China: The vision of thousands of bicycles thronging the streets of Beijing is one of the classic images of China, as Chinese as dragons, pandas or the Great Wall. But the "Kingdom of Bicycles" is under severe threat from the car.
Bicycles are banned in parts of Shanghai to stop congestion and in Beijing, home to anything between four and 10 million bikes, people use their bicycles 60 per cent less than they did 10 years ago. There were 500 million cyclists in China back in the early 1980s, but the number dropped rapidly as car ownership expanded.
Now a senior government official has urged people to get back on the saddle as a way of cutting devastating pollution and easing China's worsening traffic headaches.
Deputy minister of construction Qiu Baoxing called for a return to the reign of the bicycle and has attacked urban authorities for making it tougher for cyclists to get around.
"The explosive growth of motor vehicles has caused severe traffic jams in major Chinese cities and is posing a grave challenge to the country's energy, security and urban development. The ministry of construction is firmly opposed to the elimination of bicycle lanes and has ordered cities to restore them," Mr Qiu told a planning conference.
How things have changed. A bicycle was the most significant purchase a family could make 20 years ago, when consumer goods were scarce, but now it's a shiny car that every family covets.Some people refuse to cycle because the air is often so foul, despite promises to clean the environment for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. "I love cycling, but the environment in Beijing has become less agreeable. You don't enjoy cycling when you're breathing foul air," said Hao Ming, a designer, who bought a Volkswagen last year.
While Beijing is flat and has an excellent network of wide bike paths, increasingly these are being turned into lanes for cars to turn right or into parking spaces. Facing a suicide mission every morning to get to work or school, cyclists are a demoralised bunch.
Wang Fenghe, chairman of the China Bicycle Association, believes China will continue to be a Kingdom of Bicycles, as sheer convenience will win out in the end.
But even he was forced to give up cycling recently after he was knocked off his bike by a car and injured himself. "It's too dangerous," he said.