From Grits to Chopsticks

Now that we have finally settled into our apartment (more to come on that), it’s time to improve my transportation options.  The walk to school isn’t too bad – only about 17 minutes at a brisk pace.  But if I had a bike, it would only take about half that long (including carrying it up and down stairs).

We visited with a friend on Friday, and it turns out that his old bike had been stolen on Wednesday.  Since he was previously a fairly serious road biker, he had already been eyeing a new set of wheels at the local Giant store.  We joined him on a quick trip there to see if there might be anything for us (remember, Giant bikes are made in China/Taiwan).

There is a strong tension here when it comes to buying a bike.  Part of me would like to get a nice, lightweight mountain bike to make it easier to carry up the four flights of stairs to my office.  But the other part of me is keenly aware that bike theft in this city is a finely tuned science (everyone I know has had several bikes stolen).  Our campus is also right next to some pretty awesome mountains, and I’ve heard that there are trails in “them thar hills,” evidenced by some bike clubs who ride in that direction on the weekends.  Unfortunately, our trip to this bike shop was not particularly fruitful.  It turns out that there were only two frames in the entire shop that would fit my size, and they were both clunky and heavy.  I decided to take a smaller frame out for a quick spin (it has been so long!), but found that the shock quickly bottomed out when I jumped the curb:

I’ve heard that there are some better bike shops downtown near the major universities.  Maybe we’ll take a trip there before deciding to buy a theft-resistant, rusty gray second-hand bike from a local dealer.  It sure would be nice to have some suspension for banging over the obstacles in the alleyway between our apartment and the main road heading toward the school (with a lockout shock, a solid crank set, disc brakes…).

But just when you think that everything in China is small, think again.  Last week as we were heading out the door to look for a toaster oven for our new apartment (they don’t have traditional full-size ovens here), I took a quick measurement of the appointed spot in our kitchen – 18 inches wide.  When we got to the store, I grabbed a tape measure from the hardware aisle to narrow our search to just the ovens that would fit.  Of course, the only tape measures were metric, so I did the quick math: 18 * 2.54 = 45 cm.  We found an oven that would work, but when we got it home, it was significantly smaller than the spot.  I couldn’t figure out what went wrong until I looked at my Chinese tape measure:

I’m still not sure what units of measure this represents, but it’s clearly not the inches that we are familiar with.  Perhaps someone finds value in having a ruler where inches are 38% longer than those I grew up with.