Beijing Boyce

When I dropped into The Rickshaw last Friday morning to watch the Chicago Cubs - Arizona Diamondbacks game, I didn’t imagine that 24 hours later I would be blogging live about nearly 20 foreigner-driven three-wheeled “rickshaws” racing around the Houhai area on a pub crawl. (Then again, I didn’t imagine the Cubs would get swept and extend their failure to win the World Series to 99 years, but I digress.)

I blogged six times about the event on Saturday (see all of the posts here). Now that the event is a few days behind, my overwhelming memory is of the many locals, from bar owners and employees to bystanders, who seemed to have had nearly as much fun as the participants. From taking photos of and with the rickshaw racers, to watching a few of them go for a dip in Houhai, to sharing dance moves at the post-race bash, it was good times all-around.

In any case, I spent half of the day at Houhai Zoo and the other half touring the course with race marshal Alistair:

The racers took 90 minutes to three hours to finish, with only a few major incidents - one tipped over rickshaw at the beginning and three rickshaw-car scrapes (the owners of the autos were fully compensated).

Some of the more memorable moments:

- Befuddled racers trying to find The Reef or Drum & Bell or any other number of bars, but refusing - out of pride - to pay the one-drink penalty to the race marshal in exchange for directions.

- Racers busting moves on the deck of Houhai Zoo to the amusement of locals.

- What must have been a seventy-year-old man stopping his bike, parking it and showing some moves of his own.

- The further spread of pajama culture in Beijing.

- And couples taking wedding photos: what a contrast to see Chinese in Western wedding wear beside Westerners about to race Chinese rickshaws. Perhaps not globalization at its finest, but certainly in its explicitness.

As for the serious business, according to Mike Iannini for whom the race was his going away party, the winners seem to have been the team of Gary, Grace and Max, though  he adds that they may have played a trick or two on the other teams along the way.The following establishments participated and, noted the race marshal, did a superb job: No Name Bar, Hai Bar, Huxley’s (Shut Up Just Drink), Shui Gui Qi, Drum and Bell, Cafe Sambal, Ball House, Paper, Reef, Fish Nation, Pass By Bar, Houhai Zoo and, last but not least, the Xiao Mai Bu across from 20.

Props go to Mike Ianinni, Alistair, Chad Lager of The Rickshaw and Huxley of Houhai Zoo, where the race began and ended. Sadly, it coincided with the final weekend for the Zoo as Huxley will put more focus on the new Nanjie, which has done a rocking business since opening about a month ago. Good luck to Huxley and the Zoo staff, pictured here:

Hopefully, East meets West again…

… next year.