China: E-Biking in China

The Fundamentals of e-bike Zen

Take a moment to look on “You Tube” at “scooters in Asia”.  Try any city from Bangkok to Beijing to get the feel of the road.  The electric, or motorized scooter is the family car of Asia. It is also the utility vehicle and pick up truck of Asia.  I have seen every manner of cargo both human and otherwise carried on a scooter.  To Westerners what should logically be a vehicle to carry one or two passengers, can carry a family of five in relative comfort because it is all relative.  As I drove today I saw a little Chinese boy look  out at me from under his mother’s legs as she drove her scooter through traffic with another child on her back. 

Call me a speed freak, or call me a dare devil, but I assure you I am not boasting when I say my e-bike reaches speeds in excess of 45 km/hr on a downslope, it struggles on an upgrade.  It runs on 6 motorcycle batteries in series circuit that can take me about 80 km if I don’t try to go at maximum speed and rapid accelerate at intersections.  It runs extremely quietly, at full speed it sounds like the high pitch whine of a mosquito. I often slap my face as I drive. The exhilaration of the wind in my face is only tempered by the grit in the air and the exhaust from the many diesel engines.  After a drive into Jinhua from the relative quiet of the suburbs of the campus I have to wash my face of the city grim.  Ironically, the brand name of my scooter is SNOW...pure and clean.

Chinese streets are generally wide and often have special lanes for e-bikes because there are so many of them.  In some places cars, trucks, people, dogs, kids, more trucks, bikes all have to merge into one chaotic melange and that’s where the challenge begins.  There are rules of the road, because I was told there are 1700 questions on the Chinese drivers license test of which at any one time the testee has to answer a random selection of 100.  There are standards to be met!

There are rules.  These rules are precise. They cover every contingence and are widely ignored.  From chaos theory to the reality of the conditions on the road comes a curvilinear flow of traffic that no simple algorithmic function could describe.  There is motion. It is constant, often random, but it seems to work if one is bold decisive and goes with the flow.  One can not hesitate, one, as Confucius once said of his e-bike experience, “Be one with the ‘e” there is motion in poetry.”  Luke Skywalker might have said that, but the point remains the same. This only works of course if you have your eyes forward, never look behind, as mirrors are meaningless because what is in the rear is the past, driving is about the here and now, it is in the moment, one must be in the moment, one must have peripheral vision that borders on 180 and have your thumb on the horn button, of which there are two, at all times, that is why God gave us opposable thumbs my friends.

There is a definite yin yang and zig zag when I drive.  I have gotten to the point to which Chinese are cursing me either for my zen of driving or my knack of passing on the right, fading left and driving for the middle, much like in football.  I figure if I can irritate the Chinese I must be catching on.  I keep my thumb on the horn to resonant with the cacophony of the urban symphony.  One must yield to the driver making the turn, red lights are discretionary, if they work, cars go in bike lanes, bikes go in car lanes, parked cars have open doors, everyone who has a cell phone at some point while driving will use it, pedestrians do not look before crossing, neither do most drivers, they are either blind or operate on blind faith.  They are all fools.  Yet they live to walk another day.  

I am not a super hero.  I drive an e-bike because I can, just as people climb mountains because they are there, the difference being is: I get horizontally from A to B and have the adrenaline rush to prove it.  Yes, I have safety consciousness at the fore.  I wore a Wal-Mart bike helmet size small until the tight strap popped off while I was in traffic.  I now wear the helmet that came with the bike, a cross between a construction helmet and a WW l helmet.  Although I have looked for the CSA approved safety label on the inside of my helmet I have not as yet located it. I will not give up.  I am not a quitter, but I do know signal lights are for sissies and headlights only wear down the batteries.

 If women ride side saddle with high heels, and children ride wedged between their parents, on the floor boards, in back packs and elsewhere  and as long as pandas eat bamboo, I guess I can drive as one of the few Westerners in Jinhua, riding as to war, or Walmart looking like Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes with bugs on my teeth and a smile on my face as I cross the bridge into the city over the mighty muddy Quai River as a diesel truck careens into my bike lane honking his horn simply because he can.  It is all Zen and we are all in the moment.