Getting Around in Beijing

After more than two weeks, things have definitely fallen into a daily routine... a very fun daily routine at that. This weekend we only had one visit, the Summer Palace, which is about 15 minutes from here by bike. It's a rather small complex built on a huge lake and was pretty cool. Pictures of that will be along sometime soon.

But going to class during the day and going out at night doesn't provide a lot of variety in stuff to post on here, so I decided to detail daily life a little more (and specifically how it differs from life at home).

UIUC is nice enough to pick up the entire cost of our US-to-China airfare in exchange for completing a project they can use to promote the program to other students. For my project, this basically breaks down to writing a 10-page guide to daily life in China in exchange for $1400. It's a pretty sweet deal, and so writing these kinds of posts will make it even easier to put the project together when I get back.

(Plus, I think my family would be more interested in stuff like this than "we went to this bar, we went to that bar, we went to a big lake" all the time. But there will still be some of that :P)


Ok... so here we go. This one's on transportation in Beijing.

自行车 - Bicycle
Our most often used means of getting around is via bicycle. We rented bikes on one of the first days we were here. There was a ￥300 deposit and a monthly charge of ￥60 (about $45 and $9, respectively). So that's about $20 to rent a bike for two months, assuming nothing breaks or gets stolen. One of my locks (everyone has two) just broke earlier this afternoon, but otherwise I've been pretty fortunate so far. The bikes are all pretty much identical, which is to say quite 80s- or 90s-style with fenders and baskets and stuff. But they're relatively new and pretty reliable.

Biking requires a bit of a different mindset than most of us were used to. If you want to be successful, you have to act like all the other bicyclists, pedestrians, and cars in the country. By that I mean you should pretend you're the only one on the road and drive blindly into situations you'd otherwise try to calculate and reason out. This applies to sidewalks, narrow gates, crossing 6 lanes of traffic against a red light, whatever. As long as you're more confident than anyone in your way, you win.

Here's a video of us just after getting said bikes:


The campus is huge, even compared to UIUC. Class is about 10 minutes away at a leisurely pace, but the cafeterias and store are closer. We bike everywhere on campus. There's a little village/entertainment street called Wudaokou about 15 minutes away which has a mall and plenty of bars. It's sort of the hub for international students as there are four or five universities surrounding it. It's also the nearest subway station, which brings me to our second-cheapest mode of transportation...

地铁 - Subway/Metro
Being about seven miles from the center of Beijing, we're actually pretty lucky to have a metro line (which is above-ground out here). Most of the currently-open lines are concentrated in the middle of the city, are entirely underground, and were built in the 80s. Our line (#13) was added only a few years ago (picture above), and three more lines are supposed to open before the Olympics. All told, there are supposed to be four times as many stations/lines by 2015, which might explain why the currently-operational lines are numbered 1, 2, 5, and 13.

Everyone gets on for ￥2 ($.25) and you can ride as long as you want and transfer as many times as you like. This is good, since we have to transfer twice just to get to the center of the city. It takes about 45 minutes to make that trip if it's not too crowded, or up to an hour and a half if the trains are packed. There are often so many people that it's simply impossible to get on a train. Luckily, they come frequently enough that it's not too much of an issue. Everything is relatively new, clean, and air-conditioned. And for a quarter to get anywhere within a few miles of the city center, it's not a bad deal at all. The only downside is it doesn't run after midnight.

出租车 - Taxi
Taking a cab is the priciest way to get around here, but it's still grossly inexpensive compared to Chicago. The base rate is ￥10, and that will make any short trip of maybe 10 or 15 minutes. After that, the rate creeps up as a function of distance and time. Still, getting four people to the center of Beijing on a high-traffic day will cost around ￥80, which makes about $3 per person for an hour-long ride. When there's no traffic, the same trip will be half the cost or a little more. We went to a club on the other end of town (about 45 minutes away with no traffic) the other night and paid ￥2 to get there and ￥15 each to get back.... so it's pretty awesome. One of these days they'll probably wisen up and raise the rates (especially with gas prices), but until then it's good for us.


Hope this was somewhat interesting. I just realized that I haven't enabled comments for any of my past posts, but that's corrected now. Let me know what you think.

I'll be posting pics from the Summer Palace trip soon, but for now this is all...