Carting Glass

With the way the traffic is in any place in China, you'd wonder the wisdom of carting a sheet of glass on the back of a tricycle.

He obviously is a worker planning to put the glass in somewhere, but he has no protection if he should be involved in an accident and the glass break.

We look at amazement at things like this here. I have seen several tricycles that seem set up to carry glass - this man had a ladder and was probably on his way to install the glass somewhere.

Carts and more carts

This guy was pulling his cart in the college grounds. He was probably collecting things for recyclking. Anything that is recycled is collected by a variety of different people. We can never tell whether they are doing this just to make pocket money or they are paid to do so. Men with these sort of carts do seem to be workers on staff and they appear and empty all the bins around the college.

Mostly the "good" stuff has been taken by other workers. All bottles, cardboard, clean paper etc. will have been collected by the many staff who cannot pass a bin without checking its contents.

This guy was also wearing a "triangle hat" made of bamboo I think. He was happy to be photographed.

Fuyang Paper making place.

This home made cart was in the paper making place at Fuyang. At this place the ancient art of making paper from bamboo is still carried on. The paper is used for art, and there is much paper manufactured here.

No doubt, somewhere in Fuyang there is a factory where the process is automated.

This cart would be used to carry the big piles of paper, or books or other items.

Some odd wheels in Longmen (Dragon Gate)

I can only guess that this was the tricycle of a peddlar of some sort. In the basket as some sort of gluey rice paste, and I have no idea if it was for eating or some other use. There was a basked beside the tricycle that had a similar content, but different consistency.

My wheels

I do wear a lot of purple or lilac coloured clothes. Not exclusively - but I have a fair number in my wardrobe. When I went to buy a bicycle I was thrilled to discover this purple one in the midst of a range of other colours and so claimed it for me.

It is a basic bike but gets me to quite a few places. I'm not one keen to ride into the city on it, but am happy to pedal around the university and along the streets on the outskirts of the city. Even to the small supermarket here - when I don't need to carry a lot home!

Riding a bicycle with a baby?

While out riding my bicycle the other day I saw this young woman trying to ride her bike carrying a baby. It was not easy for her - in fact she spent most of the time walking holding the baby in one hand and wheeling her bicycle.

I just can' imagine attempting to do this on a busy road. Very dangerous I would have thought. What hope for the baby if she lost balance? Or something (a car or even an e-bike) ran into her?

Orange bikes

I'm not sure how it happens, but this semester there are new students all riding orange bicycles. All the same brand and there are rows of them. This lone cycle was near the bakery, and I received some stares as I photographed it.

What I thought was odd - apart from so many bikes of this colour on campus, is that few are "unwrapped" and still sport their bubble wrap packaging, just as they would have been at purchase.

So many are like this. For me, I was keen to remove all my packaging very quickly to reveal my new shiney bike.

Chairs on bikes

Apparently these cane chairs are made by villagers, and the truck loads of these chairs come into the cities on a regular basis, and guys with tricycles load them on their carts and head off to furniture shops and markets. Some of the loads of cane chairs are amazing - and I have been unable to get a photo of them.

This one was in Hangzhou - not many chairs on board, but enough to see the challenges that the rider has, when negotiating the traffic.

Carting boxes

The humble tricycle is a common "work horse" with amazing loads being carried over short distances. The myriad of different items placed on these tricycles is amazing. They are often overloaded, and the cyclist, (who must be very fit indeed) pedals his way around through vehicular and pedestrian traffic as if he has not a care in the world.

There are narrow alley ways to negotiate - places where bigger vehicles have not a hope of getting through. These guys are really the backbone of much commercial activity.