Last fall I purchased an electric bike so I could do my part keep the streets of Beijing as terrifying as possible. It came with a battery that was so heavy it almost threw out my back to lift: it was the size and weight of a mini-keg. I learned to sling it over my shoulder when bringing it upstairs to charge.
Nevertheless, I was proud. It was the first machine-powered vehicle I’d ever purchased. I quickly noticed that I could be super Beijing by buying large objects like a mattress topper, tie it to the back of the bike so that it stuck out over both sides, and then Red Rover-style clothesline everyone in the bike lane as I drove by. I slapped three dozen stickers of the Brandeis University mascot Ollie the Owl onto the front fender and sides, and from then on, I referred to driving the bike as “rolling ‘deis.”
However, the battery’s weight soon took a toll—not on myself, but on the battery’s tiny plastic handle. As with much of the infrastructure in China, it was asked to bear a load greater than it was designed to bear, and yesterday when I made to put down the battery on the floor of my apartment, the nut holding the handle in place sheared off and the whole battery pack smashed loudly onto my floor.
The casing shattered and the battery cells slipped out. In an instance of what I like to call “ex-pat luck”, the battery happened to also fall on the battery charger. My battery, in the process of its own destruction, also destroyed that which gave it life. It seemed to me oddly poetic, like a baby falling out of the womb, only to be stopped from hitting the ground by being choked by its umbilical cord.
Staring at the mess in front of me, I had an epiphany. In China, when I buy things new, they break. Does that mean that if I break things, they should work like new?
I plugged in the wrecked battery with the wrecked charger. It worked! Wires were exposed, gaping wounds in the plastic casing yawned at the air, but it worked!
Encouraged, I took a role of packaging tape and wrapped the entire battery up like a mummy. In the end, I had created a monstrosity, but it supported its own weight well enough to allow me to hoist it onto my shoulder.
The rest was just the fitting conclusion to the Loony Tunes logic that had pervaded the entire situation. I was zooming around rolling ‘deis again in no time.
3.27.13