Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
And for all that, what did it all mean? I glanced at him again, then shook my
head with a private grin. A year or so with a thousand kilometres between us would
probably do the world of good. After that? Well, I was one hundred percent sure
that we'd end up lifelong friends.
We pedalled off into the crowd again and soon found ourselves heading down a
long, straight promenade lined with tall, important-looking buildings and buzzing
with eight lanes of traffic. We stopped at a traffic light to give way to pedestrians
and saw, amid a sea of Chinese faces, a tall, elderly European-looking man.
'Hi!' Tim yelled. 'Over here!'
The stares of the crowd doubled but the man in the green golfing cap almost
stumbled over us before he noticed our bikes. 'Oh! Hello there,' he said in a pleas-
ant English accent. 'I'm sorry, I didn't see you.' His face showed a gentle kindness
and not a bit of surprise. He seemed ludicrously out of place in this bustling city -
even more so than we did!
'Um, hi,' Tim continued. 'Could you please tell us how to get to Tiananmen
Square?'
'Oh! What? Oh, yes. Tiananmen Square. Just let me think. Why yes. It's about
a mile ahead, but a few blocks off to the left. Take the next left, then turn right
again after several hundred yards. That should take you straight there, I'd say. Jolly
good!' The lights changed and we were on our way again.
Tim's brake cable snapped - our last one. 'Great timing,' he groaned, but it
didn't matter. Ten minutes later, we crossed an intersection and rode past a gigant-
ic portrait of Mao Zedong. There it was, right before us, Tiananmen Square. The
heart of Beijing and the final destination of our dream.
We fell into a silent reverie, overcome by emotion. There was a deep sadness
that the long adventure had finally come to an end and, of course, an overwhelming
euphoria. But mostly there was just a bewildering sense of uncertainty - or maybe
it was a sense of freedom? The journey that had occupied us both for so long was
finally over and now only the daunting prospect of the future remained.
We met up with Helen by the fence at the top end of the square. She gave us
bunches of flowers, and she'd brought her Chinese teacher and the whole class
along too. A camera flashed somewhere, a newspaper photographer maybe, but I
couldn't see. A gate opened and we were allowed to wheel our bikes onto Tianan-
men Square.
'You're not allowed to ride them though,' Helen translated for the stern-looking
guard.
