Beijing Biking: Forward March

BEIJING â€”  Many travelers to Beijing see most of the expected attractions: the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Forbidden City, and first-timers always try to experience at least one Peking duck dinner.

Unfortunately, few tourists ever get to really see the best of China’s capital city, and what they do see is more often than not viewed from the window of a tour bus.

Now, however, as travelers are becoming more adventurous and government officials more cooperative, more individualized itineraries are being developed.

One, which isn’t advertised, is available to guests at the Great Wall Hotel. You can, for a nominal cost, rent a bicycle. It seemed like a great idea, and some friends and I decided to give it a try.

The hotel concierge gave us a city map and suggested a route that would take us from the hotel to downtown Beijing and around the Forbidden City.

We picked up our Flying Pigeon brand bikes from the basement parking garage at the hotel and headed west toward the center of the city.

Within seconds of leaving the hotel’s driveway we were confronted with one of the facts of bicycling in Beijing: At some point you must cross Dongsanhuan Zhong Avenue.

Tough Assignment

To experienced city bikers, this may not have been a tough assignment. For us it was a game of chicken in which no one wanted to blink.

We finally made it across and into the flow of bike traffic.

Almost immediately we learned the rules of the road. The first rule of Beijing biking: What’s behind you is not important.

The second rule of Beijing biking: What’s in front of you, or on either side, is also not important.

And, according to knowlegeable sources, no third rule concerning bike riding in Beijing has ever been discussed.

What is important while riding your bike is that you must always move forward.

Having crossed the first busy road, we were making progress. As the Great Wall Hotel is just a few blocks from most major foreign embassies, we turned down quiet, tree-lined streets and pedaled lazily past other bikers, mothers with strollers, and guards posted in front of a few dozen buildings housing diplomats from Ghana, Bolivia, Canada, Zaire, Kampuchea, Iran and the PLO, among others.

Wild and Crazy Guys

We waved at the guards, and they saluted back. Two wild and crazy guys (one was wearing a Madonna T-shirt), who turned out to be staffers at the Yugoslavian Embassy, stopped to chat with us. The ultra-modern Iranian Embassy was heavily guarded and half a dozen officials walked around the circular driveway, speaking in hushed tones. Their foreign minister was in town.

Because it was a diplomatic zone, no cars were parked on the streets, and that gave us a false sense of bicycle mastery.

But the feeling evaporated as soon as we turned south on Xindong Road. We were suddenly thrust into the never-ending flow of traffic. Within seconds we were surrounded by hundreds of bicyclists.

In Beijing, as in many other Chinese cities, bicycling is the great equalizer. Two-wheeled timidity is not tolerated. Tenacity is encouraged by the sheer number of bicycles that compete for space in the streets. By necessity, you soon become totally dependent on your instincts.

Beijing bikers possess a sixth sense--they always seem to know when a car or bus or truck is closing in behind them, and, without hesitation, change lanes into the constantly moving stream of other cyclists at the last second.

Surprisingly, despite the often bumpy and potholed streets, and other roadways full of small, sharp gravel stones, we never saw one flat tire.

No one races to get anywhere. In many cases, bicyclists in the city have driven for miles to get to where they’re going. They seem to reach a certain slow pace, and work to maintain it despite any obstacles. In Beijing there are no demonstrations of speed, only incredible displays of balance and perseverance.

It almost seemed as if we had been trapped inside a bike convoy of balancing acts. Some bicycles carried fruit. Others were laden with cabbages. A family of three rode in the back basket of one bike. Other bikes hauled steel bars, mattresses and cases of soda. One bike managed to balance a six-foot couch. Another was carrying four other bicycles.

Urban Roller Derby

But we were no longer just watching this urban roller derby-- we were part of it.

What we also quickly discovered was that there are two kinds of bicycle riders in the capital city: confident bikers and targets. And as long as you appear to know what you’re doing and where you’re going, you’ll have no trouble. If you begin to make a right turn and then realize it’s not where you wanted to go, keep going. Hesitation usually results in collisions with other bicyclists and does not score diplomacy points.

Newcomers will also need a great navigation sense. Street maps are not usually drawn to scale, and asking directions is often more confusing than taking a chance on dead reckoning.

But it seems that just at the moment you feel you are hopelessly lost, you turn the corner and there is a recognizable building or monument.

Besides, not following the map does have some pleasant and unexpected compensations, and wrong turns aren’t always bad decisions. We turned down one forbidding alley, only to find hundreds of schoolchildren playing behind a small wall.

One of them was throwing an old Frisbee, and soon we had dismounted our bikes and were playing a hard and fast game of Frisbee catch, to the delight of just about everyone except a few anxious mothers who had never seen a Frisbee, or us, before.

We headed out again, into the swarm of traffic. There are few traffic lights, and those that do exist are purely ornamental. A red light in Beijing doesn’t really mean stop . It simply indicates that you should cross the street very quickly.

Uniformed Cops

White-uniformed traffic cops are usually positioned in the middle of busy intersections. Occasionally they will point a finger at a particularly disobedient biker and then will spend 10 minutes lecturing him or her, but they do little to control traffic.

Their movements and frantic gesturing indicate a great aptitude for becoming aerobics instructors in the next life.

A typical bike tour will take one to three hours. One route goes around the Imperial City (with the Forbidden City at its core); another takes you around Wangfujing Street, Beijing’s major shopping area. Other routes will get you to Xidan (the main intersection on Beijing’s west end), and to the Qianmen district and the double gate at the south end of Tian’anmen Square.

In our case we circled the Forbidden City, wheeled past the Capital Hospital and the National Art Academy and headed back to the hotel, where we toasted our feat with a Tsingtao beer followed by a long shower. (One piece of advice: Because Beijing is an incredibly dusty city, it’s a good idea to take along a handkerchief or tissue for your eyes, as well as your camera.)

The bike rental program began in April when the Great Wall Hotel bought 20 bikes and announced the service.

The rental fees are about $6 a day. One of the good things about renting the bikes is that if your bike gets crunched in traffic, it will cost you only $50 to replace it. (That’s how much the hotel paid for the bikes.)

So far only one guest had to cough up $50. He didn’t destroy his bike. He simply forgot where he parked it. And, believe me, if you leave your bicycle in Beijing and later can’t remember where you left it, you can forget it.