CSC Blog

Wow, there are a lot of motorcycle manufacturers in China.  A whole lot.  I grabbed a few photos of the different manufacturers’ booths here at the Canton Fair, and you should know that what I’m showing here is not all that I’ve seen over the last four days.   The Chinese motorcycle industry is vibrant.

So, the question you’ve got to be wondering is: Did I see anything new and exciting?  The short answer is yes. A better question might be: Did I see any bikes that I thought were better than the RX3?  The short answer to that is no.  There are other manufacturers trying to replicate Zongshen’s and CSC’s RX3 success, but I didn’t see anything I would prefer as my personal ride.  I did see other bikes I liked a lot, though. One of them is one we are already bringing in, and it was, of course, in the Zongshen booth…

I was surprised about the electric bike situation.  I just didn’t see that many of them, which surprised me because when I rode an RX3 across China a year ago, we saw way more electric scooters than gas scooters.  But there just weren’t that many at the Canton Fair. I saw quite a few electric bicycles, only a few step-through electric scooters, and one electric police motorcycle.   As was the case with the RX3, Zongshen is way out in front with the electric motorcycle (the one you see me on above).   We’re bringing that bike to America, and you’ll see more about it right here on the CSC blog!

The sun finally came out yesterday morning and folks, it was a beautiful day here in Guangzhou. These first few photos are from my morning ride to the Canton Fair.  The Canton fair is on the eastern banks of the Pearl River.

That tower you can barely see in the distant haze is Guangzhou’s radio tower, which is a cool quarter of a mile high.  For a few years, it held the title of the world’s tallest structure. When Sue and I were here a few years ago, we went up in that tower and enjoyed its amazing aerial views of Guangzhou.  It’s impressive.  If you ever have an opportunity to visit Guangzhou, going up in the tower is something you want to do.  Trust me on this.

Here’s a shot taken while I was on the bridge crossing the Pearl River.   The oval building and the building with the wavy roof are part of the Canton Fair complex.

This is another shot looking south.  You can see the radio tower in the distance, and you can see the Canton Fair complex on the left.  Two hours by train (roughly following the Pearl River), and you’re in Hong Kong.  I’ve done that.

This is the Canton Fair’s Halls 9 through 13.  I guess that means Halls 1 through 8 are nearby.  I think there are more halls that go beyond Hall 13.  It’s a huge place.

This is the crowd entering the Canton Fair.   There are a lot of people here.

I have been sticking to the motorcycle exhibits during my time in Guangzhou, but I took a different entrance yesterday morning.   There are a lot of exhibits marketing to the construction industry.  China is still building furiously, and they evidently supply construction materials to a lot of the world.  Here are a few shots as I walked through these areas…

There are people here from the Middle East, Australia, South America, Africa, and  other places.  Yesterday while I was enjoying my now-standard lunch of beef-and-onion dumplings, an older fellow asked if he could sit at my table (the seating is very crowded because there are so many people here).  “Sure,” I said.  His English was a little rough, but he reached into his bag and pulled out a piece of flatbread.  He broke it in two and offered half to me.  Not wanting to be rude, I accepted it. I asked my new friend where he was from and his business.  He was a construction guy from Lebanon. My guess is that piece of flatbread was from Lebanon.  Imagine that…a guy from California at a motorcycle show breaking bread (literally) with a construction guy from Lebanon.   Like they say, it’s a small world, and I think it’s getting smaller.

I almost titled this one “Sleepless in Guangzhou.”  About the time I’ll get used to the 13-hour time difference and I get on a regular sleeping schedule, it will be time to get back on an airplane to California, and then I’ll start the sleep adjustment sequence all over again.  Ah, that’s the way it goes, I guess.  It’s worth it.  I’m having fun.

We’ve had rain ever since I arrived in Guangzhou, so I had to settle for this photo going into the Canton Fair complex yesterday…

I was hoping to get a bright blue sky in the background, but hey, you go to war with the army you have.  The one shot I show above is just a tiny, tiny corner of the Canton Fair complex.  It’s enormous.

The crowds and the action here are incredible.  The Canton Fair is not just motorcycles.  It’s everything (literally including the kitchen sink).  Motorcycles, consumer electronics, household goods, building materials, you name it, and everything new under the Chinese sun is here.  My focus, of course, is motorcycles, but that’s only a very small part of what’s on display this week in the Canton Fair complex.

It takes me a good 20 minutes once I arrive in the morning just to find the motorcycle area (I keep forgetting to leave a trail of bread crumbs, or maybe the janitorial staff is so efficient they clean up whatever I drop within seconds of it hitting the floor).   The place is huge, it’s in multiple buildings, and each building has several floors.  Remember that string of restaurants I mentioned?   This is the action at lunchtime…

There’s even a GS-themed coffee shop at the Canton Fair..

One of the things that’s conspicuously absent are the female models.  At any US motorcycle show, young ladies model the motorcycles at nearly every booth (except the CSC booth, of course; all you get there are me, TK, and Steve).  There were only two models at the Canton Fair’s many moto booths, and I photographed them both..

The Zongshen booth is very busy, and it was grand to see my good buddies Robbie, Tracy, and Hugo there.   Robbie is our main man in Chongqing.  Tracy rode with us on the ride across China.   Hugo (aka “it’s okay, it’s okay”) rode with us on the Western America Adventure Ride…

One thing that has been a little disconcerting for me is the number of people who start talking to me as if we know each other.   I keep thinking I must have met them before and I am embarrassed because I can’t remember their name.   Hugo told me it’s okay (of course it is, and he actually told me that twice), because they know me (and Joe Gresh) from the Zongshen posters and videos.   Don’t believe me?  Check out the action in the Zongshen booth, and check out the poster that’s upper left.  Dajiu and Arjiu ride again!

There are a lot of unusual vehicles on display here, including this Chinese version of the Oscar Meyer weiner mobile…

Some of the paint jobs were pretty cool.   Animal decals are in, I guess…

And that Monkey-Davidson I showed you yesterday?  The folks who did that also have one that looks a lot like a Gen 1 CB750 Honda.

You know, the scary thing about the Monkey-Davidson and that CB750 monkey bike is there are actually people out there riding around on them.  Think about that…

Two startling things here at the Canton Fair are the number of different kinds motorcycles produced in China, and the fact that so many of them use the same engines.  There are only a few engine manufacturers in the Chinese motorcycle world, and Zongshen is one of the major players.  I wrote about this during my very first visit to Zongshen several years ago when we hooked up with these folks for our 250cc Mustang engine.

I photographed a display at the Canton Fair of the different engines Zongshen manufactures, and it’s an intriguing lineup.   What’s even more intriguing is seeing all the other motorcycles and scooters here and recognizing just how many of them are, at heart, a Zongshen.

That’s it for now.  Keep an eye on the blog, folks.  There’s more good stuff coming!

I’m not kidding.  I saw Elvis in Guangzhou earlier today, I actually spoke with him, and he let me grab a photo…

A lot of the Chinese guys who work with folks from our neck of the planet take English names to make it easier for us guys and gals who don’t speak Chinese.  You’ve heard me talk about my good friends Tracy, Robbie, Hugo, Thomas, Bella, Jason, Leo, Oscar, and more over here in China.   Well, I was chatting it up with a very polite young man in the XGJao booth earlier today when I noticed his name tag said Elvis.  That was cool!  I gave Elvis my business card, and he had the perfect response…

“Thank you very much.”   We’re in China, but the Tupelo accent of our young Elvis was perfect!

Sometimes, you want to hang with the cool kids even if all you have is an electric bike.   You know, you want your friends to think you’re really an internal combustion guy.  Hey, no problem!

And if the faux engine above isn’t enough, check this one out…

That Munro v-twin above had glorious chrome cases, and I just couldn’t let them go to waste…

There are a lot of interesting things to see at the Canton Fair, including a few that you can’t help smiling at…like this monkey bike.

I told the folks in the booth where I saw this bike they needed to put tall handlebars on it.  They missed the joke.  You know…ape hangers.

Sometimes, you just take pictures without asking too many questions…

These are electric bikes.  I may drift by that booth again later today to get a little more information.

Think big, think big crowds, and think “I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going but I’m following the crowd,” and you’ll start to get a feel for what the Canton Fair is like. I’m staying in the Paco Hotel, which is only a couple of miles from the Canton Fair, but it took a good two hours from the time I left the hotel this morning until I was actually inside seeing new motorcycles.  For starters, there’s the Guangzhou traffic. It’s normally heavy, but as we got closer to the fair (after crossing the Pearl River, which bisects Guangzhou), things really got thick.

Then there was the press to get into the fair once I was off the bus. It involved hoofing it in a heavy crowd of like-minded attendees for a good mile, but you just don’t walk into the fair. Getting in is a process, and the process starts with guessing which crowd to follow.  I got lucky.  I guessed right.   You have to buy a pass, and for me, I opted to get the 100 RMB buyer’s badge. 100 RMB is about $16, and that will get me in to the Canton Fair all week (as opposed to paying 30 RMB for a spectator’s pass every day).

But you can’t just buy the badge. The crowds are heavy and the security is, too. Lines, lines, and more lines.  And for every one of them, I had to guess at which one I had to follow.  I had to go through a metal detector after standing in a long line. Then I had to stand in another long line to fill out an admission application form. Then it was another long line for a photo. Then it was another line to take the photos to the folks to make my badge. Then it was another line to pay for the badge. Then it was another line to get the badge. And while all this was going on, the crowds were deep and pushy. But they were friendly.

I didn’t bump into anybody from the United States today, but I did meet several interesting people from fairly exotic parts of the planet. One guy asked me where I was from, and when I told him, he told me he was from Iran. Wow. He asked me what I thought about what Mr. Trump did in Syria this weekend. Hmmmm. This could get interesting, I thought.

“You know, Mr. Trump doesn’t call me as often as he used to,” I told my new friend, “and even if he had called this weekend, I had a 15-hour flight to get here, so I would have  missed the call.”  He stared at me for a couple of seconds and then he started laughing.  We both had a good laugh and he took a selfie of the two of us.  Yep, that’s me. Working for world peace, one selfie at a time.

Things were moving right along. I had my photo, I had my badge, and now I was in the last line this morning…the line to get inside and actually start seeing motorcycles.  And then it started raining. On us.  Standing in line.  Outside.  Hey, if this was easy, everybody would be doing it…

I finally made it to the Promised Land, and there it was…the Canton Fair’s motorcycle exhibit area!

The Zongshen booth was the first one I saw. It was one of many, and interestingly, even though the good the folks from Zongshen had a lot of bikes on display, they did not have the RX4, the RX3, or the RX1 in their booth. Zongshen did have an RX3S and the Café Racer, though (along with many other motorcycles), and it looks like they’ve taken our lead and they are now offering the Café Racer with the 250cc engine.

I had lunch with my good Zongshen buddy Robbie (that’s Robbie in the photo above) and another guy from Zongshen I met for the first time today.  His name is Jason. Jason handles RX3 sales in Pakistan. Wow. Pakistan. I asked Jason if his duties required visiting Pakistan and the answer was yes. I asked what that was like and he said it was not bad at all. Like most places in the world, I guess, the stories about things being dangerous are greatly overblown. But still…Pakistan. Wow. I imagine it would cool to have a decal on your bike for an RX3 tour in Pakistan.

The Canton Fair has a restaurant row that must have 100 restaurants, ranging from exotic Middle Eastern foods all the way to Papa John’s pizza. I had Chinese food (and I’ll probably have Chinese food again tonight). It was beef dumpling soup for a whopping 25 RMB (that’s $3.96 in US dollars), and it was delicious.

My buyer’s badge has given me status and made me a target. There are motorcycle parts suppliers at the Canton Fair, and when they see a buyer’s badge, they are on the case. They all wanted my business card and they all wanted me to have theirs. There are a lot of battery suppliers in China, I guess, and they all hire attractive young women (like the one in the photo below) who want to me to buy their motorcycle batteries.

More to follow, folks.  The Canton Fair!  This sure is fun!