China Doll's New Bike

Remember that girl who got lost in Grinnell, Iowa? The small city with numbered streets?

Remember that girl who had to wear a cast for the 3rd grade Newscasting Session because she hurt her arm on a bike? That girl who hurt her arm on a bike when she gently love-tapped a shrubbery?

A shrubbery, for crying out loud.

Well, that girl got a bike. It was not her brightest of ideas.

Living at Hohai University has some large advantages over my location from last year, the biggest (and maybe only) advantage being my large living space and beautiful tree-lined campus. The most drastic change is the location. Last year, my dorm was in an extremely centralized place. There were tons of buses that ran frequently from the bus stop across the street. And the food... oh the food...

Even though I am only a 25-30 minute walk away from my old apartment, the change feels drastic. There are no buses that leave from the back gate (close to where I live) and there are only a few buses at the front gate, which is a 10 minute walk at least. Plus, the major construction nearby hinders the bus routes, and has demolished a lot of the business near my apartment (including restaurants.) The lack of convenient buses and shortage of good restaurants made the idea of getting a bike appealing. I decided to go for it.

Lela and I took the bus to Tangzi Lu, the street in Nanjing known for selling cheap, second-hand (read: stolen) bikes. I've noticed that in China, there are often markets where everyone sells exactly the same thing. It's useful when you're going to buy something specific: a lot of  merchandise are centralized in the same place. It also makes it really overwhelming, since there are so many options. When my mom and I went to the Pearl Market in Beijing, it was just stall after stall of the same pearls over and  over. Just pearls for what seemed like eternity. That's what Tangzi Lu looked like.

Even though there were bikes for days, none caught my eye. Immediately, Lela picked out a pink Giant bicycle, which she able to bargain way down. But I was still on the hunt. After a few failed attempts (the "salespeople," which I put in quotes because it was basically just people selling bikes on the side of the road, weren't willing to bargain) this lady came up to us out of nowhere. 

"Buying a bicycle?" she asked in Chinese. She waved at us to follow.

I thought we were going to the visible side alley with lots of bikes lined up along the brick wall. Nope. We went further into the alley, twisting and turning. I found it hard to believe she could even wheel a bike back there it got so tight. Finally, we arrived this little hole in the wall with 20-30 bikes lined up. On the other side, some old men were spray painting bikes army green and attaching a wagon to each one. No idea.

I found a bike I liked, but again, I was having trouble getting it at the price my Chinese friend had advised me not to go above. Tired and frustrated, I ended up paying 10 RMB more than "the highest I should pay at Tagzi Lu" but included was two locks and two bells (one for me, one for Lela.) I figured Lela deserved a bell after all the haggling she did for me and after all the indecision I put her through.

Now came the scary part. Buying a bike meant biking home. Having not ridden a bike in over a year, it would have been nice to start out on the Hohai campus, biking up to Shanghai Lu, my old stomping grounds. Nope. I had to bike from a new place during rush hour traffic.

It was trial by fire, to say the least. I discovered that when the bike was going downhill at rapid speed, the breaks were not as useful as on a new, American-sold bike. Lela and I followed the bus route back to her school, then I biked home from there. Even though I led the way for awhile, I could not have done that without Lela.

There it is!

My purse just barely fits in the basket...

The next day, I biked to the technology market to retrieve my unlocked iPhone. That was a huge win for me. I had no idea where I was going and I was riding by myself. Apparently, the way to Zhujiang Lu is a "bike lane" that is actually also a pedestrian walkway, so I had to do some impressive bike maneuvering and bell ringing.

As scary as riding a bike is in Nanjing, having this bike is a lifesaver. What it saves me in time and money it gives me back in heart attacks and conniptions. Bikes seems to follow their own traffic rules here: sometimes they follow the vehicle traffic and sometimes they act more like pedestrians. The only thing I'm yet to perfect is the left turn. It's not super intuitive...

I hope that having a bike will help me learn the city better. So far, I really love it. This China Doll isn't as fragile as she seems—biking along the traffic-ridden, law-unabiding roads...