Humble bicyclist becomes Beijing nighthawk

Dark clothes

You're hyperaware, cognizant of the need to watch more vigilantly for the car door opened suddenly in your path, the pedestrian wearing dark clothes or the fellow cyclist with no lights. But that's part of the urban cycling environment, and it doesn't spoil the enjoyment. Your steed has lights front and rear and, of course, you're wearing a helmet.

At these times, especially during the bursts of energy and speed between intersections, you can sometimes feel a brief reverie in which you're transported from mere cyclist to a different reality as the nighthawk or the zephyr blowing through China's North Capital.

You pass through centuries of history, as, indeed, at one point my favored street crosses the Yuan Dynasty Capital City Wall Site Park, including the remains of the city wall built by Kublai Khan, the grandson of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, starting in the late 13th century. At the time, Beijing was known as Dadu (Great Capital) or, in Mongol, Khanbalig (City of the Great Khan), according to China.org.cn. That's about 200 years before Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World, and about 500 years before my country, the United States, won its independence from Great Britain.

There are many other good locations for cyclists to spread their wings in Beijing. Also near my home is the Olympic Sports Center Stadium complex off Aoti Middle Road just south of the Fourth Ring Road and west of Anding Road.

Biking cities

This is among the reasons that CNN Travel named Beijing No 2 in its list of top five best biking cities in Asia, just behind Kyoto, Japan, in 2010. The article, by Tiffany Lam, still rings true: "Asia's first city of cycling is renowned these days for its growing automobile traffic－but the infrastructure for cyclists here is still the best in Asia. Bike lanes cover nearly every inch of the city."

So if you're out at night in Beijing and you see a big laowai (foreigner) zipping by on a red bicycle, remember the nighthawk. And listen for the brrrin-brrrin of the bicycle bell.

The author is a China Daily copy editor.