With spring just around the corner, the time is ripe to hop aboard the bicycling revolution and embrace pedal power as the best way to travel round this cycle-friendly city -- Shanghai, writes Douglas Williams.

 

Recently I had the strangest dream. I dreamed the streets of Shanghai were awash with cyclists and there wasn't a car, taxi, bus, scooter or motorbike to be seen anywhere.

 

That's not all: the bikes people were riding were the very finest. There were "ET the Extra Terrestrial," Kuwahara BMXs; classic 1950s Colnagos; carbon-graphite Lemond racers and Choppers. There were fine Pinarellos fully decked out with Campagnola components; chunky, full-suspension Yeti mountain bikes, and handsome black sit up and beg Forever roadsters, but that's not all. All the cyclists were wearing their very coolest threads and they all looked as though they were off for a Saturday night at the Glamour Bar, the bikes their ultimate accessory.

 

Oh it was lovely.

 

Then I woke up and cycled to work; needless to say, the reality was somewhat different.

 

Cycling in Shanghai, clearly a very popular mode of transport, can be a daunting prospect for those unfamiliar with the traffic, even more so for those unfamiliar with a bike.

 

Cycling does, however, provide probably the simplest, usually the cheapest and often the quickest way of getting from A to B. Particularly so if that A to B would not be more than an 11-yuan (US$1.40) taxi fare.

 

More important, cycling is a whole lot more fun than taking a cab, it's good for you and, unlike most other forms of transport, it doesn't harm the environment.

 

Granted there's an element of danger but having cycled regularly in a number of cities in the West, I can categorically state that cycling here is safer albeit a little more intense.

 

Jack Lin, vice president of Labici, one of Shanghai's finest bike shops, and self-confessed biking nut, says: "In the United Kingdom all new roads must have a designated cycle lane. Here in Shanghai most streets already have a big, clearly marked cycle lane so it is really an easy city to cycle round."

 

Added to that there are no hills in Shanghai, so it's flat, which is a huge advantage. "Cycling is fun," says Lin. "You've got to just go with the flow and don't do anything too sudden but make your moves obvious. It's a bad idea to get aggressive but at the same time, if someone's cramping your space, taxi or bike, then you will need to cramp somebody else's space."

 

Labici on Wanping Road stocks the sort of bicycles that professional cyclists ride, some more expensive than a car.

 

Many would make a generous gift or an indulgent indulgence. There's a magic about a new bike that doesn't fade as we grow older.

 

One of Lin's most popular bikes is the Xenia, an "urban assault" bike. This is a cross between a BMX and a mountain bike.

 

One gear, shock absorbing forks and one rear disc brake.

 

"It's comfortable, easy to control, almost indestructible and it's great fun to ride," says Lin.

 

It sure looks sturdy.

 

It costs 7,500 yuan.

 

There's a beautiful Cinelli frame, racing red with chrome stays and lugs, 13,000 yuan, the basis of an incredible bike.

 

For would-be Tour de France entrants there's a Moser Fat Freddy, but at over 70,000 yuan it's a tad expensive.

 

With spring just around the corner, this is a good time of year to take to the bike, though there isn't actually a bad time of year.

 

When it's cold, cycling warms (gloves are good), when hot, it cools and when it's wet donning one of those colorful capes sure beats trying to find a taxi.

 

With Shanghai's usually vertical rain, the capes, which can be bought in convenience stores, are very effective and cost around 30 yuan.

 

They sure add to that blending-in process though the hoods can impair sound and vision.

 

Of course there are much cheaper bikes available and literally scores of outlets where they can be bought.

 

Not the least of these are the French giant Carrefour and the local Century Mart where a fully functioning bike can be had for less than 200 yuan. Quality- wise, these bikes may not be up to much but getting bikes fixed is another thing that Shanghai does extraordinarily well.

 

Puncture repairs by any of the street-side fix-it people will rarely cost more than two yuan so long as a new inner tube isn't required.

 

Any repair that doesn't involve actual materials will rarely cost more than a few yuan. Most repairs are an exercise in time and motion and a joy to behold.

 

Around the corner from Labici on Jiangguo Road there is the giant Giant shop and round the corner on Xiangyang Road S., there are many large bicycle retailers.

 

One not-so-big purveyor on that street is Speedcat, where they build bikes according to the customers' requirements. Owner Xiao Du has had the business for 12 years and he reckons he can make the perfect street bike for about 1,000 yuan.

 

"A lot of our customers want their new bikes to be painted so they look old and less attractive to thieves," he says raising perhaps the biggest problem for cyclists in Shanghai and the world over, the dastardly and cursed bicycle thieves.

 

"It doesn't matter how good your lock is, it won't stop the thieves. You've got to park your bike in places where you pay and there are people watching over it. Take it up to the office or take it up to your apartment."

 

Xiao's perfect street bike is a light alloy mountain bike frame, no shock-absorber forks (extra weight and cost), with lightweight components and a total weight of about 10 kilograms.

 

For safe riding Xiao advises taking it slow: "It's when people are cycling fast that they are most likely to have an accident. In the long run, going at a leisurely pace or going flat out doesn't make much difference to the journey time."

 

The traditional Chinese bikes are hard to beat in terms of comfort and durability. Hundreds of millions of Chinese can't be wrong. They're also the ones that are most easily fixed and they blend in quickest, making them less likely to be stolen.

 

In this reporter's humble opinion, they afford a certain classy elegance that none of the young pretenders quite attain. The classic light ladies and gents Forever made in Shanghai bikes cost around 300 yuan, the larger, heavier black model around 340 yuan. These are available in many shops but a good one is on Shaanxi Road N. and Haifang Road.

 

By 2010 Shanghai will have an underground light rail transport system to rival any in the world.

 

Wouldn't it be good if, to complement that sophisticated subterranean transport system, the streets above ground weren't clogged with polluting, dangerous, going-nowhere cars and were instead awash with bicycles?

 

(Shanghai Daily March 1, 2007)