Once I had my bearings, I bought a Flying Pigeon model bicycle off the black market. Daddy loves Flying Pigeon stories. The Pigeon had bald tires and bad brakes. Still, it was a deal—the only commercial transaction in which I came out ahead in a lifetime of shopping. Well, there I am riding the Pigeon when a truck shot past me and knocked over an old man who was riding a bike without a seat. The accident left the poor man sprawled out on the road, an unconscious bloody wreck. No ambulance came. The man began to have convulsive seizures and turned blue. No police came. People stopped to stare at the injured man but no Good Samaritan lifted a finger to help him out. Sometimes I think the residents of Chengdu are positively evil, all ten million of them. I’m not from Samaria but I helped the man to a teahouse and from there I hired a pedicab to take him home. I offered to take him to a hospital but he said he was okay and wanted to go home.

When the brakes on my Flying Pigeon went out, I bought a new set that cost twenty cents installed. The bicycle repairman later fixed a flat for an American dime. Elizabeth called me a fool and told me the bike guy totally ripped me off. How do you get ripped off over a dime?

I give as much every week to the rotating watchmen at our apartment building, although the prevailing fee is less, a single tenth of a yuan. These men guard bicycles for a living. That’s all they do. A week after the old man was struck by the truck, my Flying Pigeon was stolen from a bike rack near the post office. Bike thieves carry commercial lock cutters. There is simply no percentage in owning a nice bicycle; it’s just going to get stolen and with a new bike you have to get it licensed at the police station and take a bike-riding test. Since the Pigeon got taken, I’ve lost three crappier bikes. The Pigeon 2 was a rust bucket but it did have a basket and a bell, each of which was stolen on separate occasions within a week. Next the square foot pedals were stolen and I was left pedaling on thin pegs. Then someone stole the seat cushion, leaving an exposed seat spring that was determined to munch a hole in my ass. I told my dad about it. My father hears “rusty spring” and he fears tetanus. He hears “monkey bite” and fears rabies. Mosquito bites: malaria, Japanese encephalitis, and dengue fever. You don’t even want to know what he feared when he first heard of the SARS epidemic. Obviously no way in hell did I consider telling him that Marcello was a black soccer player from São Paulo, Brazil, eleven years my senior.