by Jeff Stone
Before me was a sea of bicycles. There were mountain bikes, road bikes, and cyclocross bikes. There were tricycles, unicycles, and tandem bikes. There were BMX bikes, load-hauling bikes, and recumbent bikes. It was unbelievable.
Most astonishing of all was that the bikes were from every major manufacturer around the world. The shops back in the United States would kill for an inventory like this. American shops were tied to contracts with specific manufacturers, which meant they could carry only certain things from certain brands. This shop obviously had no such agreements.
Standing with my mouth agape, I heard a girl’s voice ring out in English.
“Do you like?”
I closed my mouth and glanced about, but didn’t see anyone. Then I heard movement behind a tall counter toward the back of the shop and saw a small, grease-covered individual appear from behind it. The person was wearing stained coveralls, black work boots, and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled low. It didn’t look like any girl I had ever seen before.
A small hand with gunk-clogged fingernails removed the hat, and a wave of shimmering sable hair spilled out. Now she looked like a girl.
“I said, ‘Do you like?’ ” the girl asked again. “You speak English, yes?”
“Yes,” I replied. “And I like.”
She smiled. “What exactly do you like?”
I felt my face flush, and I waved a hand toward the rows of bicycles blanketing the shop floor. “I—I was talking about the bikes.”
The girl pouted as she approached me. “Oh.” She wiped grease from her palms with a dirty rag dangling from her back pocket and stuck out her hand. “My name is Tiě Hú Dié. Welcome to the finest bicycle shop in Henan Province.”
Still embarrassed, I took her hand. It was small and warm, and holding it made me feel strange. I let go.
“I’m Phoenix Collins,” I mumbled.
“Phoenix?”
“Yes.”
“That is a girl’s name.”
I frowned. “Not according to my grandfather, and he’s Chinese.”
“But you’re American, yes?”
I stared at her. “How did you know?”
“Your accent.”
“Oh.”
“So, Phoenix is your first name?” she asked.
I remembered that people from many Asian countries gave their last name first. “That’s right,” I said.
“Then you would say that my name is Hú Dié Tiě. You may call me Hú Dié.”
She pronounced it “Hoo DEE-ay.”
“Butterfly?” I asked.
“Correct,” she said. “You speak Chinese?”
“Yí dian dian,” I replied. “A little. What does Tiě mean?”
She flashed a mischievous smile. “Guess.”
“I have no idea.”
“Come on, Phoenix, guess my name.”
I fought the urge to laugh as the story of Rumpelstiltskin popped into my head. Never one to back down from a challenge, I looked her over and swallowed a lump that was inexplicably forming in my throat. I figured I should guess something nice. I asked, “Does Tiě mean … ‘lovely’?”
To my surprise, her smile disappeared, and she punched me in the arm. “No,” she said. “Guess again.”
I rubbed my arm. She was strong. “Um,” I said, trying hard to think of a word that paired well with butterfly. “How about … ‘delicate’?”
She punched me again, harder this time.
“Ouch!” I said. “That hurt. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Get punched by a girl, and you squirm like an eel. Guess again.”
I shook my head. What was up with this girl? Was she flirting? Did she just want attention? Regardless, I wasn’t interested. Girls were the last thing on my mind. “This is stupid,” I said. “I give up.”
“Quitter.”
“I am not a quitter.”
“Guess again, then.”
I glared at her.
She glared back. “Would you like a clue?” she asked.
“Whatever.”
She punched me a third time. This time I felt as if I’d been hit with a hammer.
I yelped and jumped backward. “Are you insane?”
Hú Dié giggled. “That was your clue.” She pushed the sleeves of her coveralls up all the way to her shoulders and lifted both arms in a bodybuilder’s pose. She flexed, displaying perfectly toned biceps and rock-hard triceps. “Tiě,” she said, “means ‘iron.’ I am Iron Butterfly.”
I rubbed my arm again. “You are Psycho Butterfly.”
“And you are an infant. Stop whining.”
I’d had enough of her. I turned away and headed for the door.
“Wait!” she called out. “Please don’t leave. I am only joking.”
I kept walking.
“Please? Pretty, pretty please?”
I stopped. I looked back at her. “Why should I stay here and keep getting abused?”
“I promise I’ll stop. I like talking with you. I’m sorry if I tease too much. It is just my way.”
I glanced around at the bikes once more, and an idea began to form. Why in the world would I hike to this Cangzhen Temple when I could ride there? This shop had plenty of mountain bikes. Maybe I could afford to buy one? Better yet, maybe I could rent one. It would be a lot cheaper.
“I need to speak with the manager,” I said.
“Huh?”
“The manager,” I repeated. “The boss. The head honcho. Your leader. I need to speak with him.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I am the manager. I am also the head mechanic, and the owner.”
I looked at her in wonder. “This is all yours?”
“Yes. Technically, my father and I own it together, but I do all the work. He is usually busy with other things. This is my shop. Just ask him when he comes back later.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen. How old are you?”
“Thirteen.” I looked around. “How do you find time to manage all of this? Did you drop out of school or something?”
“Do I speak English like an intermediate school dropout?”
I felt my face beginning to flush again. “Um, no. Sorry.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, then,” she said. “I want to go to college in America or Australia one day, so I work very hard on my English. I even pay for a special tutor with my own money. I do not want to spend my whole life with grease underneath my fingernails, you know.”
I nodded, a new respect growing for her. Maybe she wasn’t psycho, after all—just feisty. “Do you rent bicycles?” I asked.
“For you? Possibly.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Possibly.’ ”
“It’s just that we don’t normally rent bicycles here. I rarely sell them to individuals, either. No one bothers to come to this section of Kaifeng unless they are going to the bus terminal. We are wholesalers. The bikes you see will be sent to bike shops across China.”
“Oh,” I said, my irritation quickly dissolving. “I was wondering how you could have so many different brands in one place. How much to rent one?”
“Pick a bike first; then we’ll see if we can work something out.”
I spotted a blue and white dual-suspension mountain bike and walked over to it. It was a beauty. I knelt down to examine the components and froze. “I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but this bike is a copy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is not an original from the manufacturer. It was made by someone else.”
“How do you know?”
I pointed to a joint where two sections of the frame came together. “See this weld? It wasn’t done by the manufacturer. They use machines. This was done by hand. The weld probably won’t hold up to hard riding.”
“It will hold,” she said in a defensive tone.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I welded it.”
I jumped to my feet. “You built this bike?”
She nodded. “It is a very good reproduction, is it not? I even painted it. Look.” She pointed behind the tall counter at the back of the shop.
I walked over to the counter and saw a small spray booth for painting beyond it. I also saw a large assortment of raw aluminum and steel tubing to be bent into bike frame sections, plus cutting torches, welding equipment, and numerous trays of wrenches, hammers, pliers, and other tools.
“Which of these bikes did you build?” I asked.
“All of them. I built the frames from scratch, then added the components.”
“But there are like two hundred bikes here, and they are all different types!”
“There are currently two hundred twenty-one.”
“Incredible,” I said. “How much do they sell for?”
“Retail price, of course.”
I wasn’t sure that I had heard her right. “You mean people pay the same price for your copies as they would for the real thing? Don’t you tell them that they are fakes?”
“My customers know that these are replicas. As for what they tell their customers, that is none of my business.”
“But that’s cheating.”
“No. I am honest about the origin of my bikes.”
I shook my head.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Bike companies copy each other’s designs all the time, right down to the paint schemes. No one is stopping them from stealing my designs.”
“What do you know about bike design?”
“More than you could ever hope to know.”
I laughed. “I doubt that.”
“What do you know about bicycles?” she asked. “Seriously. What could you possibly even need a bike for? Let me guess. Judging by your ratty hair and baggy clothes, you want to rent a mountain bike.”
I didn’t reply.
“I knew it!” Hú Dié said. “I bet you don’t have a clue where to ride. There are no mountains in this neighborhood.”
“I have information.”
“What kind of information? You barely speak Chinese.”
“I have a GPS unit.”
“Ha! That won’t even get you to the foothills, let alone actual mountains for a mountain bike. You can never count on the roads being open around here. You would have to ask the locals how to get where you want to go, and you won’t be able to speak their dialect. Many of them don’t even speak Mandarin.”
I said nothing.
“So, where is it you are going?” she asked.
“I have a better question,” I replied. “Why am I wasting my time talking with you?”
She flashed that brilliant smile of hers. “Because you like me.”
I felt my face turning red again.
“No need to be embarrassed,” she said. “It happens to most guys. I’ll tell you what: I will go with you and be your guide. I know which roads are open. It will be fun. I won’t even charge you for borrowing a bike.”
“You really are crazy,” I said. “You don’t even know me. I could be psycho.”
“I doubt it. You’re harmless.”
I ground my teeth. “You can’t come with me.”
“Sure I can. I’ll just close up the shop for a couple days. A ride in the mountains usually takes more than a single afternoon around here. If the shop gets an order for some bikes, my father can take care of it. It’s my summer vacation, after all. I deserve a short getaway.”
“If you want a getaway, go by yourself.”
“It’s more fun to ride with someone else.”
“Why me?”
Hú Dié paused. “Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
“I want to study in America someday, remember? You’re American.”
I nodded. “I see. You think by riding with me, we’ll become friends and I’ll help you go to college in the United States?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Even if you can’t help me or you decide that you don’t want to help me, so what? At least I’ll have a fun ride in the mountains and get to practice my English.”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand. This is something that I have to do alone.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Hú Dié said. “You can’t do this alone. How are you supposed to accomplish anything if you barely even speak the language? I can be your interpreter. What have you got to lose?”
“The answer is still no.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, growing feisty again. “Is it that you are afraid you won’t be able to keep up with a girl? Maybe you should be worried. I ride the mountains whenever I get the chance. I am good. Very good.”
I took a deep breath and thought about what she was saying. Maybe I would be better off with her coming along. Beyond speaking the language and having knowledge of the roads and mountain terrain, she definitely seemed to know bikes. Equipment broke all the time on mountain trails. More than that, riding with a buddy was simply responsible mountain biking. Anything could happen out there. Just because she went along did not mean I had to tell her what I was up to.
“Well?” Hú Dié pressed. “It’s getting late, and this is not a safe city after dark. I’ll tell you what—if you let me go with you tomorrow, you can sleep here in the shop tonight. I live upstairs with my father, and it will be easy enough for you and me to leave first thing in the morning from here. I will even throw in dinner tonight. You won’t find a better deal than that in this city. What do you say?”
I closed my eyes and thought about the encounter I’d just had on the street. She was right. This city wasn’t safe, and I wouldn’t find a better deal anywhere.
I decided to take a chance. After all, she was only a girl. I opened my eyes and nodded.
And just like that, I had a new riding partner.
The question was, how safe was she?
I spent the rest of the evening in the bike shop, toggling through screens on the GPS unit while Hú Dié cooked dinner upstairs. When she finally came down, I was so hungry I could have eaten scrap metal.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to. She had made a huge bowl of pork wontons in chicken broth with fresh napa cabbage and sliced pickled ginger on the side. It was delicious. We ate with metal chopsticks while sitting side by side at a grease-streaked workbench strewn with bike parts. Pretty much an ideal dinner setting. When she wasn’t being feisty, Hú Dié was actually fun to be around. I even stopped getting that strange, nervous feeling when she was close to me.
We talked some, and I learned that while she lived here with her father, her mother lived elsewhere. I didn’t ask why. Like me, she had no other family.
Hú Dié’s father was out for the evening on business, and he didn’t make it home as she’d expected. We ended up eating the bowl of food she’d set aside for him, too. By the time we’d finished, my hunger was more than satisfied. I pushed our empty bowls aside and handed Hú Dié the GPS unit, showing her the route that PawPaw had laid out for me. Both kilometers and miles were displayed.
“No problem,” she said after looking things over. “This route appears to be programmed primarily for travel by bus, but we will be riding bikes, so we can take some shortcuts.”
“Really?” I asked.
Hú Dié nodded. “I know roads through several small villages where buses don’t go. This route shows sixty miles to the trailhead, but I can cut it down to about forty-five. We should be able to make it to the trailhead in four or five hours at a moderate pace.”
“What about the trail itself?”
“It appears to be ten miles one way into the mountains. I have ridden out there several times, and we’re probably going to have to spend the night. Those ten miles will take a couple hours, both going out and coming back. From what I remember, though, there is nothing at the final destination but a small, empty valley. Why would you want to go to that place?”
I’d been expecting this question. I had decided that since she would be with me the whole ride, I might as w
ell tell her about the ruins. Of course, I wouldn’t tell her why I wanted to go there. As for the man I was supposed to find, I would deal with that topic when the time came.
“There was a temple in that location,” I said. “It was destroyed a long time ago.”
“Cangzhen Temple?” she asked.
My eyes widened. “Yes! How do you know about Cangzhen?”
“I don’t know much, only the few things my father has told me. There is supposed to be a crazy old hermit who lives in the temple ruins, but no one knows exactly where the ruins are located. Are you sure that’s the spot?”
I couldn’t believe my good luck. Her already knowing about the man would make things much easier. “I’m fairly sure that is the location. The person who programmed the GPS said it might not be exact, but it should be close.”
She shrugged. “I guess the ruins could be in that valley. I’ve ridden all over those mountains except down there, and I’ve never come across any destroyed temples anywhere else.”
“Do you know anything more about the hermit?”
“Not really. My father spends a fair amount of time in one of the villages out that way, and he hears things. People see the old man a few times a year, buying food and other supplies. My father said that he saw him once, and that he didn’t look crazy at all, just really big. Maybe people only call him crazy because he prefers to be alone, or because he often talks to himself about the glory days of Cangzhen Temple. I’ve never heard stories about him being dangerous or anything.”
“That’s good.”
“Do you want to talk with him or something?”
“Maybe. I just want to find the ruins first. Do you know anything more about Cangzhen?”
“There are legends, but they seem pretty unbelievable. Can I ask why you want to find it?”
“No. I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s personal.”
“Fine,” she snapped, her feistiness rising once more. “Be that way.” She grabbed the dirty dishes.
I stood. “Here, let me help with those.”
“No. I’d rather you didn’t come upstairs. I’ll take care of it.” She headed up a staircase at the back of the shop. She returned a few minutes later with a couple of old blankets and a threadbare pillow. She handed them to me.