Bicycling in Beijing

My first experiences of Beijing traffic made me scared to just cross the road, let alone ride a bicycle, so it was many months before I started watching the route to work more closely and realised that I could ride a fair amount of it off the main streets and on side roads, or even bicycle only lanes.

Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation the first time I set out to ride the ~20km to work. I discovered that, unlike London, it was not the cars that were my main enemy, it was all the vehicles that were smaller than a car and had fewer wheels such as three wheeled auto-rickshaw type vehicles and two wheeled motorbikes and electric bicycles. It appears that while there are laws for cars and larger vehicles, anything smaller is completely exempt from any sort of rule, including completely ignoring normal conventions regarding the direction of the traffic flow!

However, with a little bit of patience and staying alert, I managed to navigate all these obstacles safely. On my way home that day though, I got a puncture. I couldn't believe my luck that my very first ride I should get a puncture, but there was nothing to be done but to take off the wheel and fix the puncture. While I was doing this a teenage boy stood watching me and admiring my bike (it was my track racing bike that I had brought from the UK). I was struggling with trying to get the tyre off (they were thin wheeled racing tyres and were very tight on the rim) and after a while he stopped just watching and came to help. Once the puncture was mended he indicated that he would like a photo with the bike and then while we were putting the wheel back on he indicated that he would like to ride it.

I didn't seem enthusiastic at first, so he started pulling out his ID card - but I was concentrating on putting the wheel back on so I just waved it away. Once it was ready to ride he asked again so I gave it to him and watched him ride off round the corner. I spent the next few minutes wondering whether or not I would see my bicycle again, and whether I should have asked him for the ID card and if my faith in humanity would prove to be misplaced.

After a few minutes he arrived back, smiling, handed back the bike and I rode home