Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Biking Some Less-Forbidding Streets Near Forbidden City

USA Today reporter Mike Lopresti gives a very colorful account of a 2.5 hour, 12 mile commute on the streets of Beijing from the Olympic News media center to downtown. Its a mile by mile description of what he sees on the streets of Beijing [See Forbidden City]. The biggest obstacles are the some 3 million vehicles out on the road to dodge.

He begins : "As an out-of-towner on a bicycle, trying to fight four city buses on the same lane, my life flashed before me outside the gates of the Forbidden City. With Chinese subtitles."

Notice also how he talks about hearing of a Chinese grandmother, aged 97, who rode her tricycle from the Hunan province to Beijing to watch the Badminton competition. That sounds a little too good to be true.

Anyway, read more below.

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1 comment:

Bluenoser said...

Ron,
There was one guy that rode a bike 2000k to the games just to sweep the streets because he wanted the world to see a clean China. Come on think about it they build roads with shovels and wheelborrows.

-B