Beijing by Bicycle in 24 Hours

The sun rises very early in this part of the country. It sets very early too, which is why last night getting caught in a rainstorm at 5pm was all the more dangerous, I was losing daylight, too, and if you can possibly conceive how insane the traffic is, try negotiating it in bad light on a junky 3rd world bike. The brakes on this thing are questionable at best, add grime and slime (which is what rain turns into on a Beijing street) and you have a recipe for the other ubiquitous 3rd world bike feature: bent forks. Thankfully, I maneuvered around all obstacles, not the least of which was getting hopelessly lost.

Beijing is a grid with the cardinal quadrants marked, so it is easy to navigate on a map. But each of those giant blocks has a medieval labyrinth of *hutongs* - alleyways no bigger than a pig on a bicycle and never straight for more than 20-30 meters. The alley walls are a quilt of brick and mortar dating from a couple 100 years to wet concrete with absolutely no logic as to why one is superseding the other. Honestly, much of the new stuff is falling apart and much of the old stuff is bullet proof and the piebald effect creates a feeling of carelessness. Nostalgia for historical preservation is so bourgeois. People stand and sit around the apertures in these walls, spitting, yelling, and sweeping little piles of debris off the dirt and shit caked alley with a dilapidated brick cubicle on one side and in-progress concrete block construction on the other and the debris from both choking the narrow path causing no end of beep beep beep from the electric bikes and *san lun che* (three wheel delivery scooters) My bike does not have a bell. Whistling works.