Here’s a little geography lesson about Beijing:

At the center of the city is the former Imperial Palace and the Forbidden City.  Just south of that lies Tian’anmen Square and other important government buildings.  Between Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City is Chang’an Street (Eternal Peace–which I find incredibly ironic, actually).  Encircling the Forbidden City is the 2nd Ring Road.  A little further out is the 3rd Ring Road, and after that, the 4th Ring Road.  Beijing actually has six ‘ring roads’ that encircle each other with the 5th and 6th being furthest away from each other. 

A while back I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to ride my bike around the 4th Ring Road (about 42 miles, or 68ish kilometers) for a challenge.  I was thinking about doing it over the May holiday but ended up traveling instead. 🙂  So, an American friend and I decided that we were going to do it!  I decided to ask my students if any of them wanted to join us.  On Friday in my business class, I began by drawing Beijing on the board. 🙂  (This was actually really funny because as soon as I started drawing they started guessing!)  It didn’t take them too long to figure out what I was drawing.  Then I labeled some key places (Forbidden City, the ring roads, Tsinghua University, my home, etc.) so they had a frame of reference.  Then I drew a bike on the 4th ring road and an arrow all the way around it.  A few of them caught on to what I was ‘telling’ them.  Then I asked them, ‘who wants to come with me?’  Most of them said, ‘you’re crazy!’ or ‘too far!’  But, I ended up with two students who said they would come with me. 🙂 

I told them where we were going to meet and at what time.  (Actually, I told them a little earlier because they are notorious for being late.)  The plan was to meet at 7:40 (for them) on the corner of the 4th Ring and another street close to the university.  I got a phone call from one of them at 7:15.  I answered.  He said, ‘where are you?’  WHAT?!?  I said, ‘I’m at home. Where are you?’  He said, ‘we are on the way!’  AAAAHHHHHH!!!  Then, I got to where we were meeting and received another phone call from a different student (a student who didn’t actually tell me he was coming on the trip–four students ended up coming!).  They were on the opposite corner of the intersection and wanted to bike the other way because they didn’t want to look into the sun.  I guess I didn’t really care which way we biked so I agreed.  So began our journey ‘around’ Beijing.

I had warned the men that we were going to go fast. (I’m used to Chinese people biking slowly and I didn’t want to be biking for 12 hours.)  I was impressed with their speed and was happy that we would finish the journey in a reasonable amount of time!  🙂 Hehehe….ever the optimist…  Dexter brought his map so that we wouldn’t get lost. 😉  (apparently Dexter doesn’t read road signs).  And, the map didn’t help anyway.  In the first hour of the journey, he and Edward led us astray 5-6 times.  Aaaaahhhhh!!!  Each time I said to them, ‘we need to go this way’ and they wouldn’t listen.  I may not speak Chinese but I’m really good at reading road signs that are IN ENGLISH!  After a few wrong turns, they finally figured out that the foreign girls might actually know what’s going on.  There were a few times where we didn’t even let them stop long enough to check/ask.  We just kept going so they were forced to follow. 

Then… my friend and I were pretty hungry at about 11:15-11:30ish.  We’d been riding for a few hours.  So I said, ‘let’s find a place to stop and eat.’  Dexter said, ‘we’ll eat at 12.’  🙂  Then we had a little exchange about how I eat when I’m hungry and not when the clock tells me to eat and how he thinks one should have an eating schedule….blah blah blah.  This concept was so foreign to him.  We ended up stopping to eat (at one of the nicest restaurants I’ve been to in China–in sweaty athletic clothes!).  Lunch took way too long because they assumed that we wanted to have a sit down meal.  I would have been fine with baozi from the street or some other street food.  After our hour-long lunch we got back on the bikes.  (this was pretty painful)  About another hour into the trip, Dexter’s bike chain came off.  🙂 He immediately got out his tissue so that his hands wouldn’t get dirty. 🙂  The chain was stuck and he wasn’t able to pull it out.  So, he went off the road to find a branch to use for leverage.  While he was looking for the branch, I pulled his chain out (sans tissue) and proceeded to put it back on his bike.  It was pretty humorous to hear the reaction of the other three guys.  Clearly they think that I am not capable.  (Thanks, Dad, for all the times you ‘let’ me help you with handy things around the garage/house/cars/etc.) 

So, we were back on the road.  About 30 minutes later, my tire went flat.  I ran over a nail-like object.  At the same time, the spring on Hubert’s kick-stand broke so it wouldn’t stay up. (I fixed that one with a piece of ribbon I happened to have in my bag)  So another 30 minutes was spent finding a bike guy and repairing my tire.  Edward wanted to send me home in a taxi!  No way was I going to stop when I was so close to finishing!  After fixing the bike and having a popsicle we were back on the road. 

We were on the final stretch home when we lost the guys in the last kilometer.  They decided that we didn’t know where we were going and went a different way.  Who ended up in the right spot?  That’s right…the two foreigners.  They never did show up at the original corner.  They just found the back road back to the university.  🙂 

At the end of the journey, I was sore in the rear and burnt in the face.  But, it was a fantastic day!!  🙂  See below for a map of our journey.

The red dot is where I live. The line from the red dot is where I bike every day on my way to the university. My original idea was to go clockwise so that we didn't have to worry about crossing intersections on the corners. They wanted to go the other way because the sun would have been in our faces for the first hour. Total time for the trip including wrong turns, extended lunch, flat tire, and broken kick-stand: just over 7 hours. A bit embarassing for 42 miles. Next time I hope to beat that time!