Transportation:A big struggle with living in any major city is traffic, yet Beijing takes it to a whole new level. I personally have never seen anything like rush hour in the city. Combine the relative novelty of cars in the city with the lack of real training in driving and multiply that by the 4 million plus cars on the road and you have an equation for gridlock. The fact that the “stop hours” last from about 7:00am until 10:00pm when the city is literally a parking lot makes other forms of transport very necessary. The subway is quite usefully, but also gets jam packed at peak times in the day so I try to avoid it around 8am and 6pm. So I choose to bike, which allows me to move through the stopped traffic and still make progress to my destination. Although it is anything but a smooth ride, millions of bikers take to the streets every morning. These bikers then have to dodge pedestrians and the cars that choose to use the bike lanes to get ahead in traffic. Other obstacles include the silent dangers of the electric bikes, men with bikes stacked 10feet high with styrofoam, and other random debris left in the streets. And don’t forget your mask as a feeble attempt to block out the pollution.
This is my bike. My first week here I met an expat who had lived here for 8 years. I asked him what his number one piece of advice was to a newcomer in Beijing. He said "get a bike." Then, as my luck would have it, he was leaving Beijing the following morning to move back to America and gave me the keys to his bike. I look forward to the day I can make someone's life infinately easier by doing the same.
Her name is Giselle.
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