Each evening, Mr. Yi drank single malt

and looked at the broken tricycle in his front room,

marveling at how so basic a principle

could have escaped the engineering minds of history.

When Mr. Yi’s friends came over for dinner one night,

they sat admiring the mangled tricycle too.

His business partner’s wife liked it so much,

she demanded the name of the gallery.

“I want one for the third guest room,” she said.

“Chinese art is so real!”

When the fruit came, Mr Yi told his business partner

that the metal egg mechanism known as Golden Helper II

could potentially be a candidate for mass production.

He explained what he thought it did,

and how it might take a team of skilled engineers

weeks—even months—to reproduce it exactly.

The business partner looked worried,

didn’t know where Mr. Yi found it, was afraid to ask.

Was that blood on the frame?

Or sriracha?