The Bike Came Back, it wouldn't stay away

This from an article in Beijing Review, March 25th, about New Zealand Professor Michael Donnelly, now teaching in Beijing Normal University in Beijing. This anecdote is from 1996, "when he was in Ya'an City, Sichuan province...a relatively small place, where, at that time, he was not just 'a' foreigner, but the 'only' foreigner.

Once he received a gift from the university where he was teaching at the time--a very old fashioned bicycle that he was determined to lose somehow after accepting it politely. Every time he went downtown he would leave it in some obvious place without a lock, hoping that someone would steel [sic] it. but nobody ever did. One morning he dumped it and walked home. In the afternoon, someone returned it, saying, "This is the foreigner's bike."