Beijing Bicycle and Turtles

I confess I didn't go to a single class all day, although I tried to go to one in the morning, only to be stymied by the alternate week thing. But I am really close to getting it figured out. And I had a lot of other adventures instead.

One thing I had been considering doing for a long time was buy a bicycle. I had been set on getting a second-hand one, but one of my professor's grad students explained how that only contributes to the problem of rampant theft, so I changed my mind. He suggested going to the campus bike store, since it's awfully convenient, and buying not the very cheapest and not the very most expensive, but something in between. So I did that. I'm not sure if 180 RMB is cheap or expensive by local standards, but it's the certainly the cheapest bike I've ever bought, at just over $22. An extra 10 RMB for the basket and 35 RMB for the best lock they had still put it under $30. What a deal.

Of course it's the most awful piece of crap, just one speed and in every way "made in China" cheap to the touch. You couldn't even find a bike this crappy in the US. But that's kind of what makes it wonderful. There's a market for exactly this sort of bike, and a bike-mechanic on every corner to fix it cheaply when it goes wrong. And it actually rides quite comfortably. I think Chinese bikes are slightly different in shape. I notice that everyone rides low, so that your knees never completely straighten. I had them put my seat on the highest setting, but it's still lower than a bike in the US would be. The handle-bars on the other hand, are much higher, so you sit more upright when you ride. The result is pretty good.

Of course everyone rides very very slowly. People drive and walk slowly too, always alert to prevent potential accidents. The bike lanes are enormous. They are full-sized car-lanes on either side of any major street, and they are generally protected from the motor traffic by a fence or a median strip. Motorcycles and occasionally taxis also drive in them, but they are still pretty safe if you keep your eyes open. I would say that biking around here requires more attention than biking along the Lakeshore path in Chicago, but is no more challenging than, say, driving a car in traffic.

NO one wears helmets. But by now I'm used to being stared at, and I brought my damn helmet all the way from the U.S., so yep, I wore it. And boy did I get extra stared-at. But I knew it would make my mama happy. I drew the line at wearing it on campus though. On campus, there's almost nothing big or fast enough to knock you down, and I think it's a fair compromise.

Next, I decided to have an adventure and bike to Wudaokou, just to see how far away it is. It turned out to be quite reasonable, maybe only 10-15 minutes, faster than the bus (because there's less traffic in the bike-lane and you don't have to stop every few blocks)! So having a bike makes the nearest subway a lot more convenient, and also brings me closer to my fellow Fulbrighters, for what it's worth.

I parked and locked my bike and wandered into an outdoor market, which reminded me a lot of Korea. Every sort of thing being sold. Lots of socks, clothes, kitchen utensils, and flower pots. Also unidentifiable dried things. I rounded a corner, and first got very excited about some goldfish I saw. But then I got even more excited about some little tiny turtles. I have wanted a little tiny turtle for ever so long, that you can't exactly call it an impulse buy.

Mind you, the turtle-selling guy and the U.S.-based turtle-enthusiast websites I subsequently consulted differ significantly as regards the ease/difficulty of their care. Chinese turtle-salesman: they need to be able to get in the water, get out of the water, and here are the pellets they eat. Turtle-enthusiast websites: you need three kinds of filtration, aerating stones, live plants, a basking light that will also provide UVA and UVB light, a thermometer and aquarium heating system, a variety of vegetables as well as live and pre-killed seafood for its diet, preferably gut-loaded with healthy foods and dusted with vitamin powder, oh yeah, and test the water you use to change their tank for ph and potential chemical imbalances.

I know turtle- enthusiasts will probably get really mad at me here, but I opine that the truth is somewhere in between. I haven't really found a pet-store here where I can get fancy filtration and bubbling equipment. I'll feed 'em some seafood and veggies in addition to their pellets, change their water often, and see how they do. They are Baxi turtles in Chinese, otherwise known as red-ear sliders--actually native to the U.S., which I hadn't realized. But I'm sure these little guys (I got talked into two) were bred and born here. They are very small, and would be illegal to sell in the U.S., apparently because toddlers have a tendency to put tiny turtles in their mouths and catch salmonella. Don't worry, I won't. The picture is of one of them in the temporary tank I got for 10 kuai from the turtle seller. The websites at least convinced me I ought to get a bigger softer home for them than this, though, which I actually did today.

Anyway, I put the turtles and their house in the little basket of my bike. Meanwhile, an old fellow who had been sitting nearby came up and very attentively helped me in various ways. Oh--it was an attended bike-parking lot, and he was the attendant. I hadn't even noticed. But there are almost no bike-racks in Beijing, certainly not as many as there are bikes. Most people lock their bikes only to themselves, which is probably why bike-theft is so rampant: you just chuck the bike into a truck, lock and all, and break through the lock later at your leisure. It reminds me of a story told us by a bike-shop guy in Chicago, who had locked his especially nice valuable bike to a lamppost with a good sturdy lock. The thieves chopped down the lamp-post. Well, bike-theft is easier here, though what with so many bikes equally stealable, whether yours gets stolen is merely a matter of luck or fate unless you have an especially nice one. Anyway, the bike parking lot attendant thing is one way of getting around that. The cost, payable upon departure, is 2 mao (1 mao is 1/10 of an RMB)--almost exactly 2 and a half cents. Worth it!

I and pedaled home very softly and delicately, trying not to jostle them too much. I'm sure they didn't like it, but the recovered okay. Just as I was locking up my bike, my phone rang and it was JZ and FL wanting to know if I'd like to hang out. Yes, actually, I would. I barely had time to get the turtles settled in, when they arrived, so I dashed out the door with hardly anything, just my wallet and keys. I was most dismayed to have not brought my camera when, a few minutes later, they informed me that we would be going to a nice temple about an hour away to drink some tea. There was no going back for the camera, though, as we were already in traffic. I felt very regretful about it but there was nothing to be done. Along the way we passed a river which FL said was the water source for Beijing. Hm. No wonder we have to boil it. There was a fence all along it ("fence" was a new vocabulary word for FL), which he said was to keep country people up in the hills from doing their laundry in it. Thank god for small favors.

The temple was very quiet and peaceful. It was not a functioning temple, really just a rustic setting for a rather good restaurant and extremely expensive tea-house. But it had lovely turtle ponds and very ancient trees. The restaurant was most romantic, lit by hanging lantern-lights. We sat on the second-floor which was a balcony around the outside so you could look down onto the first floor--just like in a martial arts movie before someone comes and tears the place up. But no one tore the place up. Instead, we had really tasty, mostly vegetarian dishes, and yellow wine in cups pre-supplied with a plum pit. Yellow wine tasted a little like plum wine, but I don't think that had anything to do with the plum pit which I believe was there to keep you from drinking too fast (?). It was served warm like sake, and I drank a lot of it. It's funny how I can drink much more stuff like that than I can beer. I pretty much kept up with FL and I was only a little tipsy.

After dinner and jolly conversation, we went over to the tea house, where the cheapest pot of tea cost more than my bicycle and turtles combined. FL and JZ both grumbled about it. "Paying for atmosphere," JZ said accusingly to the waitress's face. But it was a lovely atmosphere, alone in the courtyard with only some gnarled old pine trees, stars coming out overhead, and not even any mosquitoes. We sat along the edge of the courtyard on a sort of porch under some calligraphy, and JZ and FL played Chinese chess while I earnestly studied the rules. Then we switched to pente. JZ kept saying she was bad at both games, but she won every single time, almost apologetically. It was fun, and we were mellow and in a good mood. How important the human factor is in experiencing things. I would have had a totally different experience if I had gone there alone, and not as good either. But with them I felt perfectly taken care of and had the warm feeling of fellowship, so that the place was not the main thing, only an enhancement. Some places can stand up to the challenge of being the main thing, of course, and those are places that may be best seen by oneself. But this place was perfect just as it was. If only I'd had my camera...


When we were going out, they had already closed the doors. "Hey," said FL, "how do we get out?" I thought they answered, "The door!" But it turned out they'd said, "The door in the door." Inside the bigger doors, which were closed and barred, there was a smaller door that could open freely. It was funny, and it prompted me to recall the story of Yanzi, the dwarf-statured minister of Qi, who went on a diplomatic mission to the country of Chu. The Chu people wanted to make fun of him, so they ushered him to a very small door at the side of the main gate. This was a great insult, but he actually made to go through it, remarking that when in the country of humans one uses a human door, and when in the country of dogs one uses a dog door. I think, as the story goes, they were ashamed and had him come in through the proper door instead. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed the door inside a door.

We got lost on the way home, but we were in a car so I didn't mind about it. And we eventually found our way back. I thanked them both very much, though I'm told one doesn't thank one's friends for things because it is a distancing sort of politeness. Well, I did it in English, so I hope it's okay. Then I went to see about my bike.

I had been observing the bike-parking situation for some time, and had realized that people park in front of my building during the day, but not during the night. Some people take their bikes up into their rooms, but that's a major pain and only exacerbates the already-cramped elevator situation. So I asked the security guard about it. The security guard looked about 15 years old. They hardly know anything about anything, though they do some greatly military version of the macarena every night around 7, loudly shouting out numbers in Chinese. However in this case I lucked out. He directed me to building 2, which in fact was where the "supermarket" was, that had so incensed me when first I moved here. "But," he added, "you have to pay 3 yuan." I considered it. Fifty cents didn't seem so much to make sure my bike was safe, but on the other hand, it would add up. "Three yuan a day?" I asked. He looked shocked. "Three yuan a month!" he hastily corrected me. Wow, hurray for China. So I have easily sorted out the bike parking issue which had so worried me before, and I dropped off the bike with its 24-hour/day attendant, and headed back up to sleep. What a day!