You can't call yourself a Beijinger till your bike's stolen

There was a story at the beginning of the year about a Japanese man who had been cycling around the world for a year and had his bike stolen in Hubei's provincial capital Wuhan, China. He made a plea on Sina Weibo for the return of his 13,000-yuan ($2,045) velocipede and it was unexpectedly recovered by Hubei's finest in a market, on sale for 1,000 yuan. Keiichiro Kawahara became an Internet star and an unlikely ambassador for China-Japan relations.

Well, putting aside that bike diplomacy doesn't appear to work as well as ping-pong diplomacy - considering the recent arrests of Chinese citizens on Diaoyu Islands by Japanese authorities - my bike was stolen recently outside my Beijing office.

I notified security personnel and they showed me hopeful CCTV footage of my bike before it was taken. They were sympathetic but I haven't heard anything from them for a week and I don't really expect to. I imagine late at night or early in the morning an anonymous looking group of individuals with a small truck stopped, loaded all the bikes that weren't chained up (and possibly those that were) and fled.