Shopping overkill
(Taiyin Ma, my bike, laden with shopping, Suzhou, China)
Ying’s mum was surprised at our speedy adaptation to life in China; the food, the roads, the weather, but I believe this shot possibly encapsulates it best. I went shopping with the bike to pick up tissues and various foods to nurse a sickly Ying back to health As often happens, my poor forward planning was exposed as soon as I scooped up my purchases at the till. Once I returned to my faithful steed, the problem of carrying and driving logistics became more evident. I utilised my helmet lock to hold the bumper tissue box to the basket – well, one can’t just buy one box when there’s a house full of flu.
You can see that I have attached the tissues to the basket, the basket itself is full and there’s a third set of goods on the left which as I recall, I was carrying hooked over the handlebars. Another time I had to buy a duvet since I woke up shivering the night before. I ended up sitting the enormous box of feathers on the back seat of the bike and managed to secure it there after ten minutes of gentle coaxing with a length of elastic with a hook at each end. It was yanked to the limit that my biceps could award the situation and with a few minor bumps, I managed to make it home. Obviously since it was dark, nobody batted an eyelid, but had I been pulling a similar stunt in the daytime, my paleness and pile of shopping would have turned heads.
