The Veleur Defined

The word is a portmanteau, combining velo for bike, with flaneur, for one who dawdles about aimlessly. The flaneur wandered about in a thinking voyage. Proust described some as walking their turtles to gauge their speed as they slipped about, deep in their philosophical reveries. The Situationists in Paris brought back the idea, describing the flaneur as a way to remap the city, to explore the metropolitan geography. The veleur has no truly fixed goal, but is open to the whims of the day as he cycles about slowly, observing the ordered chaos of the city.

The bicycle is a perfect invention; it is the ideal vehicle to see a city with. For the sprawling warrens of Asian cities like Guangzhou, where I live, the car is impractical. Roads that end, roads that don’t begin, the grass-pierced walkways along the river, the inner-city jungles (literally) are all unreachable by car. A cheap, single-speed Chinese bike gets you to all the places in a reasonable time. There is but one speed, and that speed is contemplative.

All cities are made for exploring, for seeing what lies in the interstices of the maps and satellite pictures. The pace of change in Chinese cities magnifies the effects of urban development, turning nestled old houses into modern enclaves of brick and glass. Roads snake about pell mell, seemingly without human input, as if they grow independently, for they go nowhere widely, sometimes burrowing into the ground to become havens in a rain and homes for the itinerant, sometimes suddenly leading back into the city. One turn takes you from thick carpets of vines to crammed roads, from quiet to cacophony. The dichotomy is exhilarating.

A map is fine, but a compass is necessary. The twists and turns throw off your sense of direction and perhaps the dense canopy of trees hides the towers that drive into the sky. But only a rough sense of where you want to go is necessary if you wish to be a veleur.

That abandoned amusement park ,glimpsed through the window of a bus high on the arched highway, now disappearing into the undergrowth. The causeway tracing along the river, leading into plantations and small farms. These are places you wish to go, and perhaps, someday, you will find them. In the meantime, there is what is around you, and the oddities you spy and either photograph, or lock away in your memory for another visit. Another time.

This blog is a record of my veleurs, my attempts to map out a city in a different way.

I can be reached at veleur at gmail dot com