Two things have remained constant within the sandbox of my long-term travels: the moment I become complacent is the moment the carpet gets pulled out from under my feet, and I manage to stumble across the same people in completely different, seemingly unrelated places.

To let Beijing (and its grime and and mist and smog) seep deep into your bloodstream necessarily requires you to bike around incessantly until the chaos and noise and intersection of millions of lives starts to make some sense, starts to meld together into a comprehensive pattern – which is exactly what I did.

How many French wind engineers does it take to find the Great Wall after midnight? Just one, and his name is Hubert.