Chongqing – The ExhaustNotes Blog

The Wayback Machine: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…

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.

The view from our 21st floor hotel room…it stays misty in this mystical city!

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…

I hope this guy knows where we want to go, I thought to myself as we got in his 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.

This guy would make a good KLR rider…looks like this bike gets washed about as often as my KLR!

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.

A scene vaguely reminiscent of a James Bond movie…that’s downtown Chongqing in the mist

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!

A postal service motorcycle in downtown Chongqing…check out the handwarmers and the parcels

Here’s another bike we spotted while walking downtown.

Live to ride…ride to live…and loud pipes save lives.

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.

Fresh fruit delivered the old-fashioned way.

I grabbed a few more scenes on our walk downtown.

This fellow was making and selling necklace pendants from animal teeth…those are skulls on the ground in front.

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!

People…lots of people…and motorcycles…lots of motorcycles!

Another Chinese rider in downtown Chongqing.

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.

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The Wayback Machine: Zongshen, Chongqing, and Tempus Fugit

By Joe Berk

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe it’s been a dozen years since I first visited Zongshen for CSC Motorcycles, and when I did, the RX3 wasn’t even a thought. I went to Zongshen looking for a 250cc engine for CSC’s Mustang replica (the photo above shows CSC’s Mustang and an original 1954 Mustang Pony). CSC’s Mustang replica had a 150cc engine and some folks said they wanted a 250, so we went hunting for a 250cc engine.

The quest for a 250 took me to a little town called Chongqing (little as in population: 34,000,000). I spent a day with the Zongers and, well, you know the rest. This is the email I sent to Steve Seidner, the CSC CEO and the guy who had the foresight to dispatch me to Chongqing. I was energized after my visit that day, and I wrote the email you see below that night. It was a dozen years ago. Hard to believe.

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17 Dec 2011

Steve:

Just got back from the Zongshen meetings in Chongqing. This letter is a summary of how it went.

Our host and a driver picked us up in a Mercedes mini-van in the morning at the hotel. It was about a 1-hour drive to the Zongshen campus. Chongqing is a massive and scenic city (it just seems to go on forever). Imagine mid-town Manhattan massively larger with taller and more modern buildings, built in a lush green mountain range, and you’ll have an idea of what the city is like. We took a circular freeway at the edge of town, and the views were beyond stunning. It was an overcast day, and every time we came around a mountain we had another view of the city in the mist. It was like something in a dream. Chongqing is the Chinese name for the city. We in the US used to call it Chun King (like the noodle company). We drove for an hour on a freeway (at about 60 mph the whole time) to get to the Zongshen campus, and we were still in the city. I’ve never seen anything like it. The city is awesome. I could spend 6 months here just photographing the place.

The Zongshen facilities are huge and completely modern. The enterprise is on a landscaped campus (all fenced off from the public) in the city’s downtown area. We were ushered into their office building complex, which is about as modern and clean as anything I have ever seen. You can probably tell from this email that I was impressed.

Let me emphasize this again: The Zongshen campus is huge. My guess is that they have something in excess of 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space.

Here are some shots of some of their buildings from the outside…they have several buildings like this. These first two show one of their machining facilities.

There were several buildings like the ones above on the Zongshen campus. It was overwhelming. This is a big company. The people who work there live on the Zongshen campus (Zongshen provides apartments for these folks). They work a 5-day, 8-hour-per-day week. It looked like a pretty nice life. Zongshen employs about 2,000 people.

Here’s a shot showing a portion of the Zongshen office building. Very modern, and very nicely decorated inside.

Zongshen is the name of the man who started the business. The company is about 20 years old. Mr. Zongshen is still actively engaged running the business (notice that he is not wearing a beret). I had the Chinese characters translated and what he is saying is “I want Joe to write our blog.”

Zongshen has a few motorcycles and scooters that have received EC (European Community) certification. They do not have any motorcycles that have received US EPA or CARB certification. They do have scooters, though, approved in the US. They have two models that have EPA and CARB certification. I explained that we might be interested in these as possible powerplants for future CSC motorcycles.

I asked to see the factory, and they took us on a factory tour. In a word, their production operation is awesome. The next several photographs show the inside of their engine assembly building (they had several buildings this size; these photos show the inside of just one). It was modern, clean, and the assembly work appears to be both automated and manual (depending on the operation). Note that we were in the factory on a Saturday, so no work was occurring. I was thinking the entire time what fun it must be to run this kind of a facility. Take a look.

Zongshen has onsite die casting capabilities, so they can make covers with a CSC logo if we want them to. Having this capability onsite is a good thing; most US manufacturers subcontract their die casting work and I can tell you that in the factories I have managed, getting these parts on time in a condition where they meet the drawing requirements was always a problem in the US. Doing this work in house like Zongshen is doing is a strong plus. They have direct control over a critical part of the process.

In addition to all the motorcycle work, Zongshen makes power equipment (like Honda does). I grabbed this shot as we were driving by their power equipment factory.

Here are some photographs of engines in work. Zongshen makes something north of 4,000 engines every day.

Yep, 4,000+ engines. Every day.

The engines above are going into their automated engine test room. They had about 100 automated test stations in there.

Zongshen makes engines for their own motorcycles as well as for other manufacturers. They make parts for many other motorcycle manufacturers, including Harley. They make complete scooters for several manufacturers, including Vespa.

These are 500cc, water-cooled Zongshen ATV engines….

Zongshen can make engines in nearly any color a manufacturer wants. When we walked by this display I asked what it was, and they told me it showed the different colors they could powder coat an engine.

Quality appears to be very, very high. They have the right visual metrics in place to monitor production status and to identify quality standards. The photo below shows one set of their visual standards. These are the defects to avoid in just one area of the operation.

This idea of using visual standards is a good one. I don’t see it very often in factories in the US. It’s a sign of an advanced manufacturing operation. And here’s one set of their production status boards and assembly instructions…boards like this were everywhere.

The photo below shows their engine shipping area.

Here’s a humorous sign in the Zongshen men’s room…be happy in your work, don’t take too long, and don’t forget to flush.

As I said before, this entire operation was immaculate. Again, it’s a sign of a well-run and high quality plant.

We then briefly ducked into the machine shop. It was dark so I didn’t grab any photos. What I noticed is that they use statistical process control in manufacturing their machined parts, which is another sign of an advanced quality management approach.

I also have (but did not include here in this email) photos of their engine testing area. They test all engines (a 100% test program), and the test approach is automated. I was impressed. Zongshen’s quality will be as good or better than any engine made anywhere in the world, and we should have no reservations about using the 250cc engine in our CSC motorcycles. These guys have it wired.

My host then took us next to a factory showroom at the edge of the Zongshen campus. Here are a few photos from that area.

Check this one out…it’s a 125, and it looked to me to be a really nice bike.

Now check out the price on the above motorcycle. This is the all inclusive, “out-the-door-in-Chongqing,” includes-all-fees price.

Yep, that’s 8980 RMB (or Yuan), and that converts to (get this) a whopping $1470 US dollars. I want one.

The Chinese postal service uses Zongshen motorcycles….as do Chinese Police departments, and a lot of restaurants and other commercial interests. These green bikes are for the Chinese Post Office, and the red ones are for commercial delivery services.

Another shot from their showroom.

Zongshen also has a GP racing program, and they had their GP bikes on display with photos in the factory and the actual bikes in an office display area. Cool.

And finally one last photo, Steve, of Indiana Jones having a blast in Chongqing.

The bottom line, Boss, is that I recommend buying the 250 engine from these folks. Their factory is awesome and they know what they are doing. I write books about this stuff and I can tell you that this plant is as well managed as any I have ever seen.

I’ll be in the air headed home in a few more days. This trip has been a good one.

That’s it for now. I will send an email to the Zongshen team later today confirming what we want from them and I will keep you posted on any developments. Thank you for the opportunity to make this visit.

Joe

So there you have it. What followed was CSC becoming Zongshen’s North American importer, the RX3, the RX4, the TT 250, the San Gabriel line, the electric motorcycles, the Baja RX3 runs, the Andes Mountains adventure ride, the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride, the ride across China, the Destinations Deal ride, and more. Lots more. The first big ride with Zongshen was the Western America Adventure Ride, and in a few more days, we’ll post the story about how that came about. We were excited about hooking up with Zongshen; the Chinese were excited about riding through the American West. And ever since then, it has been one hell of a ride.

Stay tuned.

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Chongqing!

Other than good buddy Arjiu (that would be Joe Gresh), I’m guessing most of you have never been to Chongqing. Chongqing is home to China’s motorcycle industry and it was the starting point for your two blogmeisters’ putt across the Ancient Kingdom. I enjoyed that ride enormously. Gresh and I had some fantastic times.

I first visited Chongqing and Zongshen as a consultant to CSC when we used Zongshen’s 250cc engine in our Mustang replicas. One thing led to another, and before too long CSC was Zongshen’s exclusive North American importer, and CSC introduced the RX3 to the US. I was blown away by Chongqing, the people, the size of the city, the photo ops, the cuisine, and more. I’ve been there many times and I’d go back again in a heartbeat.

Good buddy Fan shared this video a few days ago, and I knew I had to share it on the blog. Pro tip: Hit the little button on the bottom right of the video (after you start it) to view it full screen. It’s impressive.

You can be a China hater all you want. I know more than a few people over there I call my friends. Yeah, the world is going through some shaky times right now, but that’s not the Chinese people and it’s for sure not the guys I know. I like the place.

If you want to know more about our trip across China, pick up a copy of Riding China. There’s a link here on the blog. And take a look at our Epic Rides page, where we have links to posts about that ride.

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Phavorite Photos: Chongqing at Night

A day or two before Joe Gresh and I began our ride across China on Zongshen RX3 motorcycles, the Chinese took us to dinner in Chongqing, the megacity in which the Zongshen company is located. It was a typical summer night in Chongqing, which is to say it was hot, humid, and steamy. Sultry is a word that comes to mind. Exotic is another one.

Chongqing is where two of the world’s great rivers meet (the Jialing and the Yangtze). Downtown Chongqing is in the center. We were returning from dinner on the south shore of the Yangtze River (the lower river in the map) when I grabbed the photo you see above with my Nikon. Where it says Yuzhong…we were right about where the g is in that word.

Chongqing is huge. How big? We think New York is big (and it is) with 8 million people. Chongqing has 34 million people. It’s hard to imagine, and it’s hard to imagine we rode 250cc motorcycles through it (as well as many other Chinese megacities). I like everything about Chongqing, and you’ll see more favorite photos from there in upcoming ExNotes blogs. But this one stands out for me.

You can read more about what we saw in China in Riding China.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.