Pedal Power

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I lived in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, though Beijing had become my second home. Between a growing number of Chinese friends and my work as a reporter for Asiaweek magazine, my days were crowded with appointments in the capital. Making plans in Beijing was easy; getting around less so. You could hire a driver but you couldn’t yet hail taxis on the street. The metro was just one line that ran in a straight, politically symbolic but relatively useless east-west direction under Tiananmen Square. The buses and trolleybuses, meanwhile, were slow and overcrowded, their interiors a confit of sharp elbows and jostling bodies. One day, a conductor ordered an older woman to yield her seat to me, “the foreign guest”. I protested. The other passengers observed the conductor and me with sullen hostility. The woman, eyes downcast, vacated her seat. I urged her to sit, but instead we both remained standing.