If you live in Beijing you might have seen that Bamboo Bicycles kickstarter floating around. If not, the concept is pretty self-explanatory. Bicycles made of bamboo. In Beijing.
Bamboo Bicycles Beijing is the brainchild of David Chin-Fei Wang, a Boston transplant who's been living in China for six years. After graduating university, he got a Fulbright grant to do a year-long anthropological research project on sports and nationalism in contemporary Chinese culture. After that he ran a bar in Xi'an called Oscar's. That lost money pretty efficiently. Faced with going back to the US for grad school or staying on, David carved a position for himself at China Youthology, a Beijing-based startup conducting market research on emerging trends among... yeah, Chinese youth. Again, David focused on sports, albeit broadly construed. He recently pulled an all-nighter at a wang ba studying World of Warcraft culture. That gets raw apparently.
Around the end of 2012, David started salvaging spare bike parts and trying to build his own. He eventually came up with the idea of using bamboo to fill in the gaps. After researching and Taobao'ing the hell out of the whole situation, he came up with his first bamboo bicycle. Now he's quitting his day job to make these full time.
Making bicycles out of bamboo is not an especially new concept. Over 100 years old. There's a thriving market for bamboo bikes in Uganda and other parts of Africa, David tells me. But not in China. After building his first bamboo ride, David had the idea to turn this pet project into a mission synthesizing his years of experience as an anthropologist and a hutong citizen, promoting the theme of sustainable urban mobility while drawing on his knowledge of Chinese youth culture.
Despite the ubiquity of bamboo in China, there's not a developed market for aged and cured material in the Mainland. David ended up hooking up with the Bamboo Culture Park in Taiwain — located, of course, on Bamboo Mountain — for the quality timber.
While sourcing bamboo from Taiwan is not long-term sustainable for a Beijing-based venture, it planted the seed for the current project. David secured enough raw materials for an initial run of 25 bikes. Because of the convoluted supply chain, the actual production cost at this stage is not low — around 2,000rmb per unit. Hence the fundraiser.
Two days ago, BBB reached their initial fundraising goal of 15,000 USD, which will float a bike-building workshop running most weekends between now and the end of October. The initial goal is not profitability, but education: participants in the Phase I workshops pay only 600rmb for the raw materials and hands-on guidance from David and his team in their small, Gulou hutong workspace. Plenty of elbow grease required. The BBB crew is now starting to promote the workshops via Chinese-language crowdfunding platforms, less to raise money than to spread the idea among Beijing youth who'd otherwise default to buying a car.
The current workshop phase is also a means of testing the market for a sustainable, locally-sourced alternative mode of transportation specifically suited to Beijing's urban rhythms. While the ultimate goal would be to create a self-sustaining "bamboo village" churning out high-end rides for a growing niche market, BBB is nowhere near that level. The venture is currently non-profit to the point of not being able to afford to file for non-profit status. But the idea has legs. David's already been approached by two car companies who also realize the practical necessity of finding alternative modes of urban transportation. Or maybe it's a keep your enemies closer situation. Either way, there's interest, and it's growing.
For the time being, David doesn't plan on collaborating. He's waiting to see how the next few months pan out. The Kickstarter still has another week to go and there are many more goals to be accomplished. Find all you need to know about Bamboo Bicycles Beijing in its current incarnation here, or set aside the next eight minutes to hear it from David himself:
