Bringing back a bike

When I was in China, I really wanted to bring back a bike - one of the 'looks like it was made in the 50's' type.

I let it go, and to my shock horror, same bike in magazine in Oz is $2000 AUD.

Girl I live with is going as an exchange to Beijing, can buy one but how to suggest we send it back.  Any suggestions, I would be grateful.  China Post maybe??

Also when I was up North the water was bad, and when we washed it turned my clothes disgusting.  I threw them out before coming home.  Hand washing in Beijing, any probs with water there??

Phetsy...

Ask the shop where you're going to buy (or have bought) the bike to take it apart and put it into a box. That's the way get transported from the factory to the shop anyway, so the shop owner knows how and what to disassemble and he has exactly the right boxes. China Post would be the only option I could think of. Choose the 'by boat' option, then maybe it won't be too expensive.

About the water, was that only once or all the time? I had brown water coming out of the taps up in Heilongjiang once, but that was after we had no water at all for about a week
Maybe your dirty water was a single event as well..

What Martin said. As for the clothes, before you wash them, let the water run for a bit (if it's a machine wash, first check what kind of water comes from the tap that is nearest to the water pipe connected with the machine). Brown water doesn't always happen.

I took a bike back to the States. It was shipped and arrived fine. Just won't be able to find repair parts for it.

Todd