June 4, 2009, shortly before 7:00 p.m. Location: People’s Square, Shanghai. A police van with a bewildering array of cameras, lights, whizzing bits and oddly bulbous domes is parked near a large crowd. The van’s side door is slightly ajar. Signs behind the crowd reveal that the people are here to watch “High School Musical” […]

An ill-starred taxi ride recently left me without a commuter bike. Lesson learned: When taking a taxi, always get a receipt. Without one, the Bashi Taxi Company proved unable to recover my beloved Dahon Boardwalk, folded and placed in the trunk. It had recently been converted into what I dare say was China’s only fixed-gear […]

This explanation (with diagrams!) of cars at a Beijing intersection making a left turn is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a while. Substitute a Volkswagen Santana for the Hyundai if you’re in Shanghai, and add a couple of mopeds.
Edit: Proxy link here.

A few months ago, I posted pictures of my Beijing commute from home to my language school. Since then, I have moved from my old apartment in Beijing’s northwestern university area to an apartment within the city’s Second Ring Road. The Second Ring traces the line once drawn by the imperial moat and city walls, […]

Photos from a ride out to the Fragrant Hills (香山) area in the Northwest of Beijing.

For those interested in bikes, China, and the human side of global business, this travelogue of a trip to Beijing is a fun read. The traveller is the designer of the Stokemonkey, a tremendously nifty electric assist gadget.

An early morning ride to the Summer Palace was marred by the remnants of the worst sandstorm I’ve seen in a year and half. I felt particular sympathy for the men engaged in the largely futile task of sweeping sand off the streets with large brooms. Their work succeeded in liberating the sand for a […]

I’ve seen photos of bicycle commutes from around the world, and felt that it was time to make my contribution. My commute is a short one — 15 minutes each way on a normal day. The pollution today was terrible, so I decided to take it very slowly. That had the advantage of making it […]

Winter in Beijing is deceptively cold. An absolute minimum of about -10 Celsius may not sound too bad to true cold-weather veterans, but it discounts the effect of the gale-force Siberian winds I encounter riding to and from my university; by some quirk of meteorology, I run into headwinds in both directions. I’m not sure […]

It’s just after Christmas in Beijing, which puts us firmly in the middle of Coal and Cabbage season. Oddly enough, the huge piles of cabbage that overtook the sidewalks at my university last year do not seem to have materialised again.
Coal, on the other hand, is still abundant. While the use of coal for household […]