The art of the velocipede

Today I mounted my trusty steed and rode off into the Beijing traffic. I have learned some more things and I will share my newfound knowledge with you:

• The traffic is much scarier when you're in it
• It's been a long time since I've ridden a non-motorised bike
• Riding in Beijing is really fun as long as there isn't too much traffic
• If there is too much traffic, the cars pull out into the bike lanes to try to get ahead. Without indicating or looking (or listening to my little bell!!)

I was heading down to the Wangfujiang bookstore (it's on Wangfujiang st, kind of like the Pitt St Mall) which is 5 levels of seriously packed (with both books and people) bookstore, plus a sixth level of musical instruments (including pianos)/cameras/phones/rice cookers/antiquities of various kinds. All stuck on the top floor of this bookshop, and definitely part of the book shop as well.

I was in this bookshop because it was a cool place to go as well as to buy books for (Jane and) my Mandarin lesson later today. I was looking around the "Learn Chinese" section and managed to find the book in Chinese/Russian rather than Chinese/English when a helpful lady came up to me and asked me what I was looking for. I should point out at this juncture that all the learn Chinese books are spine side out as you would expect. What you may not expect for a book about learning Chinese (for beginners no less) is that all the words on the spines of all the books are in Chinese characters. NOT HELPFUL!!

Anyway, this nice girl looked at my picture of the book and took me to where it was. She asked me where I was from and I told her and she asked me if I wanted to look at other Chinese/English books too so I checked them out. I went to leave and said "Xiexie" (thanks for you non-Mandarin people) and she said wait, are you sure you have the right book. I said I think so and she said, I am not kidding, "but this is a beginners book, and you speak so well." I didn't have to heart to tell her I only know 2 words, but it was very flattering :)

On the way back I found a shop with a knight outside it, no idea why. He was just marching back and forth.

I also found an alleyway/market thing where they sold many scrumptious foodstuffs such as coconut, kebabs, dumplings, scorpions, bugs of various species, seahorses, starfish and many other things.

I guess if you want to eat a scorpion then that's fine (they're still wriggling by the way!!) but the poor sea horses looked so cute before they were stuck onto kebab sticks. Oh well.