骑行，北京-上海（一）

编者按：带着研究的疑问和探索的精神，Amirah即将展开从北京至上海的骑行之旅，进行为期20多天的中国自行车文化与基础设施状况调查。在未来的一个月里，她将与新青年们一同分享在中国的所见所闻。
With research questions and spirit of adventure, Amirah is starting her bicycling journey from Beijing to Shanghai, studying China’s cycling culture and bike infrastructure. In the coming month, She will share her seeings and doings with all the YLAers.

I will begin my 1250 km bicycle tour from Beijing to Shanghai , starting in September, 2011. I will be riding close to 60 miles per day for 21 days while carrying my own gear in bicycle bags. The past several months have presented many planning challenges including finding a reliable bike, route planning in a country where not all GPS systems work, setting up blogs, managing logistics in a country with a language I do not speak, contacting media, and testing/finalizing documentation methods.

I live in San Francisco, home to a tangled bounty of twisting, hilly bike routes, where I work as a landscape designer with the SWA Group. I’m traveling to China with the goal of experiencing the country’s transportation infrastructure firsthand in order to gain knowledge and expertise that will enhance SWA’s new development projects in Asia. China has a massive appetite for increased transportation, and especially public transportation, infrastructure. During my journey, I hope to discover how cycling culture and bike infrastructure can be integrated into efficient and sustainable transportation design.

I head across the Pacific Ocean with many questions I hope to answer: As China continues to grow, how can it accommodate both cars and bikes? What sort of highways, arterials and bike paths are needed to make sure people can efficiently and safely zoom to and from the many, many new buildings rising in this Asian superpower? What sort of infrastructure is needed — and how can it be smartly incorporated into landscape urbanism and landscape design to minimize harmful environmental impacts? I want to find out. Join me.

My love for travel, adventure, and cycling was catalyzed in high school when I embarked on a bike tour to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula to explore the Mayan ruins. Rolling through the history-rich region’s remote villages, beautiful haciendas, and spectacular sites made me realize that bike touring is the best way to travel. On a bike, you breathe the air, you meet the people, you feel the land, and you take your time. You get to know a place in a way you never would on a tour bus or in a private car. I continued my bike exploration during my studies at Colgate University, where I received a bachelor’s degree in biology and geography, and later at the University of Pennsylvania, where I earned a master’s of landscape architecture. My bike and I have spun through many remote corners of the country and world, including Mexico, New Zealand, Fiji, and the Midwest/Northeastern parts of the United States.

This journey is made possible by SWA’s Patrick Curran Fellowship. Each year the firm awards one to two fellowships to further the art and science of landscape architecture. This experience will greatly benefit the work of the firm as SWA continues to design numerous large-scale projects in China each year and will help bring firsthand experience to larger discussions rethinking transportation infrastructure across the globe.

video mounting experiments

beijing road atlas map

route map

bike image

继续阅读：骑行，北京-上海（二）