Indeed, many 'mixte' bikes in Vietnam, in the post colonial communistic periode it was the main and only personal transport. Remember the girl in the movie 'Good morning Vietnam', she had one (or a lookalike). At the moment nearly all the new retro mixte bikes we see in our shops are made in Vietnam, the industry is still there. And it seems that the small factories and workshops are familly owned on a small scale Fair Trade principle.

In Japan a lot of municipals of the big cities bought a city bike as emergency transport. A lot of people were stuckted after an earthquake, subway and trains didn't go and taxi's ....not available. So it was recommended to buy a bike in case of. They call them City Bikes, in Japanese '****ti Baiku', what's in the name. You buy them for about 10.000 yen (about $ 100) and are poor quality, allready rust before you finnish the payment. In contrast are the real cyclists, they prefer top-end bikes and spent an awfull lot of money, mostly famous European brands.

Interesting is the story about the Japanese/American brand SEKAI, founded in Seatle: there is a nice site about the small brand but I still cant sent URL or pictures. The name of this site is:
Sekai Bikes - Classic Rendezvous, please google. They also made real 'mixte"bikes.