8/9 Lives
Shanghai JiaoTong University is a big campus. In order to reasonably get around, you really need to either have a bike, or heavily rely on rental bikes which are found just anywhere. Either option works with owning your own bike being the more convenient of the two. But this semester I have had very bad luck with relation to bikes; something that I now call a curse. For reasons that I will now list:
Exactly a week after buying my first bike, it had gone unexpectedly missing. I had ridden it to the subway station not far from campus, and upon returning late that night, it was gone. I talked to a police officer there who was interview some other people who had gotten their bikes stolen and he said to check at the city impound. And if it was not there, to come and file a report at the police station. But the city impound was very far away and the price of a taxi there only to maybe find my bike prompted me to give up on that idea. Maybe this was the beginning of the curse, that I had abandoned my first bike so recklessly. But I can’t say. However to differentiate my bike from all the other bikes, I had put duck tape on the handlebars with the words “我的，不是你的” translating to “Mine, not yours” which very well have provided impetus for someone to steal that bike.
I used rental bikes for a bit after that, feeling sad that my new bike would be so heartlessly be torn away from me, until I felt that the inconvenience of finding a rental bike every time I wanted to go somewhere to be too much. I bought a second hand bike for half as much as my first one, which in hindsight maybe I should have done first. But not 3 days had passed until I got into a bike accident with that bike. I was riding along, when a person a little ahead of me on my right decided they wanted to turn left; she didn’t see I was there and we collided. I scraped both my knees up pretty badly (I would include a picture, but it doesn’t look good). She got right back up and rode off, and I did my best to do the same. Later I went to the school clinic and got some iodine spread on me, which was fun.
To summarize the rest: I had a tire pop twice, I accidentally went to fast and ran into some of the pylons on roads that are supposed to prevent cars from driving on some roads, another time I hit a speed bump badly (and fell). Recently I was coming out of an intersection and into a person who decided to stop in said intersection, busting open my front tire, picture below.
And lastly, probably most devastating, I was riding down a sidewalk one night, going arguably faster than I should have, when I hit a curb thing that extended into the sidewalk. It’s one of those concrete rings that goes around trees, but there was no tree there, and it extended out into the sidewalk, and it was dark, so it blended in. Needless to say, I hit it and fell down. But when I fell, I landed on my phone which was in my pocket, and completely cracked the screen, to the point where is was no longer usable. Living in China for the past 3 months now, I have come to realize that having a phone is essential to paying for things, coordinating with people, and getting around. And I had just broke mine. In the next couple days I was able to get another phone, but after this event, I decided that I needed to stop using bikes. If you’ve been counting, this has made 8 bike related accidents this year. If I’m anything like a cat, then I have all but 1 life left, and after that night, I vowed not to use a bike unless it was absolutely necessary.
Though it sounds bad, I don’t necessarily mind walking everywhere nowadays. The campus is big, but it’s relaxing to walk so much. It’s been annoying that these past few days have all been raining, but I’m glad that my routine is no longer just about getting from a to b but also about what’s in between. Related to that, I’d be remiss not to mention that Shanghai had its first snow today; it was the kind of snow that melted when it hit the ground, but it still built up in some places. Everyone and their mother was taking pictures, myself included.
Stay tuned for more: TALES OF SHANGHAI!
Braden Saltus
Nuclear Engineering
IPE Shanghai JiaoTong Joint Institute 2018