Leave your apartment, take the elevator down and try to find your bike in the mass of overlapping motor vehicles at the front of the complex. Squeeze your way through the narrow iron gate they recently put up, and head down the street.
(The “street” that I live on is a mix between a dirt road and an ally. The ground is part dirt and part slabs of uneven concrete. At some points, the concrete just has tire-tracks dug out, 6 inches deep. I call it an obstacle course. I try to stay on one side, although there’s definitely nothing like a bike-lane on this narrow street. It’s narrow enough to be a one-way, but like most roads in China, it functions as both. Bikes and cars in both direction, just looking out and taking turns. I wait for a good time to go in between the bumps and try not to hit the vegetable and other venders on the sides. )
Check for cars. Duck under the willow tree while slowing to go over the speed bump. Go around the pot holes. Go over the speed bump but don’t hit the vegetable cart. Look again for cars and bikes. Cross the street and swerve in between parked cars to get to the sidewalk.
(At this new shortcut that I found, I ride where people walk out front of my old apartment. I felt kind of guilty being one of those bikes in a pedestrian space- until I had to swerve for cars who’d forced their way up there too. )
Go past the guard and cross the bike lane and two lanes of traffic to the opposite bike lane. Ride until the end of the street. Do not let the bus merge onto you. When it tries and you let it pass you, check for cars again and then pass the bus by going all the way into the other 2 lanes of traffic, with the other bikers. At the end of the street, take a right into oncoming bikers and cars. Try to pass these four lanes of traffic to take the tiny dirt path just ahead and to the right. Do not hit the venders, their carts, their vegetables, or the people buying them and blocking the entrance to the tiny dirt path.
Follow the demolition dirt and un-evenly tiled path through the fields of demolished buildings, over and up the tile-lined trenches and into the sand pit. Do not touch the power line lying on the ground. Try to find one path in the sand pit that is less deep than the others. Ride quickly and push hard on your petals to make it to the other side. (This step is especially important if it has rained in the past week.)
Take a right onto another dirt road. Take a left after the burning trash. (I don’t know why they do this, but I actually enjoy that it smells more like campfire than flaming garbage.)
Make it to the tunnel. Get off your bike and walk it down the 3 levels of ramps while you take the 50 steps down. Don’t be startled by motorists who ride their bikes down the whole way, or those who are coming towards you on their bikes. At the bottom, or near the bottom if you feel like getting on your bike on the ramp, ride through the unlit tunnel 80 flt. to the other ramp. Get off your bike and walk it the 40 steps up 2 levels of ramp to the sunlight.
Get on your bike and cross two bike lanes and four lanes of car traffic to get into Tsinghua Campus. Merge with cars and other bikes, around the guard booth, and squeeze into the divider for the bike lane at the entrance. Once on campus, every block be sure to make it through the 3 inch spaces cut out of the speed bumps but don’t let your handle bars hit the poles set up to stop cars. At the two major intersections, hoards of bikers will come from the opposite direction, right across your path. Bike with them, and then weave through them. Do not stop and wait, because there will be no pause for you to get through. Continue to weave your way through the campus, and eventually weave through the cones and into oncoming traffic. Stay on the wrong side so that you can take a left onto the street.
Choose any of the four driveways to turn into. Be careful for cars leaving the driveways, and children on their way to school. Take a right into the campus, amid a crowd of Tsinghua High school students. Get off your bike and say “Ni Hao” to the guard. Walk your bike just past the green line, and then get back on.
Ride down the ramp and past the field to the bike racks near the primary building. Find a spot that’s open, lock your back tire to your bike, and you’ve made it!
As you can imagine, riding to and from school today, after being so sick this weekend, was a challenge. I swear I only made it through delirium-inspired genius, by which I thought of “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming” on my way home. Thanks Ellen!
geeez...
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