Everything's broken

When my family was still living in Belmont, our neighbor, Henry, came to the door one day and when one of my parents opened it he just stood there and said, in a wounded tone of voice, "Everything's broken." That's how things have been since we got back to Beijing.

The list so far:

My sister's new fake Polo suitcase (wheel that won't turn)
The phone (because we spilled water on it, or because we didn't pay the bill?)
The internet
The air conditioner (works but leaks)
The mop we use to dry the bathroom floor after a shower, because the shower isn't separate from the rest of the bathroom
The hot water heater (now fixed)
My new bike*
My sister's bike
The power in the entire apartment complex

AND, by far the most spectacular, MY CAR.

You would think you could leave your car in a Verano parking lot for a month and not much would happen, wouldn't you? But my car couldn't stand the lonliness. When it started bleating uncontrollably at 3 in the morning, the UCI PD towed it away and forced my wonderful, wonderful roommate and me to embark on a crazy and very expensive quest to get it back. And who knows what its mechanical and psychological state will be when I get back.

Moral of the story: have a talk with your car before you go on a long trip. Make sure it knows what to except. Reassure it that you are coming home. Clean up the spilled coffee. Buy it some magazines to keep it occupied.

Now a little bit about Beijing: it is about 100 degrees. The sun feels like a laser beam frying several layers of you at once. It is incredibly crowded, incredibly cheap, extremely ugly, absolutely filthy, and really fun.

*My sister bought her ex-roommate's bike for me to use while I'm here, but when I went to ride it it was (surprise!) broken. So we rode down the street, and on the corner was a man with a little stand out of which he fixes bikes. Everyone bikes here, including most delivery people, who tow huge loads on homemade tricycles, so there is a lot of need for bike fixing and these corner stands are more common than Dunkin Donutses in Boston. This cart was about 3' by 3' and shaded by a huge umbrella. The whole thing was on wheels, so that at the end of the day the man would be able to close up shop and bike it away.

The repairman, with incredible efficiency and accuracy, replaced both tires, both inner tubes, and one set of brakes, and adjusted the seat and handlebars. It took about fifteen minutes, and cost 90 yuan, which is about $10. Now the bike works great, and biking around Beijing is one of the most fun things I've done in China. It is almost total chaos, with tons of bikes, scooters, taxis, buses, and cars constantly vying for position, but the saving grace is that everyone bikes really slowly. Beijing is very flat, and none of the bikes have gears, so the riding itself is just a matter of puttering along. That means you can devote your full attention to seeing the sights and trying not to get hit.

Another typical moment: as part of the car disaster, I had to fax something to the towing company in California. My sister and I went on a ride around a few neighborhoods trying to find a Kinko's (including a huge apartment complex called, in English, "Leisure Garden"). Finally, we stopped off at a tiny little shack on the side of the road. In it were a computer, a photocopier, a drafting table, a no-frills fax machine, a big rice cooker, and about eight people sitting around. To my amazement, based on my experience with faxes in the U.S., the papers arrived just as they were supposed to.

We have also been having amazing food for incredibly cheap. At restaurants, we've been buying meals for three or four, with abundant beer, for about $3.50. Last night we decided to make dinner, so we bought: a bagful of potatoes, two green peppers, a bunch of celery, two leeks, a bagful of edamame, four foot-and-a-half-long cucumbers, and eight eggs for a total of 90 cents. Five huge bottles of beer added another dollar. You can also buy a green-pea or yellow-corn popsicle on any street corner for about 20 cents.

Right now I'm writing this from an internet cafe that reminds me oddly of the Gypsy Den. It's an ex-pat hangout that is about as different from its surroundings as the Gypsy Den is from the O.C. My sister is writing an op-ed piece about the importance of NGOs in Chinese public health. We just had sandwiches, a rare treat in the land of Chinese food. Everything's still broken, but it's okay.