They Peddle Good Bikes

Walking around a campus that is big enough for 60,000 students can be quite exhausting. This is why a vast majority set off one day on an adventure that I will not soon forget, a trip to the "stolen bike shop." The stolen bike shop is a shop you can't get to unless you know someone who's been there already. For all of you who might be coming to Chengdu in the next few years here are directions:

1. Cross the bridge

2. Go to the right side of the road at the stoplight

3. Look around and pretend to be looking for something

4. Wait for someone to come up to you and grab you by the hand

5. Follow them down a dark ally

6. Look at all of the bikes they've stolen 

7. Pick one you like for only 20 American dollars

It's that simple! and very sketchy. There are pictures below of some of the bikes and some of the surroundings. Let me describe them to you...

Along with the many puddles that we walked through that the children freely urinated in, there were many tanks filled with many interesting things. Some included fish that would be then cleaned and gutted on the concrete that we would later ride our bikes on then splash the puddle water onto the now "cleaned" fish. Other tanks had snakes. Some of us on our trip don't deal well with snakes and weren't able to even look at them.

After about 10 minutes I decided that I had found my noble steed for the next 4 months, a bicycle that's about 3 feet too small and bright magenta. After Emily and I had found our companions for the next semester we decided we had to test them and ride back to our dormitory on them. Mind you this is a city of 3 million people inside the city limits and a city where no one follows and driving guidelines. An example, people will see that they're not supposed to turn or that they don't have the right of way but if the stick the nose of their car out far enough people will be forced to stop for them. It's extremely nerve racking to ever sit in the front seat of a taxi. Anyway, Emily and I had to ride through 4 lanes of traffic, cross a bridge, and avoid hitting old men in tricycles. A scary affair to say the least.

Two days after my tire was flat so I brought it to "the bike man." He filled it with air for .50 RBM (equal to 7.5 cents). Since then I've had to get my airs filled about 6 times, a bell put on, the inner tube replaced in the front tire, the inner tube checked in the back tire, my back brakes doesn't work, and my entire peddle fell off so I had to scoot around for 2 days by pushing myself with my legs (not an easy task with flip-flops). 

All that being said the bike man was able to fix all of my problems (besides the brakes which I didn't ask him to fix, but probably should have been fixed) so I decided I'd try and befriend him on Moon Cake Day by giving him a moon cake. However he doesn't speak any English and was completely unresponsive to the whole idea but took the moon cake anyway. It turned out be an awkward event.

I'm going to go to bed now so if any of this is unreadable you can either deal with it or wait until I edit it next time.