The Bicycles of Shanghai
 

I've been in Shanghai and Beijing for a bit now and the bicycles here are a bit different than at home.

Bicycles are stored outside. It rains a lot. It's beside the ocean (Shanghai literally means 'beside the sea'). Every exposed steel part has rust on it. Brown, rusty steel wheels are the norm. Chain is black or silver? Nope, nice, crusty red/brown rust. You can hear bikes creak by. But they still run.

Every bike other than maybe a couple student fixies have been used solely as a means of work or transport. People leave them everywhere. They aren't locked to anything persay, but they do have a funny circular lock that locks in the rear wheel.

The downtube shifter/stem shifter/turkey lever road bike is alive and well and are continuing to be produced. Just look at a Giant Speeder for example.

Bike repairmen will set up shop on the sidewalk. I see new tubes in their kit, some new bearings, grease, a few rudimentary tools and a lot of roller pins for chains. I once saw one trying to bend back a fork that had the fork arms splayed out at 90 degrees to each other.

Single speed isn't a fashion statement here. They comprise probably more than 90% of the bicycles. There are a few mountain bike types with gears and the aforementioned downtube shifters but derailleur hangers are eschewed in favour of claw mounts. Again, rusted. It's flat everywhere so you don't really need more than one gear.

Folding bikes are quite popular. As are step through frames.

The road rules basically consist of pointing your car where you want it to go and going. People and bikes scatter out of the way. Red lights are more of a suggestion than a rule. Not uncommon for people to get hit.

Brands consist of Phoenix, Flying Pigeon, Emmelle, Giant, Qidap, Battle, etc.

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Clearing out a neighbourhood that had been moved by the government for new development.

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Top heavy bike after being hit in an intersection. Traffic just flowed around her until she got up and left.

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Cargo bikes aren't a high end specialty item. They are everywhere and a staple for much of the industry.

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Some new bikes, mostly older. Most look like your generic wal-mart branded cruisers.

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Fruit vendor in front of my wife's home.

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Rusty hub on a construction bike.

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Classic steel cruiser. You can buy one of these new for $65-$120. I was going to and just keep it here. Still might.

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Loaded a bit. Some of the bikes have direct drive electric or gas motors.

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More cargo bikes.

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Bike parking on a relatively busy street.

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Electric bike.


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I just thought this was odd.

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Generic bike

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More my style

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China Postman's bicycle. Some city workers have similar bikes but in yellow.

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One of the newest bikes I saw. Probably $100 shipped to your door or less.

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Simple bike, looked better than most of the other ones on the street.

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This looks like the generic everyday bike I see everywhere.

I didn't take many photos of the true pieces of poop lining the streets but I will. I'll get some of the 'road bikes' and some of the mountain bikes. Think of your average $100 wally world dual suspension mountain bike with almost completely useless springs everywhere...they are quite popular as well.

I'd like to see some of these road bikes

Nice pictures Narhay. :)

A couple of year ago our rowingteam was on a 2 week trainingcamp near Bejing and we decided to buy bikes to get around as they were only 50 dollars each new. We planned to put them in a container to use them the next year.

After just 2 weeks they were rusting really considerably already everywhere so we were not to impressed with the build quality and were afraid they would not last a year so we sold them of :p

Probably wrong as I can see now those bikes just keep on running rusty or not.

Nice pics. Thanks for sending me back in time. When I lived for Beijing for few years in the 90's, I didn't see one "decent" bike the whole time.
With one exception. On Sunday mornings a group of old gents would get together on a corner near Panjiayuan to show off their old classic roadsters. Mostly English and Dutch marques.

Great photos, thank you.

How about the guys carrying all the large propane bottles by bike? That is a heavy load. I checked out a Giant dealership and was surprised to see that the retail sticker prices were no bargain.

Three years ago, I had to ride this POS that my relatives had as a guest bike in Beijing. Boy was that headset loose. It looks just like your 3rd from the bottom photo of the black bike with the brown seat, except for the loop vs. diamond frame.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-F...0/IMG_1312.JPG

Thanks. That POS you posted looks like about 30% of the bicycles here. Those full chainguards seem to be calibrated to start rubbing on the crank arm at one point in the rotation. I can hear them before I see them.

Here are a few more from the lane. Due to how they were stored, tight spaces and the fact that I'm not going to pose someone else's bike these photos are about as good as it is going to get for now.

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Condo corporation work crew doing some sewer maintenance. This involves a large, long ladle that holds about 150mL, an open sewer and about 100 litres of the most vile slurry of rotting food and human waste in a hole. Cue about an hour of scooping to clean it out.

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Condo corporation work crew doing some maintenance on the buildings. Complete with full Campy tool bag.

Pretty clever tool panier. When I rode the streets of Beijing, Narhay, I could always tell the carpenters going to work. They had a small wooden box on the back full of their modest tool kits.

Oh, I've seen three nice bikes. One was a full carbon SRAM red road bike with a corncob cassette. One was a 105-ultegra roadie and the last was the most interesting. Deep dish zipp carbon wheels with what looked like tubulars, carbon track frame, carbon everything, and big mountain bike platform pedals that some young guy was using as his fixie around town and a green chain.

Put a little leather trim on that bag and sell it for big bucks in San Francisco!

Seriously, I like that bag in all its utilitarian glory. Thanks for the photos.
Brent

Now that I think about it...I have not seen a single Raleigh, Trek or Schwinn here. Of all the most common American and British marques, not a one has crossed my path. Maybe, like you said, they are sitting indoors in someone's collection to be taken to the park on a Sunday morning. The bike boom certainly did not occur here. I don't see anything resembling the boom bikes here, only old industrial age cruiser bikes to get you to work and maybe to pick some groceries up.

thanks for sharing awesome and interesting photos.

Now those are pretty awesome photos. You should check out Flying Pigeon Project sometime - some kind of photolog.

Still want myself one of those Pigeons...

M.

I wish I could see these awesome photos... I'll have to wait until I get home (if I remember that is!).

I think that is all that's there, Narhay. I certainly never saw any American or European road bikes. Not one. Of course, bikes were just transportation to the Chinese. In fact, as I remember, the direct translation is "people car". I thought of taking my Motobecane over there on one trip back and forth, but my wife discouraged the idea. "It won't last ten seconds if you leave it out somewhere", she said. Being a Beijing native, I trusted her. But I think I could've kept an eye on it.

BTW, if and when you get to Beijing, and have a spare hour or two on the weekend, check out the "old stuff" market near the corner of Panjiayuan street and the frontage road near the 3rd ring. I hear it aint what it used to be when I was there and used to take a taxi there at 4
a.m. on Saturday mornings with a flashlight in my hand. But it's an interesting experience and you just might find something interesting.
Have fun. Beijing is one of my favorite places on earth. Despite the rotten air. The people, the food, the bizarre sights.....

My wife is from China and I've resolved next time we go back that I'm going to get a bicycle. I do remember the fleets of beaters in Shanghai, but really it's like that in all the large cities.

Is bike theft really a problem in Beijing if you have something out of the ordinary? I had kinda wanted to make my MIL buy me a nice Giant, maybe an Anyroad, but I don't want somebody to run off with it while I'm buying beer...

I visited a few cities in China last year; Shanghai, Nanjing, etc.
I went thru all the trouble of squeezing a cheap folding bike in
my luggage only to find out I can get a $100 folding bike in the
supermarket. There are a lot of bicycles but I think the trend is
the same in all cities; people switching to electric scooters/moped.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi015...6zPoymgKaIoDLA

A friend of mine adopted a girl from China. The girl is about 13 years old now. After leaving the orphanage, the first time back to China was about two summers ago. They went to many places, including Shanghai. By the sounds of it, it's a city bigger than I can imagine and busier by far than New York City. I live in NYC, and even this place boggles my mind. So the then-11-year-old-girl and her parents rode bikes around Shanghai for four hours at a stretch. Then she said, "This is relaxing!" I suspect she really meant invigorating, but it's still a funny sentiment from a girl raised in the tony suburbs of New Jersey.

I know for a fact that there's an '86? Schwinn Peloton lurking in China.

Thanks for the tip. I'll book a flight ASAP so I can start searching.

Beijing has come and gone and Shanghai will be a memory in a few days as well...but we'll return.

I'll have more photos of bicycles today but here are some other photos.

Corner of Forbidden City at noon on a smoggy day:
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Corner of Forbidden City at noon the next day when the smog had temporarily cleared:
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Tiananmen Square - smoggy day:
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Snacks:
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Snacks on Fear factor?

This is like the Beijing equivalent of Beavertails. All I want to know is how they got the centipedes on the sticks in such a straight manner.

watch this article on bugs for food:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2410490568/

it's pretty cool to see all those cargo bikes and other bikes all over the city. I wonder if China has ever had a bike serious theft problem?