Zongshen – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Indiana Jones Revisited

By Joe Berk

Yes, it really was like that. Somewhere along the Silk Road (the actual Silk Road) in China. I parked my RX3 when I saw the double rainbow, thinking someday I might use the shot in a blog about this adventure.

Almost 40 years ago, I saw my first Indiana Jones movie and it affected me profoundly. I started traveling the world stumbling upon lost empires. Things that have been swallowed by time, as they say. My motorcycle ride through Colombia had some of that. The Baja adventures have a bit of it, too. But none of the rides had more of an Indiana Jones flavor than did the ride across China. That ride was three years ago this month, and I still think about it every day. There were several things we saw in China that would have been right at home in an Indiana Jones movie. One was Liqian. I can best tell you about it with an excerpt from Riding China, the story of the ride with Joe Gresh across the Ancient Kingdom.

Gobi Gresh, aka Arjiu, stopping to smell the sunflowers in China.

The ride in the morning was just like yesterday. We rode the Silk Road at high speed, making great time in magnificent weather. I knew we were going to Wuwei (you could have a lot of fun with that name; it’s pronounced “woo wee”), but that was really all I knew about that day as we started out that morning. Boy, would this day ever be an interesting one!

It was to be a very full day, and Wuwei would be another one of those cities of several million people that seem to pop up in China every 50 to 100 miles. It was a huge city I had never heard of. China is an amazing place, and I was going to learn today it is more amazing than I could have imagined, and for a reason I would have never guessed. I’ve mentioned Indiana Jones movies a lot in this book. Today, we came upon something that could easily be…well, read on. This is going to be good.

After riding for a couple of hours, we left the freeway and entered a city called Yongchang. It seemed to be pretty much a regular Chinese city until we stopped. I needed to find a bathroom and Wong helped me. Wong is a big, imposing guy. He’s a corrections officer supervisor in Xi’an. He has a friendly look, but he can turn that off in a New York minute and become an extremely imposing figure. I saw him do that once on this trip, and I’ll tell you about that episode when we get to it.

Corrections Officer Supervisor Wong. He looks like a mischievous guy. This guy’s command presence was amazing. I saw him stop a car just by looking at it. Here, he’s enjoying the attention in Yongchang.

Anyway, I followed Wong through a couple of alleys and businesses until we came to an empty restaurant (it was mid-morning, and it had no customers). Wong spoke to the lady there, she nodded her head and smiled at me, and pointed to the bathroom. When I rejoined the guys back on the street, several women at a tailor shop (we had coincidentally stopped in front of a tailor shop) were fussing over Wong. He needed a button sewn on his jacket and it was obvious they were flirting with him. Wong seemed to be enjoying it. Like I said, Wong is a big guy, and I guess you could say he’s good looking. I think the women who were sewing his button on were thinking the same thing.

Beautiful young Chinese ladies. Mostly Chinese, anyway. The one on the left is entering my phone number in her contacts list.

Three teenage girls approached us and wanted to know about our bikes. Like many young Chinese, they spoke English (in China, you learn English as a second language in grade school; it is a strong advantage in Chinese society if you can speak English well). They wanted to practice with us. It was the routine stuff (“how are you?” “hello,” and things like that) until one of the teenaged girls looked directly at me and asked, “Can I have your phone number?” Gresh and I both had a good laugh over that. I actually gave her my phone number and she carefully entered it into her phone (and no, she hasn’t called me yet).

I was enjoying all of this immensely, taking photos of the girls, the seamstresses flirting with Wong, and the rest of China all around me. There was something different about one of those teenage girls. I couldn’t quite recognize what it was, but to me she definitely looked, well, different.

Yongchang statues. They don’t look as Chinese as you might think they should. There’s a reason for that.

It was at about that time that Sean approached me and said, “Dajiu, do you see those three statues over there?” He pointed to three tall statues that faced us, perhaps 300 yards away. I nodded yes. “If you look at their faces, you will see that they have Roman features.” Truth be told, I couldn’t really see it in the statues because they were too far away, but I grabbed a photo and later, on my computer, I could see something different. But before I looked at the photo, it all clicked for me. That’s what had my attention with that girl. We were literally in the middle of China and she didn’t look as Chinese as her two friends. She looked different.

All right, my friends, I need to go tangential here for a minute or two and share this story with you. Hang on, because this is real Indiana Jones stuff. No, scratch that. I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie with a story line this good (and I’ve seen all of them).

More than 2,000 years ago, before the birth of Christ, the two most powerful empires on the planet were the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. These two superpowers of their time enjoyed a brisk trade relationship along the Silk Road. Yep, the very same trail we had been riding for the last few days. Between them (in what became Iran and its surrounding regions) lay a smaller empire called Parthia. For reasons only the Romans understood, Rome thought it would be a good idea to attack Parthia. They sent several Roman Legions to war (and to put this in perspective, a Roman Legion consisted of about 5,000 men). To everyone’s surprise (including, I would imagine, the Romans), the Parthians kicked Rome’s butt.

Wow, imagine that. Rome, defeated on the field of battle by the much smaller Parthian Empire. To put it mildly, things did not quite go the way the Romans thought they would.

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All of this severely disrupted trade between the Han Dynasty and the Romans, and nobody liked that. “Why the hell did you do that?” the Han Dynasty asked Rome. “We had a good thing going and you screwed it up.” At least that’s what I’m guessing the conversation went like. You get the idea.

Cooler minds prevailed and the Romans realized, yeah, that was a dumb move. The Romans told the Parthians, hey, it’s over, let’s be friends again. The war ended, the Chinese were happy, the Romans were happy, the Parthians were happy, and trade resumed. All’s well that ends well.

Well, sort of. There was still that matter of those pesky Roman legions that had invaded Parthia. They didn’t come back from that war, and for two thousand years, no one knew what happened to them. The Romans probably assumed their Legionnaires had all been slaughtered. No one knew until an Australian dude and a Chinese guy, both University archeologist types (starting to sound a little like Indiana Jones yet?) put a theory together in 1957. Hmmm, maybe those Romans had not been killed after all.

The Parthians, being bright enough to defeat the Romans, were not about to let the Legionnaires go home and perhaps attack them again in some future war. They didn’t want to kill the Romans, either. I guess they were kinder, gentler Parthians. Here’s where those two Aussie and Chinese archeologists enter the picture. They hypothesized that the Parthians told the errant Legionnaires, “Look, we don’t want to kill all you guys, but there’s no way we’re going to let you go back to Rome. And there’s no room for you here, either. Your only option is to keep heading east. Go to China. Maybe you crazy warmongering Italians will find nice Chinese girls and settle down.” With that, and as one might imagine, a hearty arrivederci, the Romans continued their eastward march straight into the middle of China.

And folks, the prevailing wisdom today is that is exactly what happened (although the prevailing wisdom evidently hasn’t prevailed very far, as I had never heard the story until that morning in Yongchang). In fact, prior to this theory surfacing, folks wondered why the Chinese referred to the area around Yongchang as Liqian. That’s not a Chinese word, and it’s unlike the name of any other Chinese town. The folks who know about these things tell me it is an unusual word in the Chinese language.

Liqian is pronounced “Lee Chee On.”

Get it yet?

Lee Chee On? Liqian?

Doesn’t it sound like “legion?” As in Roman legion?

A Chinese man in Liqian. This guy could be the Marlboro Man for a Chinese cigarette company!

I found all of this fascinating. I saw more than a few people around the Liqian area that had a distinct western appearance, and they all consented to my taking their photos when I asked. They recognize just how special their story is. The Chinese government is taking note of this area, too. They are developing a large theme park just outside of Yongchang with a Roman motif. We visited that theme park, and while we were there, Sergeant Zuo gave a book to me (printed in both English and Chinese) about the place. It is one of the two books I brought back from China, and that book is now one of my most prized possessions.

Imagine that: Roman legions, resettled in the middle of China, in a town called Liqian. And I rode there. On an RX3.

Watch for our next Indiana Jones episode in China. It’s about the lost Buddhist grottos at Mo Gao in the Gobi Desert. There’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!

Want to read more about the ride across China? Pick up a copy of Riding China!

The Wayback Machine: Yellowstone National Park

By Joe Berk

I’ve been to a lot of great places. None were as grand as Yellowstone National Park. I was reminded of that when watching the Kevin Costner special, Yellowstone One-Fifty.

I’ve been to Yellowstone twice. The first time was with a bunch of guys from China, two guys from Colombia, Baja John, and Joe Gresh. The second time was with Susie. Both trips were great. Seeing the Costner special reminded me of a blog I wrote about those trips a few years ago, and I thought you might enjoy reading it again.

Man, it was cold. It was the coldest we would be on our 18-day, 5000-mile ride around the western United States. Yellowstone National Park was our destination and we wanted to arrive early. Baja John was doing the navigating and the trip planning, and we were leaving early that morning out of Cody, Wyoming, at 5:00 a.m. to beat the tourist traffic in Yellowstone. I had an electric vest; our Chinese and Colombian guests did not. I knew they had to be hurting. I had my vest dialed all the way up and I was. Did I mention it was cold?

So, about that big photo above: That’s Yellowstone Falls on the Yellowstone River. There are something like 10 waterfalls in Yellowstone National Park. I’ve only seen the one above. That means I have at least nine reasons to return.

Back to the story. I did mention it was cold riding into Yellowstone that morning, didn’t I?

Following Baja John into Yellowstone. That trip was 6 years ago, and I still get cold looking at this photo.

Another shot entering Yellowstone National Park from the east. That’s Baja John in front of me…we were dressed for the cold, but I think our guests found it to be a little colder than the weather they are used to in southern China.

The trip was a wild one…18 days on the road with a dozen guys from China, two from Colombia, and all on free motorcycles provided by Zongshen via CSC Motorcycles. CSC was the importer, I was the go-between spanning the CSC/Zongshen interface (and two continents), and while we were arranging the initial shipment Zongshen asked if I had any ideas to promote the bikes in the US. Wow, did I ever!

In Zongshen’s main offices, with key Zongshen execs viewing photos from my rides in the US and Baja. Sue grabbed this photo and it’s one of my favorites. Without realizing it, I was selling those guys on giving us 15 motorcycles to ride around the US. This looks like a staged photo. It’s not.

That ride became the Western America Adventure Tour, and it was a hoot. I mean, think about it: Every angry and ignorant asshole on the Internet was condemning Chinese bikes and here we were, with 15 of the things that had just arrived in America, setting off on a 5,000 mile ride from So Cal to Sturgis, west across the US to the Pacific Ocean, and then riding the Pacific coast back to So Cal. On that epic ride we didn’t have a single breakdown and that was giving the Internet trolls meltdowns. It was a grand adventure.

But I digress. Back to Yellowstone. On our ride, we hit every National Park along the way, and Yellowstone was one of the best. Prior to that ride, I’d never been to Yellowstone and I had always wanted to see it. And for good reason…it is (in my opinion) the quintessential National Park. Yellowstone is surreal, with sulfur-laden steams and ponds spewing forth, majestic views, waterfalls, bison, bears, deer, elk, wolves, geysers, and more. It was a first for me. I was a Yellowstone green bean.

When we entered Yellowstone, we arrived so early the gates were unmanned and we entered for free. But it had been a long, cold ride in from Cody and we were nearly out of gas. My fuel light was blinking as we entered the park and I didn’t know for sure if there would be gas in Yellowstone. John felt confident there would be, and he was right. I saw the Sinclair sign up ahead, but before we got there, we had a close encounter of the bison kind. We were cruising along at about 30 mph, and all of a sudden I noticed this locomotive next to me. I was too slow to realize what it was until I was alongside, but our chase vehicle driver John (we had two Johns and one Juan on this ride) grabbed this photo…I had passed within 10 feet of this monster!

Just as I went past my big buff buddy above, he exhaled. In the frigid Yellowstone air, fog came out of his nostrils. It was like riding alongside a steam locomotive.

Here’s another cool shot in Yellowstone: The Continental Divide. We had crossed it several times on the ride to Yellowstone already, but I think this is the first time I stopped for a photo.

Sometimes the photos almost take themselves.

One of the many attractions in Yellowstone is Old Faithful. Here’s a shot of the geyser in its full glory.

It was one of those motorcycle rides that was so much fun it made me feel a little guilty. (That’s a Jewish thing; maybe some of our Catholic readers will understand it, too.) I felt bad because Sue wasn’t enjoying the trip with me. So I fixed that. A few years later Sue and I hopped in the Subie, pointed the car north, and a few days later I rolled into Yellowstone National Park again (this time with my wife). Naturally, I grabbed a few more photos.

Peering into the valley carved by the Yellowstone River.

Ah, the bison. This was really cool stuff.

A photo of Sue in the Subie photographing a bison.

I’m not a geologist, but geology seems to me to be a pretty interesting subject and there sure are a bunch of geological things in Yellowstone. Like the bubbling and burbling pits and pools you most definitely do not want to fall into.

You get the idea. In doing a bit of Internet research on Yellowstone, I came across this Yellowstone map. It is a good way to get the lay of the land up there in Wyoming, but visiting Yellowstone National Park would be even better.

You can learn a little bit more about Yellowstone as a destination (and how to get there) by reading an article I wrote for Motorcycle Classics magazine. It’s a cool place and I’ve never met anyone who felt like visiting Yellowstone was anything other than a marvelous experience. Trust me on this: Yellowstone National Park belongs on your bucket list.

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Would you like to read more Motorcycle Classics Destinations articles? Hey, just click here or better yet, buy your own copy of Destinations.

One more thing…if you’d like to learn more about the RX3 motorcycle and our 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride, you should do two things: Buy yourself a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, and watch Joe Gresh’s video:

A Decade Ago…

By Joe Berk

Man, the years do fly by: It was just over a decade ago we did the inaugural CSC Baja ride!

Those were good times and the RX3 was a great motorcycle. I was shocked when Zongshen stopped making them, but I guess those guys knew what they were doing. We had a lot of fun on those annual excursions.

I need to get back down to Baja again. Maybe I’ll do so next year. I’d like to say hello to the whales!

If you’d like to learn more about our Baja adventures, pick up a copy of Moto Baja! It was a fun book to write. Doing the research that allowed me to write it was even more fun.

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Zongshen Acquires Loncin

By Joe Berk

Two of the largest motorcycle companies in China are Zongshen and Loncin. I recently learned that Zongshen became the major shareholder of Loncin, turning Zongshen into the largest of the motorcycle companies in China. I asked my contact at Zongshen if he could tell me more about this, and he did.

Hi Joe:

On July 3rd, Zonsen Power, a listed company under Zongshen Group, announced official news. Here are the details:

Zonsen Power announced that its associate company intends to invest 3.35 billion yuan (CNY) to acquire a 24.55% stake in Loncin. Upon the completion of the transaction, Zonsen will become the largest shareholder and the actual controller of Loncin.

In fact, before this acquisition, Loncin Group had been trapped deeply a debt crisis due to heavy losses in its real estate business, leading to significant debts in 13 of its subsidiaries.

In previous years, Loncin had been trying hardly to resolve this issue, and some companies proposed acquiring shares in Loncin, but ultimately, none succeeded.

The Chongqing court ruled that Loncin Group must resolve this debt issue before August 2024, or the company will be auctioned. This acquisition of Loncin by Zonsen is likely the result of coordination by the Chongqing government.

As the previous acquisition of Lifan by Geely Automobile was not successful. Geely, a powerful automotive enterprise in China that is the largest shareholder of Daimler and once acquired 100% shares of Volvo, but had no intention of developing the motorcycle industry by acquiring Lifan. Instead, it aimed to obtain Lifan’s electric vehicle production license. However, after the acquisition, Geely did not invest much in the motorcycle sector, causing Lifan to decline significantly, which greatly displeased the local government.

Although Loncin’s real estate business has suffered heavy losses, its motorcycle business is still operating well. Therefore, the local government is unwilling to let Loncin suffer the same fate as Lifan, so it coordinated with Zonsen to acquire a majority stake in Loncin, and state-owned assets also invested in Loncin.

Whether Zongshen and Loncin’s businesses will be merged is yet to be announced officially, but most people believe that Loncin will maintain its current structure and business, and there will still be competition between the two companies in the same industry.

Thanks!

These are interesting developments. In case you were wondering, Zonsen is the name by which what we knew as Zongshen now wishes to be called. Another bit of information: 3.35 billion Chinese Yuan is the equivalent of approximately 461 million US dollars. I first visited Zongshen more than a decade ago, and the company impressed me greatly.

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It’s Always About The Motors

By Joe Berk

For me a motorcycle’s appearance, appeal, and personality are defined by its motor. I’m not a chopper guy, but I like the look of a chopper because the engine absolutely dominates the bike. I suppose to some people fully faired motorcycles are beautiful, but I’m not in that camp. The only somewhat fully faired bike I ever had was my 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200, but you could still see a lot of the engine on that machine. I once wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics on the Solvang Vintage Motorcycle Museum and while doing so I called Virgil Elings, the wealthy entrepreneur who owned it. I asked Elings what drove his interest in collecting motorcycles. His answer? The motors. He spoke about the mechanical beauty of a motorcycle’s engine, and that prompted me to ask for his thoughts on fully faired bikes. “I suppose they’re beautiful to some,” he said, “but when you take the fairings off, they look like washing machines.” I had a good laugh. His observation was spot on.

A 1200cc Harley Panhead motor I photographed at the Rock Store in Malibu.

My earliest memory of drooling over a motorcycle occurred sometime in the 1950s when I was a little kid. My Mom was shopping with me somewhere in one of those unenclosed malls on Route 18 in New Jersey, and in those days, it was no big deal to let your kid wander off and explore while you shopped. I think it was some kind of a general store (I have no idea what Mom was looking for), and I wandered outside on the store’s sidewalk. There was a blue Harley Panhead parked out front, and it was the first time I ever had a close look at a motorcycle. It was beautiful, and the motor was especially beautiful. It had those early panhead corrugated exhaust headers, fins, cables, chrome, and more. I’ve always been fascinated by all things mechanical, and you just couldn’t find anything more mechanical than a Big Twin engine.

There have been a few Sportsters that do it for me, too, like Harley’s Cafe Racer from the late 1970s. That was a fine-looking machine dominated by its engine. I liked the Harley XR1000, too.

A 1000cc Harley Cafe Racer photographed at one of the Hansen Dam meets. When these were new, they sold for about $3,000.

I’ve previously mentioned my 7th grade fascination with Walt Skok’s Triumph Tiger. It had the same mesmerizing motorrific effect as the big twin Panhead described above. I could stare at that 500cc Triumph engine for hours (and I did). The 650 Triumphs were somehow even more appealing. The mid-’60s Triumphs are the most beautiful motorcycles in the world (you might think otherwise and that’s okay…you have my permission to be wrong).

A 1966 Triumph Bonneville and it’s 650cc twin-carb engine. My Dad rode a Bonneville just like this one.

BSA did a nice job with their engine design, too. Their 650 twins in the ’60s looked a lot like Triumph’s, and that’s a good thing. I see these bikes at the Hansen Dam Norton Owners Club meets. They photograph incredibly well, as do nearly all vintage British twins.

A late1960s BSA at Hansen Dam. These are beautiful motorcycles, too.

When we visited good buddy Andrew in New Jersey recently, he had several interesting machines, but the one that riveted my attention was his Norton P11. It’s 750cc air cooled engine is, well, just wonderful. If I owned that bike I’d probably stare at it for a few minutes every day. You know, just to keep my batteries charged.

Andrew Capone’s P-11 Norton. You can read about our visit with Andrew here.

You know, it’s kind of funny…back in the 1960s I thought Royal Enfield’s 750cc big twins were clunky looking. Then the new Royal Enfield 650 INT (aka the Interceptor to those of us unintimidated by liability issues) emerged. Its appearance was loosely based on those clunky old English Enfields, but the new twin’s Indian designers somehow made the engine look way better. It’s not clunky at all, and the boys from Mumbai made their interpretive copy of an old English twin look more British than the original. The new Enfield Interceptor is a unit construction engine, but the way the polished aluminum covers are designed it looks like a pre-unit construction engine. The guys from the subcontinent hit a home run with that one. I ought to know; after Gresh and I road tested one of these for Enfield North America on a Baja ride, I bought one.

The current iteration of Royal Enfield’s 650cc twin. I rode this bike through Baja and liked it so much I bought one when I returned from Mexico. Here’s more (a lot more) about that adventure.

Another motorcycle that let you see its glorious air-cooled magnificence was the CB750 Honda. It was awesome in every regard and presented well from any angle, including the rear (which is how most other riders saw it on the road). The engine was beyond impressive, and when it was introduced, I knew I would have one someday (I made that dream come true in 1971). I still can’t see one without taking my iPhone out to grab a photo.

A 1969 or 1970 Honda CB 750. This is the motorcycle that put the nail in the British motorcycle industry coffin. I had one just like it.

After Honda stunned the world with their 750 Four, the copycats piled on. Not to be outdone, Honda stunned the world again when they introduced their six-cylinder CBX. I had an ’82. It was awesome. It wasn’t the fastest motorcycle I ever owned, but it was one of the coolest (and what drove that coolness was its air-cooled straight six engine).

A Honda CBX engine photographed at the Del Mar fairgrounds near San Diego. The CBX was a motorcycle that added complexity where none was required. It was an impressive machine.

Like they did with the 750 Four, Kawasaki copied the Honda six cylinder, but the Kawasaki engine was water-cooled and from an aesthetics perspective, it was just a big lump. The Honda was a finely-finned work of art. I never wanted a Kawasaki Six; I still regret selling my Honda CBX. The CBX was an extremely good-looking motorcycle. It was all engine. What completed the look for me were the six chrome exhaust headers emerging from in front. I put 20,000 miles on mine and sold it for what it cost me, and now someone else is enjoying it. The CBX was stunning motorcycle, but you don’t need six cylinders to make a motorcycle beautiful. Some companies managed to do it with just two, and some with only one. Consider the engines mentioned at the start of this piece (Harley, Triumph, BSA, and Norton).

I shot this photo at Hansen Dam, too. I always wanted a mid-’60s Moto Guzzi. Never scratched that itch, though. They sound amazing. Imagine a refined Harley, and you’d have this.

Moto Guzzi’s air-cooled V-twins are in a class by themselves. I love the look and the sound of an air-cooled Guzzi V-twin. It’s classy. I like it.

Some motorcycle manufacturers made machines that were mesmerizing with but a single cylinder, so much so that they inspired modern reproductions, and then copies of those reproductions. Consider Honda’s GB500, and more than a few motorcycles from China and even here in the US that use variants of the GB500 engine.

The Honda GB500, Honda’s nod to earlier British singles. It’s another one I always wanted.

The GB500 is a water cooled bike, but Sochoiro’s boys did it right. The engine is perfect. Like I said above, variants of that engine are still made in China and Italy; one of those engines powers the new Janus 450 Halcyon.

The Janus 450 Halcyon I rode in Goshen. That resulted in a feature story in Motorcycle Classics. It’s engine is by SWM in Italy, which is a variant of the Chinese copy of the GB500 engine. I liked the Janus.

No discussion of mechanical magnificence would be complete without mentioning two of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made: The Brough Superior SS100 and the mighty Vincent. The Brits’ ability to design a visually arresting, aesthetically pleasing motorcycle engine must be a genetic trait. Take a look at these machines.

The Brough Superior SS100. Its engine had a constant loss lubrication system. This is the same motorcycle Lawrence of Arabia rode. One of my grandsons is named T.E. Lawrence.

The mighty Vincent. This and the Brough Superior above were both photographed at Hansen Dam.

Two additional bits of moto exotica are the early inline and air-cooled four-cylinder Henderson, and the Thor, one of the very first V-twin engine designs. Both of these boast American ancestry.

Jay Leno’s 1931 Henderson. He told me he bought it off a 92-year-old guy in Vegas who was getting a divorce and needed to raise cash, and I fell for it.

The Henderson you see above belongs to Jay Leno, who let me photograph it at one of the Hansen Dam Norton gatherings. Incidentally, if there’s a nicer guy than Jay Leno out there, I haven’t met him. The man is a prince. He’s always gracious, and he’s never too busy to talk motorcycles, sign autographs, or pose for photos. You can read about some of the times I’ve bumped into Jay Leno at the Rock Store or the Hansen Dam event right here on ExNotes.

A Thor V-twin photographed at the Franklin Auto Museum in Tucson, Arizona. You almost need a four-year mechanical engineering degree to start one of these. Thor made the first engines for Indian.

Very early vintage motorcycles’ mechanical complexity is almost puzzle-like…they are the Gordian knots of motorcycle mechanical engineering design. I photographed a 1913 Thor for Motorcycle Classics (that story is here), and as I was optimizing the photos I found myself wondering how guys back in the 1910s started the things. I was able to crack the code, but I had to concentrate so hard it reminded me of dear departed mentor Bob Haskell talking about the Ph.Ds and other wizards in the advanced design group when I worked in the bomb business: “Sometimes those guys think so hard they can’t think for months afterward,” Bob told me (both Bob and I thought the wizards had confused their compensation with their capability).

There’s no question in my mind that water cooling a motorcycle engine is a better way to go from an engineering perspective. Water cooling adds weight, cost, and complexity, but the fuel efficiency and power advantages of water cooling just can’t be ignored. I don’t like when manufacturers attempt to make a water-cooled engine look like an air-cooled engine with the addition of fake fins (it somehow conveys design dishonesty). But some marques make water cooled engines look good (Virgil Elings’ comments notwithstanding). My Triumph Speed Triple had a water-cooled engine. I think the Brits got it right on that one.

My 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. Good buddy Marty told me some folks called these the Speed Cripple. In my case, that turned out to be true, but that’s another story for another blog.

My 2015 CSC RX3. Before you go all nuts on me and start whining about Chinese motorcycle quality, I need to tell you I rode these across China, through the Andes Mountains in Colombia, up and down Baja a bunch of times, and all over the American west (you can read about those adventures here). It was one of the best and most comfortable bikes I ever owned.

Zongshen is another company that makes water-cooled engines look right. I thought my RX3 had a beautiful engine and I really loved that motorcycle. I sold it because I wasn’t riding it too much, but the tiny bump in my bank account that resulted from the sale, in retrospect, wasn’t worth it. I should have kept the RX3. When The Big Book Of Best Motorcycles In The History Of The World is written, I’m convinced there will be a chapter on the RX3.

The future of “motor” cycling? This is the CSC RX1E. I rode it and liked it. The silence takes some getting used to.

With the advent of electric motorcycles, I’ve ridden a few and they are okay, but I can’t see myself ever buying one. That’s because as I said at the beginning of this blog, for me a motorcycle is all about the motor. I realize that’s kind of weird, because on an electric motorcycle the power plant actually is a motor, not an internal combustion engine (like all the machines described above). What you mostly see on an electric motorcycle is the battery, which is the large featureless chingadera beneath the gas tank (which, now that I’m writing about it, isn’t a gas tank at all). I don’t like the silence of an electric motorcycle. They can be fast (the Zero I rode a few years ago accelerated so aggressively it scared the hell out of me), but I need some noise, I need to feel the power pulses and engine vibration, and I want other people to hear me. The other thing I don’t care for is that on an electric motorcycle, the power curve is upside down. They accelerate hardest off a dead stop and fade as the motor’s rpm increases; a motorcycle with an internal combustion engine accelerates harder as the revs come up.

Wow, this blog went on for longer than I thought it would. I had fun writing it and I had fun going through my photo library for the pics you see here. I hope you had fun reading it.

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Bugeyed in Beijing

By Joe Berk

That’s me that I’m talking about in the title of this blog and the story is a Riding China excerpt. Joe Gresh and I rode with a group of Chinese riders on a 38-day motorcycle ride around China. This is a small part of it describing the ride into Beijing.

Gresh, King Kong, and yours truly in China. I’m the bugeyed old bastard on the right (after the swelling subsided).

Traffic was moving but it was heavy, and Chinese drivers in cars do not respect motorcycles. If they want to occupy your spot on the road, they just move over. It’s not that they don’t see you; they just don’t care. You’re a motorcycle. They’re a car. They know who’s going to win. At very low speeds in city traffic, you can scream at them or maneuver away or stop. At freeway speeds if you don’t get out of the way, you’re a hood ornament or a big wet spot on the asphalt. Our Chinese riders’ propensity to ride on the shoulder all the time suddenly made sense to me.

On a quiet road in China. China has delightful country roads and modern freeways. We weren’t supposed to take our motorcycles on the freeways, but we didn’t do too well with rules. We literally rode thousands of miles, all of it illegal, on Chinese freeways.

It was dark well before we reached our hotel that night and we had to ride about 45 minutes or so after the sun set. The Asian-configuration RX3 headlight is not very bright (our US bikes are much better), and to make a bad situation worse, as I have mentioned before I don’t see too well in the dark. To see a little better that night, I lifted my visor. Even though it was a clear visor it still has a slight tint to it and when I lift it at night I can see better.

In the motorcycle world, there’s another term that’s similar to ATGATT (you know, all the gear, all the time). It’s “visor down.” What it means is that you should keep your helmet visor down all the time. The reason is obvious: You don’t want to get whacked in the eye with whatever is floating in the air. That night, I proved that “visor down” makes sense. I caught a bug smack in my right eyeball. It hurt immediately, but I could still see. At that point, I put the visor down, but it was a classic case of closing the barn door after the horse got away.

We arrived at the hotel about 20 minutes later. I was tired and cranky. I went to my hotel room in a blue funk. Gresh tried to calm me down, but he was fighting a losing battle. “We have a couple of good rolls of toilet paper in this room,” he said. That was a good point and it was definitely something to be happy about, but it didn’t help me feel any better.

I really didn’t want to eat dinner that night, but I decided that bagging dinner would be too rude. So I went and I sat next to Sean. After some small talk, he noticed my eye. He was shocked. I had not seen myself in the mirror and I guess it looked pretty bad. My eye wasn’t white anymore; it was mostly red and swollen. Okay, I’ve been whacked in the eye by bugs before. I knew it would be red and it would bug me (pardon the pun) for a couple of days, and then it would be okay.

We rode through the countryside the next day to see the Great Wall at another location, but I still wasn’t over being upset and cranky from the night before. When I lead rides in the US or in Mexico that last for more than a weekend, there’s usually one guy in the group that will get cranky at some point. I had thought about that before this ride and I realized that on a ride lasting over five weeks someone would get to that point. I just didn’t think that guy would be me. But it was. I was tired, my eye was jacked up, and the stress of watching out for Chinese drivers was getting to me.

The next morning, I missed grabbing a good photo because of that. We were riding to see the Great Wall at a different location. On a lightly-traveled mountain road on a curve, we all stopped and Dong intentionally laid his RX1 on its side in the middle of the lane. He got on the bike with his knee out and had one of the other guys photograph him from the front (to make it look like the bike was leaned way over in the corner and he was dragging his knee). I think nearly everyone got their photo on the bike, but I declined. I just wasn’t in the mood. I think Dong knew I wanted that photo, though, and after I had returned to the US, he emailed a copy to me. (It’s the photo you see above.)

When we got to the Great Wall that morning it involved a considerable hike up a steep hill to get close enough to touch it. I’ve done that on prior visits, so I didn’t want to do it that day. Four of us opted to wait while the rest of the guys made the hike. It was relaxing. Wong, Zuo, Furem, and I shared a bag of peanuts Sean had left in his car while we waited for the others to return.

As we were riding back to the hotel from that location, heading downhill through the mountains the same way we had ridden in, I started slowing down. I didn’t realize it at first, but eventually I was the last guy in our formation. Then I started riding even more slowly, until the rest of the guys were so far ahead of me I couldn’t see them. My eye was still bothering me and by now I was having some problems seeing well. To add fuel to that fire, my left shoulder was hurting (I have a pinched nerve somewhere in there and it bothers me on long motorcycle rides).

But there was more to what I was feeling than just what I described above. Something was going on. I suppose a shrink would call it an anxiety attack. I was driving around every twist in the road expecting to see a truck stopped in my lane, an oncoming truck passing another vehicle in my lane, a person sweeping the street in the middle of the turn in my lane, a guy pulling out right in front of me, a bus making a U-turn in front of me, a car cornering too hard drifting into my lane, someone going the wrong way in my lane, someone pulling into my lane without looking, an old woman walking directly in front of me, people stopping to have a conversation in the middle of the street, or someone squatting down to take a dump (in my lane, of course). On this trip, I had seen all of what I just described and more. What was happening that morning was the enormity of the insanity that is riding a motorcycle in China caught up with me. Yeah, it was an anxiety attack. The nuttiness of it all, my vulnerability being on a motorcycle, and my inability to do anything about it was suddenly overwhelming.

The guys were waiting for me at the next intersection, and from there we went to a Sinopec gas station to refuel the bikes. It was hotter than hell. I guess it was fair to say I was miserable. I was still feeling all of this accumulated anxiety when a guy in a black Mercedes starting blasting his horn at me in that gas station parking lot. He didn’t want to drive around me; he wanted me to move even though there was plenty of room for him to go around. It was more of the “I’m a car, you’re a motorcycle” bullshit that is pervasive in China.

I don’t know what came over me, but I think I just got supremely tired of being the vulnerable victim. I looked directly at that Mercedes driver. I made eye contact. He looked at me, not realizing I was here with eight other guys on motorcycles. I eased the clutch out until my bike was directly alongside his window (which was open). I then leaned on my horn and let it rip for a good solid 20 seconds. Then one of the other Chinese riders watching me did the same, and yet another yelled a really bad word at the Mercedes (which he probably learned from either Gresh or me). It was pretty funny, especially hearing that kind of profanity with a Chinese accent. The guy in the Mercedes had screwed with the wrong Marine on the wrong day. Without realizing it, he took on the Wild Angels that hot afternoon just outside of Beijing. He suddenly and fully realized what might happen as a result of his boorishness. He rolled up his window, he averted his eyes, and he backed his big black Mercedes respectfully away from us. That broke the spell. I wasn’t helpless any more. I felt amazingly better.

Okay, enough about me being a butthead: On to Beijing proper. We stopped at the Beijing Zongshen dealer that afternoon (where they were expecting us) and it was the Dajiu and Arjiu show all over again.

Gresh presenting a vest to a Zongshen rider. They thought we were celebrities.

There were the usual tons of photos with Gresh and me. Hey, how often do Dajiu and Arjiu show up in your neighborhood? Tracy told us the dealer had just sold five new RX1s. He wanted to have a ceremony in which we gave the keys and Zongshen fluorescent vests to the five lucky guys who had purchased the bikes. I was feeling my old self again. I saw an opportunity and I took it.

“We’ll do it this time, Tracy,” I said, “but if you don’t start doing a better job getting these dealers prepped it will be the last time.” Tracy doesn’t always know when I’m teasing him. I could tell that this was going to be one of those times. Gresh picked up on it, too.

“Yeah!” Gresh said. Joe sometimes has a way with words.

“What is wrong, Dajiu?” Tracy asked, concern and maybe a little fear showing in his eyes.

“Where’s the watermelon?” I said. “We’re supposed to have watermelon waiting for us at each dealer visit,” I said.

Joe Gresh on a Zongshen motorcycle and his contractually-mandated chilled watermelon.

“Yeah,” Gresh added, “and it’s supposed to be chilled, too.”

“It’s right there in Section 6, Paragraph 3.2 of the Dajiu and Arjiu contract,” I said, “and there’s no cold watermelon here, Tracy!” (I don’t think I need to mention this for my readers, but I will just in case you were wondering, there is no such thing as a Dajiu and Arjiu contract, let alone any paragraphs about cold watermelon.)

“Ah, I am so sorry,” Tracy said. “It is my bad, Dajiu. I am so sorry.” Then he turned to Gresh, and addressing him as Arjiu, he said the same thing.

“Tracy, relax,” I said. “I’m just screwing with you.” But it was too late. Tracy heard me tell him I was joking, but it didn’t register.

We had a great ceremony and we had fun taking photos and giving those five proud new RX1 owners oversized Styrofoam keys and then their real keys. It was one of the most fun things I did on this entire trip. As we were doing so, I could see Tracy (who had left and returned) slicing several large (and delightfully cold) watermelons on a table in front of the showroom. Hey, a contract’s a contract.

The Beijing dealer had an RZ3, Zongshen’s naked sportbike, parked in front. Gresh was really impressed. I took photos of it and put them on the CSC blog that night, but I couldn’t tell you then what you now know to be the case: CSC is going to bring the RZ3 to North America. I like the RZ3 a lot. It’s essentially the RC3 with a normal seating position and upright bars without the RC3’s bodywork. We’re going to sell a lot of RZ3s. The RZ3 has the RX3 powertrain, and that’s both bulletproof and fast. I already have ideas on how I’m going to customize mine.

When we got off the subway after visiting The Forbidden City, we waited on a street corner for our Uber ride back to the hotel. I watched the scooters and small utility vehicles rolling by, and I realized that nearly every one of them was electric. I must have seen 200 scooters during the 20 minutes we waited, and perhaps 2 had gasoline engines. This wholesale adaption of electric scooters and small utility vehicles in China is nothing short of amazing.

Sean explained to me that the transition to electric vehicles started about 15 years ago, and the government has done a number of things to encourage people to convert to electricity. For starters (once again, pardon my pun), many of the larger cities in China now prohibit motorcycles and scooters unless the vehicle is electric. Electric scooters are allowed where gasoline-powered bikes are not. That alone is an enormous incentive. The next incentive is that you don’t need a driver’s license to take an electric vehicle on the street. You just buy one and go. And finally, as I’ve mentioned before, electricity is cheap in China. There are windfarms, solar panel farms, coal plants, nuclear power plants, and hydroelectric power plants all over the country. We saw scooters parked on the sidewalk and plugged into extension cords running into small stores everywhere. People charge them like iPhones; they didn’t miss any opportunity to top off the batteries on these things.

That night was a great night. The Zongshen dealer took us to a restaurant that specialized in Peking duck. The guys were excited about this development, but I was initially leery. I thought I didn’t like Peking duck. Boy, was I ever wrong!

I tried Peking duck 25 years ago when I visited Beijing with Sue. We both thought the duck was awful. That’s because we went to a restaurant that served tourists. The food at that place didn’t have to be good. They knew they would never see us again, and Yelp hadn’t been invented yet.

This night in Beijing with the Zongshen dealer and the RX3 owners club was different. The Peking duck was incredible. The chef sliced it paper thin right at our table. They had thin tofu (almost like a crepe), and the guys taught me how to eat duck properly. The deal is you put a few fresh vegetables on the tofu, you add a slice or two of duck, you add this amazing brown gravy, and then you roll the affair up like a burrito. Wow, it was delicious!

Peking Duck, done the way it is supposed to be done, in a Beijing restaurant. It was exquisite. Photo by King Kong.

We had several rounds of toasts at dinner that night and the liquor flowed freely. I got lucky. Kong sat next to me and he schooled me in the proper way to make a Chinese toast. To show respect, you clink your glass against the other guy’s glass, but you hold your glass at a lower level so that when the two glasses meet, the rim of yours is lower than the other person’s. When the Zongshen dealer toasted me, I followed Kong’s advice, and the Chinese riders all nodded approvingly. Ah, Dajiu knows.

It was funny. Sergeant Zuo and I had made several toasts to each other, and when we touched glasses, we both tried frantically to get our glasses lower than the other, so much so that we usually crashed the bottoms of both on the table (to a hearty laugh and round of applause from everyone). Zuo was being polite; I was being completely serious (I have enormous respect for him).

The next day we took the subway into Beijing. We already were in Beijing when we got on the subway, but Beijing is a megacity and you can’t simply drive into the center of it. We rode the subway for a good 45 minutes, and when we emerged, we visited the Forbidden City and Tien An Men Square. It was all grand. It was touristy, but it’s something that should be on any China visitor’s bucket list.

After seeing the Forbidden City, we walked around downtown Beijing for a while. I told Tracy my eye was getting worse and I wanted to get antibiotic eye drops for it. It was Sunday afternoon, but there was a large pharmacy right in front of us and it was open. Tracy went in with me and he told one of the young pharmacists what I wanted. She responded and it didn’t sound good.

“She cannot sell it to you without a prescription,” he told me.

“Well, shoot, Tracy, it’s Sunday afternoon,” I said. “We’re not going to find a doctor. I’ll be okay. Let’s just go.”

“No, it is okay, Dajiu,” he said. “We are China and we have a bureaucracy. It is my bad.”

Good old Tracy, I thought. The guy felt responsible for everything. I was resigned to the fact that my eye was going to take a while to get better. Tracy, in the meantime, had walked not more than 8 feet away to an elderly woman sitting at a wooden table. He spoke to her in Chinese and pointed to me. She never looked at me, nor did she look up. She simply pulled out a white pad with a big “R” at the top. Nah, this can’t be, I thought. She wrote something in Chinese characters and handed the slip to Tracy.

“Our prescription,” Tracy said. “Such a bureaucracy.” He walked the three steps back to the pharmacist, Tracy handed her the prescription, and 30 seconds (and 24 yuan, or about $4) later, I had my antibiotic eye drops. I put two drops in my eye. When we rode out of Beijing the next morning, my eye was good as new.

Like the above story? Want more? Pick up your copy of Riding China!

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Phavorite Photos: Tall Tales in Chongqing

By Joe Berk

It’s been a little while since we posted a phavorite photo (thanks for the series suggestion, Peter), so I thought we were due. Usually the pics in our Phavorite Photo series are pics I took, but I can’t take credit for the photo you see above. Susie was with me when we visited Zongshen to negotiate CSC’s first RX3 order, and during those meetings, Zongshen asked about sending Chinese folks over to ride with us in the United States. The idea was Zongshen would provide the motorcycles and pay all expenses for a dozen or so riders if we would plan and lead the ride. During our meeting, good buddy Thomas Fan asked if I had any destination suggestions (Fan is Zonghsen’s marketing director; in the photo above he’s the first guy seated on my left). Boy, did I ever. I had a bunch of photos on my laptop from my rides to US National Parks, Baja, and more. I pulled up the photos, told tall tales about each, and our Chinese hosts were mesmerized. Sue had the presence of mind to grab my Nikon and snap the photo you see above. It became an immediate favorite.

Zongshen came through on their promise, and we had a hell of an adventure. We rode from southern California to Sturgis, cut across the country headed west to the Pacific Coast, and then followed the coast back down to So Cal. It was a 5,000-mile ride we dubbed the Western America Adventure Ride. Folks in the US who had purchased RX3 motorcycles joined us on portions of the ride. It was where I first met Joe Gresh (Motorcyclist magazine sent Joe and he wrote a wonderful story). The Western America Adventure Ride was a key part of our CSC marketing strategy and it worked. You can read all about in 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM. Buy the book; don’t wait for the movie.

About those destinations: What Fan didn’t know when he asked if I had any suggestions was that I write the “Destinations” column for Motorcycle Classics magazine. We did a book on that, too. You should buy a copy. If you buy a thousand copies, I’ll ride my Royal Enfield to your place and sign every one of them.

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

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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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CSC’s RX6

By Joe Berk

Great things continue to emerge from CSC Motorcycles, my alma mater and your favorite motorcycle company. CSC is now importing the new Zongshen 650cc Cyclone, the RX6. It’s a logical step up. The first CSC adventure touring motorcycle was the RX3, and I had a ton of fun on it. You know the story…when CSC first planned to bring that motorcycle to America, I wrote a blog about it and we sold the first one within a few seconds of the blog being published (it went to a buyer in Alaska). The sales poured in, and literally within days of the RX3 motorcycles arriving in America, we led a tour of 15 CSC riders on a 2000-mile ride through Baja. It was awesome, and it was pretty gutsy…taking 15 Chinese motorcycles on a ride like that.

It was onward and upward after that…a 5000-mile ride through the western US with a dozen guests from China and Colombia, a 6000-mile ride across China with Joe Gresh, a circumnavigation of the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and many more Baja rides. Then came the CSC TT 250, the San Gabriel, the RX4 450cc, the 400cc twins, the electric City Slicker, and the RX1E electric ADV motorcycle.

You’ve probably heard the rumors of the Zongshen/Norton alliance and their skunkworks 650cc twin, and I’m here to tell you the 650cc RX6 is a reality. I rode the first one in America in the San Gabriel Mountains above CSC’s facilities, and it’s awesome. And like all of the bikes listed above, CSC is bringing it here.

There are a lot of features on the new RX6 (I’ll list the specifications and some of the features at the bottom of this blog). What grabbed my attention immediately when I saw the new CSC were the fit and finish, the color, the dash, and just the overall aura of excellence. The RX6 is a world class motorcycle. One of the coolest things is the dash. Check this out:

The RX6 is a full-sized motorcycle, but it’s not overwhelming. If I had one I’d probably name it Goldilocks. It’s not too big and it’s not too small. It’s just right.

Another cool feature is the wireless key. It’s like the electronic key on most new cars. It has a key feature (you know, so you can insert it in any of the various locks on the RX6, like the fuel filler cap), but as long as you have it on you, you can start the RX6 just by hitting the starter button. You don’t have to put the key in the ignition.

The brakes felt good on my ride in the mountains. There are large dual disk brakes up front, a single disk in the rear, and anti-skid braking front and rear.

The RX6 sounds like a motorcycle ought to. It has a decisive exhaust note, and it sounded good reverberating off the San Gabriels. It’s fast, too, with noticeably more power than an RX3 or an RX4 throughout the rev range. I didn’t push it too hard (it was CSC’s first sample in the US), but the power was definitely there. Zongshen is claiming a 112 mph top end; I think that is realistic and probably a bit of an underestimate. The one I rode was literally brand new and I was in the mountains, so I didn’t try a top end run.

Zongshen is emphasizing the Cyclone family name (the RX3 is actually a Cyclone, too, but at CSC we made the decision to refer to it as the RX3). The badging on the motorcycle’s side panels says SR650 (presumably, the SR stands for Sports Road), so we’ll have to see how the bike is named when it goes on sale, and Steve tells me that will be soon. The motorcycle will carry a retail price of $7195, and as CSC always does, they are offering an introductory “Don’t Miss The Boat” price of $6695. It’s a certainty that price won’t last long, so…you know…don’t miss the boat. More info will be available on the CSC website.

CSC 2023 RX6 Specifications

- - Engine type: SR650, 650cc parallel twin, 4-stroke, water cooled, DOHC, 8-valve, Delphi Electronic fuel injection, ECU ignition
  - Bore/stroke: 82mm x 61.5mm
  - Compression ratio: 11.5:1
  - Horsepower: 70 hp at 8500 rpm
  - Torque: 62 Nm at 7000 rpm
  - Transmission: 6-speed
  - Clutch: FCC slipper-type
  - Wheelbase: 57.1 inches (1450mm)
  - Front suspension: 41mm inverted telescopic fork, 130mm travel
  - Rear suspension: KYB preload-adjustable mono-shock, 51mm travel, 142mm rear wheel travel
  - Front brake: Nissin 2-piston caliper, dual 320mm front discs, 5mm thick, Bosch ABS
  - Rear brake: 2-piston caliper, 260mm rotor, thickness: 5mm thick, Bosch ABS
  - Front wheel/ tire: Pirelli 120/70-R17 cast aluminum wheel, tubeless
  - Rear wheel/tire: Pirelli 160/60-R17 cast aluminum wheel, tubeless
  - Overall length: 86.4 inches (2195mm)
  - Overall width: 32.3 inches (820mm)
  - Overall height: 54.9 inches (1395mm)
  - Seat height: 32.3 inches (820mm)
  - Ground clearance: 6.5 inches (160mm)
  - Fuel capacity: 5.5 gallons (21 liters), locking gas cap
  - Estimated fuel economy: 48 MPG
  - Curb weight: 540 lb (245kg)d
  - Top speed: 112 mph (180 kph)
  - Max load, rider and luggage: 396 pounds (180kg)
  - Instrumentation: Cyclone 7-inch, full-color TFT dash, with digital speedometer, tachometer, odometer, tripmeter, fuel gauge, gear indicator, neutral light, temperature gauge, clock, turn signal and high beam indicators; Bluetooth linking to rider’s phone
  - Electronic tire-pressure monitoring system
  - Lighting: full LED lights and turn signals
  - 12-volt and USB charging outlets on dash
  - 300-watt alternator
  - Automotive-type waterproof connectors under seat
  - Tapered aluminum handlebars with bar-end weights
  - Standard engine guards, adjustable electronic windshield, vibration-damping foot pegs, dual curvature rear view mirrors
  - Front and Rear built in recorder and cameras
  - 5,000-mile valve adjustment intervals
  - Easy maintenance supported by a service manual and CSC online tutorials
  - Options: CSC touring luggage packages, accessory driving lights, heated handgrips, and more

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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