What you didn't see on TODAY: Beijing’s sensational sidecars
Posted: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 12:40 PM by Jen Brown
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(From John Bailey, NBC News intern, China bureau)
As always in television, lots of work goes on behind the scenes that you don’t see on TV. Sometimes, whole stories don’t ever make it to the air. During our preview of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, one of those stories was a unique collector’s item that has accumulated quite a large following in next year’s host city: sidecar motorcycles.
For Americans, enthusiast clubs built around motorcycles, choppers, or muscle cars are commonplace. But in Beijing there aren’t choppers, Harley’s, or vintage automobiles; there are sidecar motorcycles.
Sidecars come to China
Invented in England and used widely in World War II Europe, sidecars emerged as practical transportation vehicles for government officials in newly communist Beijing. In the ‘40s and ‘50s, the Chinese government began importing Ural brand sidecars from the Soviet Union and manufacturing their own under the brand name Chiang Jiang.
Long after production was discontinued by the two governments, old Chiang Jiang and Ural sidecars lingered around Beijing and other major cities. Beginning in the ‘80s and ‘90s, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts began realizing the popularity of the hip motorcycles, especially among Beijing’s foreigners.
Luke Zeng was both an entrepreneur and an enthusiast. He started riding sidecars as a way to relax. After talking to him to first time, we even got to go back down to his shop for a short ride in one of his sidecars.
“I just liked them,” he said. “When you drive motorcycle you can go to mountains. You feel very quiet and very relaxed, it’s a good feeling.”
Video: Sidecar cruising in Bejing
He took his interest a step further and started his own dealership in 1999. Now, Luke owns dealerships in Beijing and Shanghai. And business is on the up and up. Five years ago, Luke said he sold 40 or 50 max, now he sells at least 100 each year.
Luke’s success and the popularity of enthusiast followings like sidecars are just the type of things that symbolize the economic and cultural Chinese growth that we saw everywhere on Meredith’s visit.
Sidecar mania
Sidecars are in virtually all countries, but none in the quantity they exist in Beijing. Luke estimates that there are probably more sidecar motorcycles in Beijing than any other city in the world.
In 2004, the city took its zeal for the motorcycles to world record proportions. In June that year, Beijing hosted the Guinness record attempt for the largest parade of sidecars in world history.
There were 317 sidecars carrying three people each parading from the Michelin Golden Port Racing Track to Beijing’s Capitol Airport. It was a massive show even by Chinese standards.
Ex-pats
Interestingly enough, the sidecar craze is driven primarily by Beijing’s expatriate community. The world record attempt in 2004 was hosted by a sidecar club called the Bullfroggies, which started by a group of French ex-pats. Though Luke himself is Chinese, he says he sells almost all of his sidecars to foreigners.
I found the same phenomenon. I only found one Chinese sidecar owner, and he said he got into the fad because he spent all his time with Westerners.
Out at a bar, I even met one American, a college student named Alex, who comes to Beijing in the summer mostly just to ride. When I ran into him, he had, just one week earlier, taken a 15-hour ride out to the mountains north of Beijing.
The sidecar’s popularity is impressive, abandoned in Europe only to survive far away in Beijing. At any rate, it surely is a rare phenomenon. One the hundreds of thousands of Olympic guests are sure to notice as palpably as we did.
