There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing, approximately the tune goes.
Sometimes, it feels like the loneliest number is one.
One bicycle.
One soul.
One peaceful minute in a city that never ever seems to stop moving.I started discovering them –-- bikes left by themselves, raiding old grey brick walls in hutong, resting in the shadow of glowing skyscrapers, or chilling under the Beijing summertime rains, like they had no place immediate to be.
Simply taking a break.
They looked practically human in their privacy.
Forgotten, almost ...
Or just, resting.And in those quiet images, something started to shift inside me.Being a foreigner in Beijing can feel like residing in parentheses.
Youre here, however not entirely of here.
The language, the rhythms, the coded unspoken guidelines –-- they orbit around you, simply close enough to touch however never quite land.
Its easy to feel unmoored.
Easy to wonder, Am I the only one standing still while everyone else flies past? But theres another way to take a look at it.Loneliness and privacy arent the exact same thing.One is a lack.The other is a choice.In those solitary strolls to work on quiet early mornings, I began to listen.
To the stillness of my strolls to work that asked absolutely nothing of me however existence.
To the soft thrum of the city waking up, to the sounds of life around me –-- jianbing suppliers clattering metal pots, the shuffle of bikes, the cheerful music originating from the speakers of a shipment driver crisscrossing the city even before the first rays of sun hit the asphalt.
Melodic circulation of the Mandarin chatter.
And to my own thoughts, the ones I normally drowned out with noise or hurried to edit.Thats when I realized: solitude can be a soft kind of power.
It offers you space to grow, to recalibrate, to overtake yourself.
You understand youre just silently growing roots in your own method, at your own speed.
A few of that growth is invisible, a little unpleasant at times –-- however its where real change takes place.
And Beijing is the best start.These bikes arent alone ...
Theyre resting.
Possibly theyre precisely where they require to be.So when I find one of those peaceful bikes leaning into the wall or basking under Beijings hot and damp sunshine, I smile.
I see myself.Because maybe being alone in a foreign city is a mirror.And maybe the most gorgeous things begin there.
* This article marks the start of China, Soft Focus –-- a sluggish journalism series that uses textured, human-centered peeks into everyday life throughout China through determined speed and intimate information, beyond the hard news headings.