My other bike’s a Ferrari

\The humble bicycle, for decades the workhorse of the Communist proletariat, is this year’s fashion accessory in China.
For two decades, China has been a nation of drivers, embracing the car to the point of gridlock and even outlawing bicycles from key thoroughfares in Shanghai. But for a new generation of Chinese, inspired by the West and Japan, the bicycle is once again in vogue. This year, colourful custom-made bikes have adorned the shop windows of Shanghai’s trendiest boutiques as well as advertising campaigns for brands such as Lee and Levi’s.

Groups of Chinese bike enthusiasts have begun to organise midnight rides through cities. “For men, owning a cool bike is the same as a woman owning a designer handbag. It completes their outfit,” said Tyler Bowa, a Canadian who custom builds fixed gear bikes in Shanghai. Luxury bicycles made by Ferrari and Lamborghini have also proven popular. Xie Jian, a regional sales manager for Qida, the Chinese importer of the two brands, said at least one 34,000 pounds Lamborghini bike sells each month in the wealthy city of Wenzhou. “All sorts of people buy luxury bikes,” said Tong Jing, a saleswoman for Qida. “Bosses, office workers, movie stars, TV actresses.”

“We started in 2008 and sold 3,000 bikes,” said Wu Yamou, the general manager of Rapid Trading, the importer. “So far this year we have sold 50,000. People will stop thinking of bicycles as cheap and think of them as a healthy, fashionable option.”

The National Amateur Bicycle League sees hundreds of riders take part in events all over the country and road racers and triathletes can buy sports bikes for monthly races in the suburbs.

“Our bikes cost around 20,000 yuan and our sales are up 30 per cent this year,” said Chain Zou, the founder of a shop.

China was dubbed the “Kingdom of Bicycles” in the 1950s by the Communist Party, which saw bikes as a low-cost solution to public transport and made them one of the three “must-haves” of every household, alongside a sewing machine and watch. Until the 1980s, workers needed guanxi, or connections to obtain the best brands: Flying Pigeon, Phoenix and Forever.

By the late 1990s, the Chinese fell in love with cars. Bowa’s company, People’s Bikes, started when he discovered a warehouse full of old Chinese bicycle frames and decided to turn them into modern fixed-gear models costing around 3,500 yuan  each. “The standard gift to foreign ambassadors in China was a Phoenix bike or a Flying Pigeon,” he said. “We found this huge number of frames just sitting unwanted. They stopped making them in the 1990s and just left them.”