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Published: November 8th 2007
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A black carpet 4 ft high in the metro? A 15-minute/95-degrees transfer at People's Square? No thanks. A bus 'system' with no English translation, no discernible order and seemingly no forethought? I'll pass. A city that looks manageable on a map only to have your 3 block stroll turn into a marathon? F' that S'. Sure cabs are great, but what am I going to do, spend 11元 on a cab to go to a noodle house just to eat a 10元 meal? My bike is all I need to conquer Le Tour De Shanghai (except Pudong, but who wants to go to Pudong anyway). I now own this city. I once even managed a 45-minute ride home in rush hour, bobbing and weaving my way through traffic, getting a great string of green lights and strategically hitting shortcuts and left turns to make it home WITHOUT STOPPING ONCE - hey, it's my website, I'll brag if I want to....
One place Shanghai is way ahead of us is in their traffic lights. Green turns to flashing green, to yellow, to red, to red & yellow combo, back to green. The order lets everyone know how much time they have
before the lights change, so drivers can throw it back in gear, speeders know whether to floor it or slam the breaks, and bikers know it's time to start jockeying for position again. One of the many, many ways Shanghai is far, far behind us however, is obeying said traffic lights. Red lights are simply a mere suggestion and a warning that if you do proceed, do so with caution (hell, or not) as 1.4 billion people will be flying across the street ready to waste you. In an attempt to control this, Traffic Assistants, who probably can't even read the name on their uniform, are placed at every street corner in the city (there's that communist full-employment thing again) to keep people in line. But all they can do is look scary, blow their super official-sounding whistle at you and point at you to get back to the corner. If I had to estimate, I'd say these Traffic Assistants are obeyed 1 out of every......wait, is there anything less than never? They are even easier for me to ignore, since they know it's not worth the effort to explain traffic laws to a foreigner who 1) either won't realize
the shouting is directed at him or 2) in my case, pretend not to notice and 3) play the stupid foreigner card and pretend not to understand your ranting. Honestly, it's just so much easier for them to let me run red lights?
But no matter what great time you're making, you can be stopped dead in your tracks behind a bike cart ridden by a guy fresh off the rice paddies transporting his entire house on his back at no more than 4 miles an hour, who combining with his buddy trying to pull his overloaded cart from next to him, box in half a block's worth of people (which I roughly calculate at 350,000 people/sq. block). Plus since he's the FNG in this city, he's never seen a foreigner before. So instead of concentrating on pumping those legs at 3 revolutions/ft, he's shouting "ha-llo" at me in disbelief that foreigners know how to ride bikes. But then again, some Chinese would probably be surprised if you told them foreigners knew how to breathe.
The streets are flooded, with a rush hour that makes the streets of Manhattan look like the Indy 500. You're not just battling
the cabbies that seem intent on running over as many people as possible or the brave souls, rich/patient/stupid enough to have their own car in Shanghai, but the throngs of bikers that make up the masses. And the bikes people ride are as strange as the people who ride them. From the luxurious motorcarts, putt-putts and handful of motorcycles to the electrics that are neither bicycle nor motorbike to the 75 year old, single-gear leg pumpers, peasant labor carts and miniature bikes straight out of the 3 Ring Circus, you see it all in Shanghai. I'm beginning to think maybe there is a city-wide contest to see who can fit the most people on a single bike. So far, 3 on a bike (including the baby sleeping in the basket) and 4 on a motorbike are winning, but I'm keeping my eyes out for that clutch player to step up and win China's version of the "Clown Car" gag. I gotta admit, biking with a full-grown adult on the back is way tougher than the Chinese make it look (the fact that they weigh on average 95 pounds helps), but by no means is it as difficult as those 2
"festively plump" foreign girls were making making it seem, when I watched them take 20 minutes to go 1 block.
I have literally never seen a parking lot in China. I have, however, seen countless bike lots stretching blocks down the road. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for why some parking spots are watched by an attendant that dutifully collects your 4mao (less than 5 cent) parking fee and why others don't. But the little attendant guy always seems to wait until you've already locked up to run up and demand money, since there's less chance you'll move your bike then. I might get more upset about this if it wasn't just 4 cents, a great way to get rid of lose change and a wonderful chance to help the Communists reach that goal of full-employment. Just make sure you lock it up good and take everything with you. Anything left in your basket will be gone in seconds and replaced by empty beer bottles & cigarette packages, candy wrappers and other trash. And if you don't lock it up tight, don't even bother coming back for it. When I first bought my bike, I was
advised to get two locks through the following sales pitch:
Salesman: (Having just finished fixing lock #1 onto my bike) So, do you want to buy a lock?
Me: I just did. You just put it on for me.
Salesman: Yes, but you need another one. This one is no good.
Me: Oh, good. That makes sense. It's a good thing I'm buying it then.
Turns out that pimply-faced kid had sage-like wisdom, when someone tried to steal my bike. Lock #2 was no match for a it's only natural enemy - the pick - and lock #1 foiled him for long enough for him to give up and ditch it. I still haven't deciphered doorman's rant about finding it on the 2nd floor of my building, but I guess it's really not important.
Bikers in China have absolutely no fear. I'd put your average Chinese peasant up against Evil Kinevil in a daredevil contest to cross a street in Shanghai any day of the week. Thankfully, most encounters leave you with little more than a shake of the head, thinking how in God's Name nobody got killed at that last intersection. But when incidents do happen,
who's fault is usually of little consequence. In typical Chinese fashion, the one "at fault" is the less sympathetic character or the one who doesn't give enough face. God help you if a little, old lady runs you down in cold blood to teach you foreign devils a lesson, cause you will get no crowd sympathy from the mob against her. Oh, and the mob definitely WILL assemble. It can be downright frightening to know that when disaster strikes, you can count on everyone around you rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to stare. When an old woman's bike got clipped by a taxi and she went rolling out in the middle of the street and I was the only one who helped her up, I stood up to a confused crowd wondering why would I ever go out of my way to help a poor old woman. When I came across a drunk guy in the subway who had fallen and was bleeding so badly that at first, I thought he had been shot, I had to push aside the passive throng of gawkers to try to help get him to an ambulance. With so many goddamn people in this country and their familiarity with suffering, they've developed an attitude of looking out for #1 and not giving a flying fuck about others. But instead of becoming desensitized to the squalor and suffering myself, China has had the opposite effect on me. Ever since that bus tragedy in Tibet ripped any remaining state of 'passive observer' out of me, I've realized that if I don't stop to help someone and stay above it all, nobody else will. Or I can just take Candi's advice and forget about business school and start practicing the line, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV in China."
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Dope ride
Love the picture of you on your dope ride! The only thing missing is a helmut. Does anyone wear them? Might be a wise investment.