Mike's Adventures - Beijing's Bikes

When you hear the phrase, Red China, what are the first images that come to mind: Tiananmen, Mao’s little red book, Tibet, corruption, human rights violations, protest? Probably a lot of images and ideas flash in your head.

However, as I have come to realize, things here are not as simple as a Brad Pitt movie. After graduating this last June, I decided to take the plunge and work in China full time, following up my undergraduate study abroad experience. The more time I spend in the country, surprisingly, the more I am coming to understand some of the more distasteful practices here.

It is easy to condemn the government for its various inadequacies, and at some times, necessary. However, once again, things are not simple enough to dichotomize the issue at first glance. A key example of this is the bicycle parking lots in most big cities in China. It is usually illegal to lock your bike to a fixed location (post, fence, etc.). Instead, people park their bikes in huge clusters and lock up the back wheel. It is only a matter of probability that your bike will be stolen, but, given a large enough parking cluster, your bike might have a fighting chance. From an outside view, this seems rather outrageous, but given the sheer number of bikes, it actually makes sense.

The same can be said of many of the actions of the government here. At first glance, many things seem extremely wrong with the current situation but, there are just as many people here as bikes. This does not, by any means, justify some of the policies here but merely tries to add a sense of perspective. You just have to ask yourself: how would you go about organizing thousands of bikes (or 1.3 billion people for that matter)?