I can think of few things that would be more terrifying than driving in China. The sheer number of vehicles combined with the fact that no one seems to follow any traffic laws makes for a hazardous combination. I have witnessed some very interesting traffic maneuvers from the backseat of a taxi, clutching onto friends anxiously as the driver crosses over six lanes of traffic or moves into the oncoming lane in order to swerve around traffic jams, all the while looking bored and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. All drivers have an automatic reflex that causes them to honk their horns at regular intervals, and all drivers are also subsequently deaf to the sound of other people honking their horns. If you can drive in Beijing, then you can drive fearlessly in any other city in the world, albeit as the most hated driver on the road.
One step down from driving in Beijing is biking in Beijing. Seeing all the inconveniences of driving in the city, many people opt to ride bikes, mopeds, and any number of other odd little motorized vehicles that are small enough to allow them to drive in the bike lanes. The traffic laws for these are just as nonexistent as for cars, or so I found when I made the auspicious decision to go biking on the weekend with my roommate and some friends.
Perhaps I should have been better prepared, given that I almost get run over by some little motorbike or rickshaw on a daily basis, but for some reason when my roommate asked if I wanted to bike to Lake Hohai, I was picturing peaceful bike trails, not the chaotic bike lanes adjacent to eight lanes of Beijing traffic.
We left for our excursion around ten in the morning, renting bikes from the campus, and ventured out into the streets. Luckily we traveled in a pack, so it was easier to avoid crazy traffic, but I still had plenty of moments where I wished for my own obnoxious horn to honk incessantly at other bikers.
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| Our biking gang |
We stopped about halfway to the lake at a hutong where the Chinese roommates told us we could find some really good food. "We'll meet at the other end of the street in a half hour," they told us. Great idea, except that the minute we started down the alleyway, everyone and their Chinese mother seemed to be crowding their way in as well. Making your way through a crowd of people literally packed shoulder to shoulder is one thing, doing this with a bike is quite another. I kept tripping over my own pedals and getting stuck trying to maneuver my bike around the crowd. At one point, it literally seemed like all of China was packed into this one little alleyway. It took us an hour to get from one end of the street to the other, at which point all I wanted to do was get on my bike and ride out of there! These are the kinds of experiences you learn to expect in China.
When we finally got to the lake, it was beautiful; Clear and blue, and fringed with willow trees. It was one of China's rarer good-weather days so of course there were large crowds there, too. We spent some time enjoying the views, ate lunch at a restaurant along the lake, and worked our way through more crowds to walk along the lake before heading back. It was around five pm by the time we returned, so we had spent around seven hours on our biking excursion, at least two or three of which had been spent fighting crowds. An exhausting day by all accounts!
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| Roomies at Hohai! |
