I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

(First of all... I should mention that I am ironically listening to the song Bicycle by Queen right now with my music player being on random)

When I first got to China (and before I even got here) I debated whether or not I should purchase a nice bike. I could not decide if it would be worth my money to have a bike for only one year even though I might just ride it a handful of times. The traffic here is pretty crazy and I thought buying a bike might be the same as buying cancer. I was able to borrow a bicycle though and after riding it once, I decided that it was liberating enough to be a good investment.

The bike you see above I bought the day after my first paycheck. It cost me almost my entire paycheck. It was 1460 RMB ($230 USD). It is a 21 speed with disc brakes and SRAM gear shifters. I really don't know if it is all that great of a deal (maybe someone who knows anything about bikes can post a comment) but I have liked the bike so far.

This blog post will be a virtual ride in China with me and my bike.



Trip 1 - See how far my road will take me

I have attached maps of all my trips so you can get an idea of what my trip was like.


View To The Daoist Temple in a larger map

For this first trip, I just decided to leave my apartment and see how far the road would take me. I decided not to make any turns so that I would not get lost. The first mile was pretty busy because I was in the city but once I got out, I was able to ride a little bit faster.

Much of the road looked like this. All of the sidewalks here in China are basically like this. If you look in the background, you will notice a scooter coming this way on the sidewalk. This is a VERY common occurrence. As in, I don't think I have spent a day here without seeing a scooter and car driving on the sidewalk. Something else that is common to see here are the trees with white painted on the bottom. Sadly, the base of the trees doubles as a place for little kids (and sometimes older kids) to use as toilet. Always be careful where you walk here. 

The day I went for a bike ride, I saw people with corn everywhere. I think this lady is trying to get the chaff out of the corn or something like that.

Yes; the corn is placed on the same road that everyone drives their scooters and cars on.

This is exercise equipment. Yes. Yes it really is. You see it everywhere here, and to be quite honest, I really don't know how you are supposed to exercise with it. Next time someone from America asks me how Chinese people are so skinny though, I will just show them this picture. 

Pretty sure this is the cleanest river I have seen so far in China. 

More corn. They literally had it everywhere on the road. There where a couple places where they had it unavoidably in traffic. There is a chance I have eaten some of the corn meal that I road over on my bike. How cool is that?!

It is common to see small gardens planted just about everywhere. Many houses out in "the country" will have small gardens in their front "yards."

My bike is awesome. Thank you for being awesome bike. 

A corn field and the closest thing I have seen to a mountain since leaving Utah.

A field and a persimmon tree looking toward the city of Zhengzhou (though you can't actually see that far)

A random shack. There is probably someone living in it.

A random building with bricks. There is probably no one living in it.

Sculpture at a Buddhist temple

After getting to the end of the road I was riding on, it turned into a mountain hilly type area. I decided to ride up as far as I could and came across an area with a couple Buddhist temples. 

At the top of the mountain, there was a lady selling some autumn peaches. She was fun to talk to, and the peaches were amazing! Even though they were all green, they were crisp and sweet. It was so nice to look out from the top of a small mountain and just relax. It was the first time in China where I was out in public and could be in an area and not see anyone else (though the longest that ever happened for was probably 1 minute). It was good to be out of the crowds and just take a minute to enjoy being in China. 

The front entrance of the temple

Dead trees for light posts and telephone poles are pretty awesome. 

This was the first Buddhist temple I came across in China. Unlike Taiwan, Buddhist and Taoist temples are comparatively rare. 

Old men and bikes = China.

Even though the cities here are quite dirty, the government puts a lot of work into landscaping the roads. Some areas really look quite impressive. 

All of the stop lights are like this. They have timers so you know how much time you have to get across the street (or how much time until you die).  The green blinks before it turns yellow, then finally red. You will see there is a sign for scooters and bikes. There is also a light for pedestrians as well. Cool beans. 

Saw some bee hives on the side of the road and thought of dad.

The bee keeper saw me looking at his bees so I talked to him. Fun guy. Pretty sure he lives in this tent.

Chinese bees look pretty much like American bees. Fancy that.

The bee keeper was nice and let me have a look at his bees. 

I felt bad; he got stung in the forehead as he was taking it out. Nice guy. 

Pretty sure we are best buds now. I keep the sticker on my hat because I am cool and he keeps the sticker on his glasses because he is even cooler. (Actually; I have never really been cool, and my hat didn't even come with a sticker)

Trip 2 - Going to the Yellow river


View To Yellow River in a larger map

So as the father of one of my students was in my apartment dropping his son off for English lessons, he noticed my bike and asked if I would like to go riding. I told him I would love to and he just happened to be going up to the Yellow River with his friend on my day off.

We met up in the morning and it took us a while to get out of the city since it was during rush hour. It was amazing how many people were out on their scooters. There were times when I would look back and all I could see was black heads of hair. After we got out of the city, we rode strait toward the river with the occasional cigarette breaks.

This is what the road to the Yellow river looks like. From the picture, I think you can get a sense of the pollution. It should also be noted that this would be considered basically dead traffic. It is rare to not see cars everywhere.

I didn't really know what to expect when we got there; I guess I figured there would be a park or something like that. Turns out, it was a big tourist trap area with a bunch of random stuff to see.

The first place we went to had a large bell. You can ring it for good luck. I think really, the only person that is lucky though is the guy running the bell who you have to pay money to in order to ring it. 

Yay for the Brown Yellow river. So amazing!

I don't know what this is, but I just kept thinking how much it looks like an upside down cross.

The small great wall of China.

I thought it funny that they have this "smoking section" considering that people in China smoke anywhere at any time (yes, I see restaurant workers smoking as they cook).

A sculpture and me with my friend.

I don't think this door has been unlocked for a while.

I thought this was a fun experience. We were at a Buddhist temple taking pictures and there was a group of local elementary school students. They kept looking and pointing at me. Finally one of them decided to talk to me. Once they realized I spoke some Chinese, they all came over and were not at all shy about taking pictures. One of the kids asked for my autograph. I thought it was kind of  weird, but the weird part was when I was done signing the autograph, all of the kids ran away and came back in about a minute asking for me to sign their notebooks. I was signing autographs for about 10 minutes. Definitely a different experience.

On the way home my friends took me to a nice fancy restaurant. We tried to pay the door attendant to look after our bikes so they would not get stolen, but the attendant was off duty, so we just brought them in the restaurant.

They bring you meat and vegetables and such to put in the boiling pot of water. No rice. :(

Trip 3 - To Kaifeng (the nearest city to Zhengzhou)


View To Kaifeng in a larger map

Kaifeng is a city directly East of my city Zhengzhou. According to Wikipedia, it is an old capital city and at one point was the largest city in the world. I had thought about riding my bike out there and finally got the chance when two other teachers said they were going out. We left at different times, but I met up with them in the city.

This picture is not too lovely, but gives me the impression of how gorgeous Chinese landscapes were before China got too polluted. Things really are beautiful here, you just rarely get to see the beauty.

As we walked the streets, I took some pretty random pictures. I actually was not taking a picture of this kid, but he ended up being in it, and I like the mirror effect the window created.

Here is a bird on a stick.

Here are some eggs from that bird.

When I was in Kaifeng, they were having a chrysanthemum festival. Apparently the largest in the world. They had chrysanthemums everywhere.

During our wanderings, we needed to take a bathroom break so we stopped by a KTV place (Karaoke TV). I am intrigued by how nice and posh these places can be.

Even the microphones sing here.

They had a catholic church in the middle of the city. It is in the middle of a old (somewhat rundown) residential area. It was nice being in a church. We talked to a very sweet nun while we were there. 

This reminded me of Dallin. They have some pretty cheap Rubix cubes.

This is me and Jasan (his choice of spelling). Jasan is a guy in a bike club and decided to go up with us to show us around. He became my one time roommate and instant friend. He always had a smile (like what you see in the photo). I am eating a chicken foot.

Here is the hostel room we stayed in. We split the bill two ways, so it ended up costing be about 50 RMB for the night (a little less than $8 USD).

The hostel had a decent room with a TV and even had WiFi in the commons area.

The bathroom was  a combo squatter and shower. Very small.

I woke up early the next morning to make it home for church. As I was riding home, I passed a group of bikers in a line (like what you would see in the Tour de France, only they were Chinese and not French). They all waved as I passed. About 30 minutes later the group leader passed me up and went about a quarter mile in front of me before he stopped. I had no idea what he was doing, till he started taking a bunch of pictures of me as I passed him. I thought that was funny and I would have loved to talk to him, but I didn't want to be late for church.

All in all, bikes are the way to go. They are literally the fasted way to get anywhere within about a 2 mile radius, and they are definitely the most convenient. It is also very liberating to ride a bike here. The thought that you could die at any second is an exciting rush.

(Don't worry mom. It actually is quite safe in China. Not only do people do a great job of making sure they don't crash into each other, everyone also goes slow enough that there is not really a chance of anyone getting hurt. Crazy, yes. Dangerous, no)