Joy and the art of cycling

Zhang Xiangdong takes a break during one of his cycling journeys in China. [Photo/China Daily]

A successful Chinese entrepreneur discovered that loving life simply meant riding his bicycle, he tells Xu Jingxi in Guangzhou.

There are three problems that a cyclist always wants to avoid: getting lost, breaking a chain and riding through a sudden rain. In 2007, a 30-year-old Zhang Xiangdong ran into all the three on the same day when he was cycling in France. After struggling to fix the bicycle chain, Zhang rode on in the rain, threading through a "cobweb" of country roads to find a lodging before dark.

The Chinese cyclist couldn't help feeling a twinge of panic. He had no idea where to go, with his Road Atlas damp from the rain. Navigation apps on mobile phones were not yet in common use.

He looked for someone to ask the way and a hunter in the meadow caught his eyes. Wearing a cloak and holding a pipe between his teeth, the hunter slowly examined his shotgun and ordered several hounds to run back and forth.

Zhang asked the man why he still went out hunting on a rainy day, and the hunter replied: "A sunny day is a nice day. Why can't a rainy day be?"

Zhang often shares that story with his friends and fans as he describes cycling the most beautiful routes in five continents between 2007 and 2013. "It is cycling that has taught me to take life as it comes," Zhang writes in his new book Brief Flight, which was published in Chinese in June.

"All kinds of weather are part of the unpredictable nature of a journey and also part of the scenery that a traveler should accept."

That same life philosophy can be applied to entrepreneurship, according to Zhang.