not a lot of money, and this park would be a lot more crowded if it were free. Instead, it is a very peaceful place--basically a large sized version of Kiwani's Park. It was a peaceful evening, the quiet broken only by the sound of music coming from the lakeside, where a couple men were playing a violin and a harmonica, and the shouting of the soldiers. Beihai borders Zhongnanhai, and we could hear the guards going through their evening drills.

Well, it was getting dark, so we headed back. On the way there, we had been riding together, but on our return, we got split up. Eric and I were racing, so we left Leander and Lisa in the dust. Eric is pretty fast, but I had an unfair advantage, because I was riding a large frame bike. The trip down took us about forty minutes, but we picked up a bit of time on the way back.