Happiness Bananas

Beijing is a city with a very strong will. It likes to impose that will on you. If you have the cheek to walk out into it with a plan, it will take that as a challenge and proceed to thwart your plan in every way it can. But if you give in to it and agree to accept whatever it gives you, it becomes kind and opens its bag of tricks for you to marvel at. One day we set out on rented bikes to go and see the Summer Palace, on the outskirts of the city. It was supposed to be very pretty. I don’t know; we never got there.

The cycling was an odyssey of terror and fascination, but mostly terror.

( Cycling in Beijing is like this... )