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 The Forbidden City lit up at night. I try to ride around three to five times a week. When I started, I’d leave my apartment building and ride down Chang An Avenue (长安大街) from one side of the second ring road in Jianguomen (建国门) to the other side in Fuxingmen (复兴门), and then back again. That route is not bad for a quick ride. The bike lanes are usually over 5 meters wide. It was about 16 km round trip. But not too exciting.
After some experimentation with different routes, I found that Di’Anmen Street (地安门大街) is good to ride on. The bike lane is somewhat wide and most of the buses are electric so there is less pollution. So the whole ride takes about an hour depending on traffic. I usually go counter clockwise so that my return to Jianguomen is on Changan Avenue and I can ride fast in the big bike lanes. Plus it goes past Tiananmen Square (天安门). There is almost always a crowd to look at taking pictures of the square or of the gate to the Forbidden City so people watching at stop lights can be interesting.
The pollution in Beijing is pretty bad. I get sore throats from it if I go out and ride on bad days. (Check the Beijing US Embassy website for current conditions — usually between very unhealthy and hazardous.) Once I went out during the rain, and when I got home I was black with tire particles and greasy soot that was sprayed up on me. It was scary to realize all that is normally in the air.
Sometimes when I feel like a leisurely ride, I go around the Forbidden City (故宫). The area surrounding it is dimly lit, and seeing the massive walls and grand entrances with nobody around are always impressive. Sometimes it leaves me with an eerie feeling especially after the spotlights have been turned off.
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 The hills west of Beijing. I met Kevin and Mark at the Wukesong (五棵松) subway station Sunday morning, and we headed west towards the hills. The skies were about as clear as they get in Beijing — a sort of pale blue, Beijing blue — and the air quality warnings were only ‘unhealthy’. But even at nine in the morning it was already 35 C (95 F) and supposed to get hotter.
We rode all the way to the end of Fuxing Road (复兴路) until we hit the old Capital Steel Company site. Then headed north to Mentougou (门头沟). The old steel mill is massive. I rode through it about a year ago when it was still operating. You could taste the iron in the air. They had no semblance of security was I was able to go into the massive sheds and places where they were still forging steel. It felt like going into an ancient fire breathing beast’s lair.
Now the steel mill is shut down and been relocated somewhere in Hebei Province to help move some pollution out of the city. The area is slated to be turned into a ‘Cartoon City’ — a development specially for developing China’s internal cartoon industry probably with an amusement park to go with it.
We headed towards Tanzhesi Temple (潭柘寺). We had Kevin, a Beijing local, leading us which was pretty good since he had been there several times before. I only had to follow and not navigate. I know we ended up on the national road G108, but not exactly sure now looking back how we did it.
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 MiaoFengShan Scenic Area My friend Mark and I decided that we needed to do a ride this weekend. So I went onto bikemap.net in order to see what might be interesting. We had already gone north of Beijing so I looked to the west. To the south and East of Beijing is almost completely flat, and we wanted some mountains.
The route I decided on has an almost 20 mile uphill section that looked to get pretty steep near the top. The route is inside the MiaoFengShan Scenic Reserve (妙峰山风景石胜区） so we hoped the views would be nice plus the cars would be few. Continue reading The MiaoFengShan Scenic Reserve
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 My bicycle and me on the Marco Polo Bridge. When I belated realized I have to start training for riding from San Francisco to Boston, I ended up buying a bike that I can’t use for the trip. It was too good a deal to pass on despite it not being the right kind of bike. I bought a two year old, used Trek SL1000 from one of the local Trek stores in Beijing. It was one of their rental bikes so it had a fair number of dings and maybe was not in perfect condition. But I felt for 2000 RMB (about $300) it would do well for the several months I had before going back to the US for the trip.
A few of the Chinese customers were shocked that I would buy a used bicycle. People are wary of buying used things here whether they are bicycles, apartments, or cars. Considering buying things new is tricky enough (notorious ‘Made in China’ quality) many assume that buying something used you will just get cheated. The only problem that I see is that the wheels will have to be replaced. The wear strips on the wheels are almost gone. I figure that can be done when I return to China after my trip. Even replacing the wheels, it will be cheaper than the most expensive road bike at the local Decathlon store that is nowhere as good a bicycle.
It is not designed to take a rack so I can’t use it for that. I have been taking it for two-day trips up into the hills north of Beijing. Anything that doesn’t fit into my hydration backpack doesn’t come. I have started putting small stuff sacks into the water bottle holders. That seems to do well since I use the bladder instead of water bottles. Continue reading My Beijing Road Bike
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 Looking up to the pass before heading down into Sihaizhen. Looking for an interesting destination for a weekend ride from Beijing, I looked at bikemap.net and found a ride to Sihaizhen (四海镇） north of Beijing about 100 km. If you went another few kilometers from where the posted ride ended, there was a town with the words ‘Spring’ in it — Zhenzhuquanxiang (珍珠泉乡). For some reason I thought it said hot spring. There are a few up north. A hot spring seemed like a good location to head towards.
Staying on the route could not really be easier as once you got on the right street heading north out of Beijing there were no turns off the main road. Mark and I met up near the south entrance to Ditan Park (地坛公园) at about 08:30 and then started heading north. From looking at the elevation section on the bikemap website I knew that the first half of the ride would be completely flat for 40+ kilometers until we hit the mountains. For some reason I did not really pay attention to the elevation gains.
Telling someone about it at work, they asked, “Where are you going to stay?” It was a good question, but I figured there would be somewhere. I read the book Country Driving as well as from when I went to my friend’s house near Mutianyu I figured there must be somewhere to stay. No worries.
Continue reading Weekend Trip to a Hot Spring…
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 Tree lined roads east of Beijing. One of my English friends in Beijing was holding a party to celebrate the royal wedding in England between Prince William and Kate at a house up in the countryside north of Beijing. I decided it was a good reason to go on a training run. His place is near Mutianyu Great Wall （慕田峪长城） and about 100 km from my apartment in downtown Beijing.
Since I had no spare inner tube or pump compatible with my newish road bike I took my around town folding bike with fat, slow tires. At 6:00 AM, I hopped on my bike and started the 4 km ride to Dongzhimen (东直门). Quickly I realized both tires were fairly flat having not ridden the bike in a while. I kept going since no bike shop or corner bicycle hack would be available for at least another three hours. Plus the later you get on the number 916 bus to Huairou （怀柔) the more and more crowded it gets. (China is like that — things get crowded quickly.) Continue reading A Royal Wedding, A Sandstorm, and Mud Falling from the Sky
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My friend Mark had heard of the Marco Polo Bridge (or the Chinese name LuGou Bridge — 卢沟桥) in a guide book on Beijing when he first arrived in 2008. The book said it was a beautiful and famous bridge completed in 1192 AD. Apparently Marco Polo went back to Europe and raved about the beauty of this bridge. It is considered the starting place of the War of Resistance to Japanese in 1937, and there is a museum nearby chronicling the Japanese crimes and the Chinese resistance. Continue reading Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing
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