“Everyone says that you should wait, because your body doesn’t fully come in until you’re like 30, and I’m 20 years old, and why am I going to wait until I’m 30 to be snatched?” Catera Northup, an exotic dancer from Rhode Island, said.

The final stage of my trip entailed a thirty-six hour trip up the Huai on a river boat from Peng-pu to the focal point of the 1951 project at Jen Ho Chih where the Huai itself was being dammed up and diverted into natural lake-reservoirs with great dyke walls being built clear across a big lake to prevent it linking up with the Huai and other lakes during flood season. This entailed a major engineering project and would be the key to controlling the most vital section of the Huai Valley. Between Peng-pu and Jen Ho Chih sluice gates were being installed at the mouths of the fish-bone tributaries, where they emptied into the Huai. The tributaries are double dangers. Firstly their discharge swells the flood waters of the Huai and secondly they are weak links in the dyke system through which the swollen Huai waters can rush back over the surrounding countryside. So every tributary between Peng-pu and Jen Ho Chih was being blocked with steel and concrete sluice gates which could be slammed shut when the Huai is in flood and form steel links in the dyke wall. We visited the first of these towards dusk one evening.

To determine if your frame has this bottom bracket type, look for a notched and possibly knurled lockring on the left side (the side without the chainrings).

It is advisable, for example, to learn the words to the school loyalty and to “Fair Harvard” in the event that you are “asked” to give an impromptu “concert” in the Yard for the benefit of the Uppers.