In my second summer in Shanghai, I decided to try commuting by my classic manual bicycle. Although it might seem OLD-FASHIONED in China’s young ambitious, and car-oriented culture today, the bicycle was ubiquitous and cool before the 1980s when I left to Japan. Back then, bicycles were seen as the most effective form of independent mobility, and loved by George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara during their stay in Beijing. It is my nostalgia on wheels as a “Sea Turtle, a newly coined Chinese word for people like me, who left to study and work overseas but now "swimming back".

It takes me about 30 minutes to bicycle from my apartment to the office. I try to take slightly different routes each day. Looking around on the street and at my fellow riders, I feel I am seeing and breathing in a country with which I am both familiar and unfamiliar. I’ve privately named my major routes the “World Road” and the “Chinese Road,” illustrating the contrasting facets of Shanghai today. On the World Road there are shops with signs in Japanese, Korean and English, so you feel at once in all of these countries and in none of them. But on the Chinese Road, the newspaper stands, mom-and-pop fruit stalls and grocery shops represent certain constants in Chinese life. I liked the stout blonde Western lady I saw one day at the intersection of these routes: she was learning Tai Chi, and very seriously concentrating to balance herself according to the commands of the instructor. She is my snapshot of the winning embodiment of the Shanghai street corner.

Days of observing the fashions worn by the riders en route have made me realize that a “not-that-young” cycling office lady is quite in the minority. Mostly, the bicycle riders are in casual clothes, sportswear, or occasionally – and reluctantly – business suits. However, as always, there is no rule in China. Astonishingly, I have even seen a lady in a shining evening gown, with 4-inch high heels, passing by me like a deer! Not the ideal saftey solution for the conflict between fashion and safety, I thought.

My solution is to leave two suits at the office – one brown and one black – so that I can transform myself from cyclist to businessperson. The suits are very official, but lacking the inventive touch among the stylish ladies in my  company office (a French Multional Corperation). Drinking coffee in the morning, greeting colleagues with “Bonjour,” I start to miss Coco Chanel and her innovative sense. I remember that her first customer was someone who wanted a dress appropriate for horseback riding, and her philosophy was, “Elegance in clothes means freedom to move freely.”

If CoCo was in Shanghai, she might create a breakthrough of Business Cycle Chic?