The other day a foreigner who I've been playing pick up basketball with, David, called me up and invited me to come on a motorcycle tour of Beijing. He was doing some promo video for the motorcycle tour company and they wanted some more foreigners to fill their motorcycles (don't worry, I wasn't driving). These tours are usually hundreds of yuan so it was a pretty sweet deal. I met David the next morning at a bus stop and we bussed for 10 minutes to a random high school where they were going to pick us up.
We heard them before we saw them. Their loud roaring engines were audible a couple blocks away, and the actual motorcycles themselves did not disappoint. They were 100% black and looked like they were transported from World War II. The sidecars (yes, we rode in sidecars) were also 100% black and had batman logos spraypainted on them. One of the drivers had a huge silver batman elblem on his belt, I'm still unsure of their affinity for batman. Anyway, we got in and started on the tour.
The tour was 4 hours long and we saw a lot of famous sights and tourists spots. The best part for me though, was just driving all over Beijing and seeing parts of the city that I would have no reason to visit. We stopped at the Beijing olymplic birds nest stadium, the forbidden city, some areas around the forbidden city that I can't remember the names of, and some hutongs. Driving through the hutongs on motorcycles with sidecars was tricky to say the least, and gave me respect for the drivers and security in my livelihood knowing how artful the drivers were with their rides. At one point, we had to get off and lift the sidecar on top of some construction stuff so the motorcycle was at a 25 degree angle so the drivers could make it through. We also didn't just drive around the forbidden city, we drove through it. When I say drove through I mean that literally, I think we weren't supposed to be on a vehicle, much less a batman and robin esque motorcycle roaring through a huge, vast courtyard filled with tourists. Some of the looks we got ranged from hilarious to frightening. I got a video of this too, which I will upload once I get the cord to connect my phone to my computer.
After the tour, I walked around part of East Beijing with David to meet his roommate. East Beijing is nothing like West Beijing in that it seemed more Western than the actual West. We passed the American and German embassies and saw tons of brand name shops and luxury hotels. It also seemed like there were also almost as many foreigners as Chinese. We met David's roommate at a Fatburger, which I was pretty surprised exited anywhere outside the U.S. It was not surprisingly, delicious. I took the subway home after and coached a camp.
I have a general feel for West Beijing and I know I haven't seen a lot of the city yet, but this really drove home that there's a lot of Beijing left to explore.
We heard them before we saw them. Their loud roaring engines were audible a couple blocks away, and the actual motorcycles themselves did not disappoint. They were 100% black and looked like they were transported from World War II. The sidecars (yes, we rode in sidecars) were also 100% black and had batman logos spraypainted on them. One of the drivers had a huge silver batman elblem on his belt, I'm still unsure of their affinity for batman. Anyway, we got in and started on the tour.
The tour was 4 hours long and we saw a lot of famous sights and tourists spots. The best part for me though, was just driving all over Beijing and seeing parts of the city that I would have no reason to visit. We stopped at the Beijing olymplic birds nest stadium, the forbidden city, some areas around the forbidden city that I can't remember the names of, and some hutongs. Driving through the hutongs on motorcycles with sidecars was tricky to say the least, and gave me respect for the drivers and security in my livelihood knowing how artful the drivers were with their rides. At one point, we had to get off and lift the sidecar on top of some construction stuff so the motorcycle was at a 25 degree angle so the drivers could make it through. We also didn't just drive around the forbidden city, we drove through it. When I say drove through I mean that literally, I think we weren't supposed to be on a vehicle, much less a batman and robin esque motorcycle roaring through a huge, vast courtyard filled with tourists. Some of the looks we got ranged from hilarious to frightening. I got a video of this too, which I will upload once I get the cord to connect my phone to my computer.
After the tour, I walked around part of East Beijing with David to meet his roommate. East Beijing is nothing like West Beijing in that it seemed more Western than the actual West. We passed the American and German embassies and saw tons of brand name shops and luxury hotels. It also seemed like there were also almost as many foreigners as Chinese. We met David's roommate at a Fatburger, which I was pretty surprised exited anywhere outside the U.S. It was not surprisingly, delicious. I took the subway home after and coached a camp.
I have a general feel for West Beijing and I know I haven't seen a lot of the city yet, but this really drove home that there's a lot of Beijing left to explore.
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