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Northern China is eerily unpopulated this far west on the Yellow River. I have still not come across a village and am once again doing what I had sworn not to do, which is to ride in the dark, and now oil is pouring out of the right side of the engine onto my boot. Miraculously, a building appears. I cut the engine and glide into the empty parking lot where I stomp around in the dark, kicking the bike and cursing. At the height of my temper tantrum the lights come on and a young couple walks out of the building. I show them the puddle of oil and my boot and they beckon me inside. It is their home, and a motorcycle dealership. I am seated on a long couch in a living room lined with candy-colored 125cc motorcycles. After a steaming cup of green tea we go outside to fill my crankcase with oil. The man hops on a moped and leads me about a half-mile into town. My bike leaks oil all the way to the luguan, a trucker dorm, where I’ll sleep, and asks someone to fetch the mechanic.

The mechanic is an astonishingly handsome young man with long slicked-back hair and almond eyes of brown verging on gold. I think there is no way a beautiful man like this could be a mechanic, but here he is. Explaining my problem to him is frustrating. He doesn’t really seem to be listening. I open my motorcycle manual to the exploded view of the engine and circle the piston, drawing lightning bolts and X-marks through it with my pencil, but he looks at me with more fascination than understanding, and so I give up.

There’s a public shower where I spend a lot of time rinsing the day away, by now used to an audience of tittering women curious about the foreigner. Back at the lugan I spread my sleeping bag liner on top of the dirty sheets in the women’s dormitory and sink into the sagging mattress, sleeping deeply until the screeching PA system wakes me blaring nasal Chinese ballads on blown-out speakers. It’s six in the morning.

Breakfast is, as usual, salty pork noodle soup and heavily-sugared green tea, which does little to relieve my caffeine withdrawal headache. I ran out of coffee weeks ago and nobody’s even heard of Nescafe. Four cups of tea and an hour later the mechanic shows up dressed in a crisp white shirt and meticulously pressed pants. He introduces himself as Frank, a formality forgotten the previous evening, or maybe he just created his new American name today. His nails are clean and his hair is oiled and swept back artfully, and the front has been teased into some sort of fluffy bouffant. Ridiculous though it is, he is still handsome, even more handsome, if possible, in the daylight. But I don’t like him. His two assistants are very young, maybe 15 or 16 years old. They wear grimy blue pants and jackets and hang back like kicked dogs.

Frank unlocks the garage doors and we roll out the Chang Jiang. Then, he dilly-dallies. I attempt to begin, showing him diagrams and pointing to the place on the engine that’s broken but he shushes me. Finally, a young woman, a local reporter, shows up with a camera. Ah-ha. Irritated and helpless, I pose for photographs with Frank, vow not to take any myself, and then, finally, we get started.

Frank shouts at his assistants who scramble to follow orders but they fumble, making things worse. After a while I figure what the problem is—I am helping—which makes Frank think they’re not working fast enough. He thinks the boys should stay ahead of me, to get to tasks before I can interfere. Too bad. I want to see what the problem is for myself. Eventually Frank gives up, letting me work at my own pace while the two mechanics assist.

The boys finally calm down, but they don’t work neatly. I organize the screws, nuts, bolts, washers, in separate containers. I replace each tool when I’m finished with it. Their tools are piled in a shallow metal box and scattered everywhere on the packed dirt floor. My tools were neatly arranged in a proper toolbox, and my wrenches were organized in sleeves from smallest to largest, but they quickly become mixed in with their tools. It is not malicious; they simply lack the concept of neatness. I spend a lot of time segregating tools and sifting through the dust for screws, washers, nuts, and bolts.