By Joe Berk
This Wayback Machine post goes back to a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles in December 2014. The nine years between then and now has been quite a blur. A bit of background…CSC was transitioning from production of its Mustang replica bikes to importing the about-to-be-released Zongshen RX3. Susie and I went to Chongqing to help finalize the deal, and this was a blog I wrote while I was in that city.
I guess I’ll start by telling you that riding my CSC-150 Baja Blaster, Steve Seidner’s resurrection of the venerable vintage Mustang, has been good practice for me and this visit to Chongqing. When you ride a CSC motorcycle, you collect stares wherever you go (we call it the rock star syndrome, and we even had a CSC custom in the early days we named the Rock Star). The photo at the top of this blog is Steve’s personal CSC-150, the Sarge, and it draws stares wherever it goes. That’s sure been the situation with Susie and me here in Chongqing. Susie and I are the only non-Chinese folks everywhere we’ve been, starting with our getting on the airplane in Beijing, and people are naturally curious. It’s like riding the CSC…we’re drawing the stares. Like the title of this blog says, we’re well off the tourist trail on this trip.
After a great breakfast this morning (see the blog below), we asked about the things to see and do in Chongqing, and our sights this morning settled firmly on a cable car ride across the Yangtze River. We started by grabbing a cab…
It’s strange…the cabbie spoke no English, so the guy at the hotel had to explain what we wanted. Then he gave us a card so that when wanted to return, we could show it to the next cab driver. Another sign of not being in Kansas anymore.
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It’s a bit on the cold side over here, but riders ride and the Chinese are no exception to that rule. These folks use their motorcycles as transportation, as trucks, as cabs, and more.
If you take a close look at the photo above, you’ll notice something that’s pretty common here in Chongqing…a set of handwarmers. These are no-fooling-around, guaranteed-to-keep-your-paws-toasty, sure-fire handwarmers, folks! They go way beyond the heated grips that BMW brags about (and that we’ll be offering as options on the Cyclone, by the way). I’ll show you a few more motorcycle photos; be sure to check out the handwarmers on many of these bikes.
Here’s another shot…a Chinese scooter equipped with what has to be the ultimate luggage rack…
The Yangtze River cable car ride was awesome. It’s about 4,000 feet across the river, and we were packed into that little box like sardines. Going up to the cable car in the elevator gave a hint of what was to come…we were squeezed in with folks I’ve never met before, and I was already more intimate with them than I had been on most of my high school dates. I guess that’s just a natural consequence of being in a city with 34 million inhabitants.
In the photo above, just to the right of us is where the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers meet. It’s the downtown area that you’ll see in the following photos. 34 million people live here. I’m pretty sure we met about half of them this morning.
First, a photo of a Chinese postal service motorcycle. They paint their postal service vehicles green. Zongshen is a big supplier of motorcycles to the Chinese postal service. Check out the handwarmers on this rig!
Here’s another bike we spotted while walking downtown.
There were a lot of people out and about. There were so many people on the sidewalks we were starting to get a little claustrophobic. It’s way worse than New York City. You won’t get a sense of that in the photos that follow, mostly because I waited until there were brief instances when the crowds parted to give me a less-obstructed photo.
I grabbed a few more scenes on our walk downtown.
Here’s a cool shot of a youngster who wasn’t too sure about this old guy in an Indiana Jones hat taking his photograph…they don’t see too many people like Susie and me in this neighborhood.
And of course, the food vendors. We did a lot of walking and bumping into people (literally; the sidewalks were jam packed…it was wall-to-wall humanity). It made me a little hungry. Check out the food photos.
Chongqing used to be known in the West as Chun King. The way the Chinese pronounce it, it almost sounds like Chun King. When I was a kid, my Mom used to buy Chinese noodles and the name of the company on the can was Chun King. Little did I know that it was a real place and one day more than a half century later I’d be visiting it!
Just another photo or two, folks. The Chinese use these three-wheel vehicles that I guess are cars, but they are based on a tricycle design. I had not encountered this particular model before, so I grabbed a photo…
I looked inside of one of the three wheelers and it actually looked pretty nice in there. They are used as taxis. Maybe we’ll grab a ride in one before we leave Chongqing.
I told Susie that I was getting a bit tired (we’re still fighting the time change). I think I said I wanted to stop monkeying around and head back to the hotel. That’s when she pointed this scene out to me…
I think that’s probably enough for now. Tomorrow’s the first day of this visit with the good folks from Zongshen. I’ve been following all the stuff on the forums and in your emails to me, and I’ll address many of the things you’ve written about. I won’t be able to post all of it here, but keep an eye on the blog and maybe I’ll get a photo or two of the factory. I’m pumped, and I’m looking forward to our discussions tomorrow.
That was quite a visit. I’d been to Chongqing once before, but that was an in-and-out trip, and on the visit described above, Sue and I poked around the city a bit. I loved it. It was one of the most beautiful and exotic places I’d ever been. It was fun because we were in a place most Americans don’t get to visit, I made great friends in China, and it was cool being in on the ground floor of the effort to bring the RX3 to America. I know there are a lot of people out there who hate China and who think anything that comes from China is of low quality. I’m not one of those people and I make no apologies for it.
The RX3 was a watershed motorcycle. It was the only small displacement adventure touring bike in America until BMW, Kawasaki, and others tried copying the RX3. The RX3 was still the better motorcycle, and I had a lot of fun on mine.
If you’d like to know more about the RX3 and CSC Motorcycles bringing the bike to the US, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM. I’ve been told it’s a good read.
Never miss an ExNotes blog post:
I’m currently reading a book called “Country Driving” by Peter Hessler. I got it next door at my neighbors sidewalk library book swap thingy. I only saw the spine of the book and thinking it was a book on driving the US I grabbed it. (I have read several books on the history and building of our interstate road system. All drivers should study it. Our highway system was/is a modern marvel. After learning, you’ll actually look forward to your next 800 mile slog on I-40). But it turned out to be about driving in western China along the route of the Great Wall. There is a little talk about the driving and a lot of talk about small village life. This is an interesting culture. I find the book fascinating. It was written thirteen years ago, a blink of an eye in Chinese history. So pretty current. Previously I had no desire to visit a communist country but now I’m not so sure. I feel bad for the villagers. In China, if you’re not “in”, you’re “out”… way out.
Thanks, Marcus. I just ordered a copy.
I would have sent you my copy when I’m done. Anyways I’d be interested in your take as you have been there.
Mighty generous offer; thanks but mine is arriving tomorrow courtesy of the miracle that is Amazon Prime.
Idk about hating China. The CCP is the problem.
But you know all that .
Did you run into Hunter Biden ?
Hunter Biden couldn’t do what we did.
People the world over are fine and no matter their background will automatically get along. Enter politicians, political ideology or religion… all bets are off.
I will remember seeing and reading the first article and actually read the book! It’s good to get a retrospective View of what you did back then and the impact it made on motorcycling in general.
Thanks for commenting, Terry.