30.4.2010 von Ines.

As tomorrow is the May first holiday and the beginning of the Shanghai World Expo we were not able to get a train ticket back to Beijing for this evening. So we decided that instead of staying in Shanghai it would be nicer to take a day holiday in Hangzhou. So we took the fast train to Hangzhou and stayed in a nice guest house near the zoo.

We had dinner in a small hole in the wall place with local food. It was really good and of course really cheap. As we knew tomorrow would be endless amounts of tourists we decided to take a long night walk to the famous and beautiful West Lake (Xi Hu).

We walked over one of the embankments crossing the lake. The one we took had 6 bridges and was very long. But we had a nice view of the mountains in the West of the lake.

There was hardly anybody out. It was really peaceful and quiet. This was in the direction of Hangzhou city center.

It was a beautiful night with a full moon. We walked for over 2 hours at fast pace. Back at the hostel we booked 2 bikes for the next day so that we could explore the city.

Geschrieben in Outdoors, China | Keine Kommentare »

30.4.2010 von Ines.

Today was the final day of the CycleChina 2010. Our Natooke booth still looked nice.

I took a final tour around the other exhibition halls. I likes this new design bike done by design students from a Chinese-Danish-German collaboration. Even though I am not sure that it will ride comfortably. Also I might not do trick on it.

And again I did some bike tricks.

There are more pictures of today on my webalbum. I also uploaded a video on youku which is the Chinese version of youtube. Each time it was so easy to attract a crowd of people. They then all wanted to take pictures of me and the bamboo bike.

We were not in a rush to take down our booth which resulted in us being teh last in our hall to pack our stuff.

Geschrieben in Natooke, Performers, Cycling, Fixed Gear, China | Keine Kommentare »

29.4.2010 von Ines.

I am having the impression that there are less walk in visitors at this year’s China Cycle exhibition. But it is still fun to perform on the open area and watch how my bicycle stunts draw a crowd. Here are some pictures of me (Ines Brunn)  doing bike tricks on a bamboo bike made by Stalk.

There are new buildings around the exhibition center that have not been there last year. Like this one that looks like it has caves for rock climbing. It really looks inviting. I wonder if anybody will try to climb it when it is finished.

Geschrieben in Green, Performers, Cycling, Fixed Gear, China | Keine Kommentare »

29.4.2010 von Ines.

Unfortunately I was not there when Arrigo came to pick up his Flying Banana track bike named “The White Beauty” that we had put together in Natooke. It is just so beautiful!

Geschrieben in Natooke, Fixed Gear, China, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »

28.4.2010 von Ines.

In the innovation center of the China Cycle exhibition in Shanghai they had some interesting bicycle designs. My favorite was this really nicely done wooden bike in the form of a 60 for the 60th year anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.

There was a conference on “Low Carbon Emission” so Shannon and I (who co-founded STC) went to listen to their ideas.

It was actually about a bike ride from Beijing to Shenzhen called “China Tour” to promote cycling as “Low Carbon Life”.

It is organized by the China Bicycle Association (CBA) together with the company Xidesheng (XDS). The launching event on May 16th in Beijing Chaoyang Park will be organized by a PR company.

Then a few young cyclists did a circle in the venue with the China Tour outfit.

The 12 cyclists that will ride from Beijing through China down to Shenzhen have already been selected. But Shannon and I are looking for a way to participate with STC.

I did tricks on the real bamboo trick bike today again here at the Shanghai exhibition. I uploaded a video of it that you can watch here. It was a video taken between the halls. The bamboo bike is really stable

There was bicycle art by Fang Zu Han. He does nice pencil drawings. I prefer this one.

And this is him with the head of the CBA

Geschrieben in Green, Performers, Cycling, China | 1 Kommentar »

27.4.2010 von Ines.

First day of the 2010 China Cycle Exhibition. I was astonished to see so many exhibitors getting in early in the morning. We actually had to wait a while in the crowd until we finally got in.

Our booth sidewalls had moved over night so we bought more tape to stick them back up. And here are many pictures of our first own Natooke shop booth with the booth chics and booth man:

Our booth was different than most booths. We wanted the people to interact with us. So we had the walls covered with some of the many newspaper and magazine articles about my Natooke store, the Respro anti-pollution masks and hump backpack covers, the Beijing fixed gear bicycle group, the STC cycling initiative and my trick bike performances.

We would have liked to display more bikes but it would have been hard to transport them to Shanghai by train. So we decided only to take the bamboo bike made by my friend Zack Jiang. Bamboo is a green alternative to metal. This bamboo bike is made in the same geometry as my trick bike. Zack made it to prove that his bamboo bikes are really stable and do not brake even if I do my extreme bicycle tricks on this bamboo bike. The bike got quite some attention at the booth.

Of course I also met friends like Zhou Chang Chun who does some Chinese style bike tricks.

As well as a cyclist friend from Tianjin called Baihua working in a newly started outer tire company that tries to look like CST brand.

I performed bicycle tricks 2 times today on the bamboo bike. I made a webalbum with more pictures. But here are just a few.

It was nice how easy it was to draw a crowd. And also people video taping that all said they have never seen anything like this.

Right after each show I got swamped with people. It was really fun. A lot were not believing that it was a real bamboo bike.

I met some great people that know me through the bicycle film festival, like Karta Healy.

Also of course some Beijing friends like Master Yang had also travelled to Shanghai for this exhibition which is the biggest cycling show in China.

Geschrieben in Green, Natooke, Performers, Cycling, China, Fixed Gear, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »

27.4.2010 von Ines.

Today there was an article about Fede and the juggling shop in the Global Times. It is a very nice article. Here is a copy:

Where’s the catch?
Source: Global Times April 27 2010

Goodness gracious… fire poi on the street in Beijing. Photos: Matthew Jukes

It looks good, works as a form of meditation, and can push your body beyond its natural boundaries. Although China may have been one of the first places it started, it has now been all but forgotten. But, there’s always room for change. “My idea is that juggling will have the same evolution as break dancing in Japan and Korea,” said Federico Moro, the man with the balls to keep the Beijing jugglers running.

Already a well loved hobby, and in some circles a professional sport in the West, juggling can be anything from the simple act of tossing a couple of lemons around to passing six sharp objects at speed across a stage. Quite simply put, it’s moving around a number of objects that exceeds the number of limbs you’re using to do it.

Here in Beijing it’s limited to a group of people who meet up on a Monday night. Strange fortune perhaps, as China was possibly one of the modern ancestors of juggling, albeit with swords.

Zen like

In the depths of Yugong Yishan, normally renown more for its music than strolling players, Moro, shouts out. “Anyone can do it!” and “It’s just like riding a bike!” This encouraging shout normally means a lot of sheepish grins as most of the novices in the crowd look down at the sea of dropped juggling balls around their feet.

“Everyone can do three balls. Everyone is able to do five balls; everyone can do six or seven balls,” explained Moro. “The whole point is the amount of time you are willing to put in.”

He insisted that all you need to learn how to juggle is two minutes of lesson, and then 10 to 20 hours of practice on your own. The more you’re spending scrabbling around on the floor to pick up dropped objects, the better. The idea is to keep swapping which hand you start throwing with, and to enter into the rhythmic zen like state which keeps three balls in motion just in front.

At any given meet up, the group can include newcomers, hardened pros and even the odd visitor just stopping by to keep in practice.

“I’ve been juggling for eight years,” said Koert Van Eijk who had come over to visit a member of his family in their place of work. “It’s my first time in Beijing, I thought I’d give it a shot and I found this group very close to the hotel,” he added. As an avid jongleur, he’d even brought his own balls. Van Eijk is used to the juggling clubs in Amsterdam, where visiting enthusiasts pop in for a quick practice.

Mind and body

Making it sound casual and easy is all very well after several years of practice, but it’s also good for the brain, as much so as meditation, and good for the body, in the same fashion as martial arts.

“Juggling is my meditation,” said Moro, who studies and connects mind and body movements as part of his project the Body Foundation. He’s now been juggling, and practicing the diabolo for around 10 years. “What I’m doing gives me the tools to do things in a different way. These tools are a good way to read yourself.”

The skill set may be similar to martial arts, with reflexes, dexterity and con-trolled movements which develop with practice. But there are fundamental differences, most importantly for Moro, the lack of “martial” in the arts.

“You don’t have to think about attack and defense,” said Moro, “and there’s no hierarchy involved.” He believes that both things detract from the body’s ability to learn, for jugglers you pick up the tool you want to practice with and work from there - no belts and sashes needed (unless you really want to).

The group in Beijing practice on the whole for fun and despite the obvious novelty as a party trick, and the fact circus skills help attract the opposite sex during festival season, China hasn’t branched into the pro circuit just yet.

Just like riding a bike. Photos: Matthew Jukes

Novelty

“At the first workshop I really loved it, but I never expected my legs would be so sore,” said Michelle Yu, a newcomer to the group who had been dashing about madly to pick up the balls. Like many hanging around the hall, she’d been brought by word of mouth to the workshop. “I really like it and want to practice and improve my skills; it’ll be a lot of fun when I don’t have to keep picking up the balls!”

Standing off to one side, so as not to injure anyone, the poi spinners also wander down to the Beijing jugglers, long term residents and visitors alike. For those who’ve never seen it, poi are a pair of wires with small weights on the end.

“It’s China! I just had to come and see this place!” exclaimed Ruben Valas, who’d been entertaining people, and more dangerously distracting motorists outside with some lit fire poi. He’d been traveling, but had met Dave Cooper, a member of the group in a bar and had come down. Cooper’s chosen tool is the devil stick, another Satanic sounding form of juggling done using balanced sticks.

“I picked up devil spinning at Glastonbury in 2004. Everyone can do three balls but no further. I just messed around a bit today devil sticking the festival away…” He was only too happy to put on an impromptu performance for a local travel channel that turned up to film the group last week.

The different forms of object manipulation practiced by the Beijing group all have their own unique style, and aesthetics, but the processes are essentially the same. You’ve got to be on your toes (hands) and stay focused to keep everything airborne.

“Of all the sports of we can imagine juggling is the one which improves the most connection of synapses in brain,” said Moro. “Switching between left and right, left and right, the two sides [of the brain] keep working at the same time.”

As a general rule the jugglers meet every Monday night in Yugong Yishan, travelers and passersby always seem to gravitate and share their experience and it’s normally an opportunity to see several different types of the art at the same time. If nothing else it gives the uncoordinated man on the street the opportunity to learn what they’re capable of and not get laughed at when their balls drop.

For more information check out www.natooke.com

Geschrieben in Natooke, Media, Performers, Juggling, China, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »

26.4.2010 von Ines.

To have a low carbon footprint we had decided to take the train from Beijing to Shanghai for the China Cycle Exhibition. It was amazing but we actually managed to store all our stuff somewhere in the train. I was happy that in the end we had decided that I only took one bike. The night on the train was quite pleasant. We arrived this morning at 7:30am. As we were 3 people we had expected that we need 2 taxis. But I was happy to see that for teh upcoming World Expo Shanghai now has many big taxis that easily fit us and all our stuff. On the way to the exhibition center we passed the World Expo area. I tried to take a picture out of the fast driving taxi and the rain did not help to get a clear picture.

When we arrived we first had some breakfast at our tiny little booth space. It looked so sterile all white and empty.

Then we started our preparations. Samantha and I crafted some interesting small lights using the bicycle lights and the green bike grips.

Julien built up a display stand for his Respro anti-pollution masks.

I am not sure how many times we had to say “bu yao”. About every 2 to 3 minutes somebody came to our small booth asking us if we need chairs, tables, shelves, help with setting up something, printng of our logo and more. It was mainly because we were one of the first in the whole tent to work on our booth.

We had printed out pictures of bikes that we had built up in our shop and we tied them together to hang them on the front of our booth while still yelling “bu yao” every other minute.

We set up things a bit different than the standard small booths. Like we put the table in an angle further inside the booth and not the the front. And as we did not bring any bikes there is a lot written on our huge posters on our walls. This is the first time for me to have my own booth. It is an exciting feeling.

Samantha was happy when we finally left the exhibition center as it had been cold the whole time and had actually been raining hard.

As it was Samantha’s first time to Shanghai I took her to Nanjing Donglu and we walked to the Bund.

Here is a picture of her taking pictures.

I never saw this fountain that sometimes turns on and changes colors - I assume it is new for the World Expo.

Then we walked to the refurbished old part of Shanghai near the Bund.

Around here they have these great bicycle stands. They are flower beds on top and have a pole so that each bike can be locked to that iron pole. I think they look great in the city and are practical. Just what a pity that there are hardly any peopel cycling and using these bike stands.

Geschrieben in Natooke, Cycling, China | 1 Kommentar »

21.4.2010 von Ines.

Wow, there was an article about fixed gear in China and about my bike shop in Slate online magazine. Here are some sections of the article:

Are There Really No Hipsters in China?
Irony-resisting Chinese bicyclists have skipped the fixed-gear trend that has swept the rest of the world.
By J. David Goodman

“BEIJING—A multicolored messenger bag slung over one shoulder and short-brimmed hat cocked to the side, Nie Zheng parked his brakeless bike in the corner of a trendy cafe in the Beijing Central Business District before settling into a molded plastic chair to chat about his particular obsession. “It’s been a dream since I was a kid to get a bicycle like this,” the 40-year-old fashion photographer told me. “But no one sold them here.” It took nearly nine months, he said, to get a track bike he wanted sent from England in 2007.

Such devotion is something of a rarity among the fashion-conscious in China, where bicycles are simply not mainstream cool. In fact, this bike-saturated nation has—so far—managed to skip entirely what is arguably the biggest global bicycle fad in a generation: the fixed-gear.

And the absence is notable. Despite the rise in car ownership, China remains the world’s largest bike market, with 51 million sold in 2009, according to the China Bicycle Association. With so many bikes, is it really possible that, apart from a few devotees like Zheng, no one in China got the trend memo? …”

“… Still, despite the odds, a handful of devotees from the West believe that now is the time to import the fixed-gear trend to China.

Hanging in the window of Ines Brunn’s new fixed-gear bike shop—Beijing’s first—is a Flying Pigeon that’s been converted into a fixie, a literal link between the past and what she believes will be the future.

“People ask: Why do you open a bike shop in Beijing? I think, well, you can do anything here,” said Brunn, a German-born physicist and acrobatic fixed-gear rider. In a year, her riding group has swelled from seven to 70. “I am optimistic!” she told a Beijing audience in November. “I see signs that the perception of the bicycle is changing.” …”

I cannot remember having made such a useless comment to why I opened the Natooke shop. I love bikes and bicycle culture. And I love riding fixed gear. In the past it was hard to get parts for fixed gear bicycles in China so by opening a shop I could enable more people to enjoy riding these bikes. And of course our fixed gear bike group in Beijing had grown now to over 150 people. Because fixed gear is more like a fashion trend it inspires the young generation to get on to bikes. I am happy to see that my shop also attracts the elderly Chinese bicycle lovers. There is still some remaining bicycle culture in Beijing and I am optimistic that it will not die out.

The article was written by J. David Goodman who writes about urban cycling for the New York Times. He writes about cycling and bike culture. It is really interesting. Thank you for this article

Geschrieben in Media, Fixed Gear, China, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »

7.4.2010 von Ines.

Today we had a nice article in the Beijing Today newspaper. Here is the link to their online article.

Here is the copy of their article:
Cycling club says bikes solution to pollution, traffic jams
April 7, 2010

Smarter Than Car’s spring ride gathers 40 participants with fixed-gear bikes. Photo by Ines Brunn

By Annie Wei

In a country where every household has at least one bicycle, you would think nobody would bat an eyelash at another cycling club.

But a group-cycling event held last Sunday to welcome the arrival of spring still attracted local media like Beijing TV and the Global Times. The organizer, Smarter Than Cars (STC), is promoting bicycles as an alternative to cars as a chief mode of transportation around the capital. As a bonus, STC members are also taught bike stunts.

The club was founded by Shannon Bufton, an Australian urban designer, and Ines Brunn, a German trick cyclist and owner of Natooke, a bicycle shop. Bufton and Brunn said cycling is the best way to get around the city: it is cheap, will not get you snarled in traffic and is kind to the environment.

According to official data, 4 million cars were registered in Beijing at the end of last year, which meant increased air pollution and traffic jams. Meanwhile, the city’s main roads have bike lanes just waiting to be used.

On Sunday, 40 local and foreign STC members set off from the Drum and Bell Tower at 11 am and headed toward Chaoyang Park for a picnic lunch.

Brunn, a former member of Germany’s national artistic cycling team and who has been performing around the world for close to two decades, said she liked best the route along the Liangma Canal where cyclists can occupy almost the entire road.

The participants all rode fixed-gear bikes – models that are not capable of coasting since they have no freewheel; the sprocket is screwed directly onto the hub. Whenever the rear wheel turns, the pedals also turn in the same direction. A rider can slow or stop the bike by resisting the rotation of the pedals without needing to use the brakes. Pedaling backwards will also move the bike in that direction.

This type of bicycle is uncommon but is available at Natooke, located in Wudaoying Hutong, Dongcheng District.

After the ride, Bufton told reporters that STC is developing an iPod application that can help cyclists keep track of their distance, time and average speed. When ready, the software will be available at STC’s website, she said.

The club lines up one to two rides a month and welcomes new members. For more information about STC, visit natooke.com.

Geschrieben in Media, Cycling, Fixed Gear, China, Beijing | 1 Kommentar »