sofasurfers

Me and my bike, outside the Forbidden City

“I’d like to hire a bike!” I announced to the hotel, on landing in Beijing. They looked at me with great concern, but dutifully obliged. £1 later, I was off! I took a mental photo of where I was: this simply must be the tallest building in Beijing, I squealed silently to myself – a perfect landmark! I can never be lost. And despite the fact that in fact this is the second tallest building in Beijing, at 249.9m – just inside the regulated limit of 250m – as soon as I was just some 500m away from the hotel, it was indeed lost to the wall-like cloud of pollution (comparable to smoking 70 cigarettes a day, some say). No matter – where there is sun, there is a compass. And off I pedalled to Tiananmen Square, to the Forbidden City, to the crumbly, higgledy-piggledy hutongs of backstreet Beijing. For there is no finer way to conquer a city (and Beijing – the size of Belgium – had felt like Everest in my perception). I might not be able to speak like a local, but at least I can cycle like them.