What would it cost to ride a horse to work?

The full narration of the video.

If you rode a horse to work, what would it cost you each month? The subway's packed, the roads are jammed, and you stare out the window thinking: if only I had a horse. A horse burns no gas and needs no parking spot. Sounds like a bargain.

Let's put the horse next to the subway and do the math. Say you live ten kilometers from work. On the Beijing subway, that ride costs four yuan. Eight yuan a day there and back. Twenty-two workdays a month, and it's under two hundred.

Now the horse. A basic Chinese-bred riding horse can be had for around ten thousand yuan. Buying it is just the start. The horse needs somewhere to live. City apartments don't come with a yard, so it goes to a riding club.

It's like renting the horse a studio with a live-in helper: someone makes the bed, serves the meals, and shovels the manure. That room runs about three thousand yuan a month. And it eats a lot. A five-hundred-kilo horse gets through about ten kilos of hay and thirty liters of water a day.

Over a month, that's three hundred kilos of hay alone. Then there are the shoes. Hooves wear down, so every four to six weeks they need trimming and new shoes. A farrier's visit costs about a thousand yuan. Spread out, that's seven or eight hundred a month.

Vaccines, deworming and vet visits aren't even counted yet. On a riding club's price list, that room is called the boarding fee, charged by the month. The rent is the boarding fee, the helper is the groom, and the bed is the layer of wood shavings on the floor.

Add it up: about four thousand yuan a month, more than twenty times the subway. And one thing the subway never does: you get weekends off, the horse doesn't. It eats all thirty days. What about time? At a walk, a horse covers five or six kilometers an hour.

Ten kilometers takes nearly two hours each way. The subway takes just over half an hour. It can trot at over ten kilometers an hour, but out on the street, that's not up to the horse. No law says you can't ride a horse on the road, but it can't go in the car lanes. A Beijing traffic officer once put it plainly: lead the horse, and stay in the bike lane.

So on your horseback commute, a good stretch is you walking the horse. And at the office it gets harder. It drops over twenty kilos of manure a day. Tied up downstairs, who's shoveling? Commuting by horse: four thousand a month, two hours each way, and when you get off, you still need somewhere to tie it.

How long is your commute right now, one way?