Topic from Mushy Brain Syndicate: The bikes we’ve had and why we thought they were awesome
The 1st real bike that I had, was my Lifan 50cc. A Chinese motorbike, with obviously only 50cc.
I bought it from a Canadian guy from the beijinger.com He sold it to me for 1,500 yuan. I was 24 I think at the time, and I hadn’t driven a motorbike since I was 10 or so years old on my Aunty and Uncle’s farm. I picked it up with my girlfriend at the time and after a quick run-about around a car park to get used to it again, we took off on a 40 minute journey back to where we were living. (Shunyi to Shaoyaoju)
Got to tell you… you learn pretty quickly about how to drive in China when you’re only semi-confident on the motorbike, are introduced to crazy busy traffic on the 京密路and have got someone you care about sitting behind you.
It had 5 gears…maybe only 4 actually.., in a weird style called a ‘round the world gearbox’… What this meant was that all gears were a down-press. 1st gear-down, 2nd gear – down, 3rd – down, 4th –down… and then you would press down again…and it’d go into Neutral. If you pressed it down again …it’d go back into 1st.
I’m not sure why it was designed like this… maybe it makes it easier to cruise up to traffic lights or something..
But it can be very dangerous… because you may be going 80-100 on the ring-roads, be in the final gear and think… maybe I have 1 more… you will press down to change gears, nothing… press it again and you’re back into 1st.
As a friend found out as he was borrowing my bike. … 80kmph in 4th, then bamm straight into 1st.
Luckily it slipped out of gear …I guess due to the stress… and he didn’t really damage anything.
The bike was a copy of a Honda 50cc pictured here. 
The chain/ belt was enclosed so that it wouldn’t easily come off; it had tubed tires back & front, drum brakes front & rear, and my version was the more classical version, so it actually looked like a motorbike… there were some that looked more like a scooter. 
Mine had chrome look dials, and a circular headlamp.
[pictured here next to my old Suzuki en125 (blue)]
I’ve got to say they Chinese copied the main parts pretty well. The engine was flawless, gearbox…while very strange.. never had an issue… in fact Lifan sells it’s engine + gearbox combinations to other manufacturers for them to use… but yep, like most Chinese-made bikes… it was everything around the engine & gearbox that had problems.
The positive side to all of this is that I learnt a shitload about motorbikes in Chinese because everything would break. I would be at the repair shop maybe once every 2 weeks. Because it was what I would call a ‘farmers bike’ – just a standard Chinese bike, meant to be as fixable as possible with parts available everywhere.. .it was incredibly easy and cheap to fix.
Although, because all the parts were Chinese they would continually break… but it meant that I really knew those part names and could communicate pretty clearly with my local mechanic by the end of it.
I saw that mechanic so many times in fact, that during the time that I had the bike, we became friends. He’d always charge me a fair price, and sometimes ask me to translate for other foreigners that didn’t speak any Chinese.
After the back wheel got punctured for maybe the 17th time, I switched to a heavy duty dirt looking tyre which was great, and never broke. I never had to replace the chain.. but the plastics of the indicators were inflexible and kept snapping, and in a heavy rainstorm the carburettor died.
So I replaced it with a Japanese one.. and never had any problems after that.
It had a kick-starter and as it WAS a carburetorred engine and had a choke…it meant that you could leave it outside in the minus 15 to -20 at night, and in the morning, with the right combination of kicking the shit out of the kick starter and adjusting the choke…it would start every time.
It also had a reserve tank… which was great.. I don’t think it had a fuel gauge, but you would just move the bike from side to side to hear if there was fuel in it or not.
It was light too.. I think it weight less that 100 kg. and came with a metal cargo rack which wasn’t just helpful for carrying shit you shouldn’t put on a motorbike… but you could use it to pick it up if you really wanted. …you couldn’t lift it over your head.. but you could move it around very easily.
Bikes parked in a way that blocks you off?… no worries.. just bounce it into position.
I once travelled with a Mexican friend to the DJ market nearby (女人街, Agricultural exhibition centre area) to.. try and repair some speakers. Myself driving, my Mexican friend in the middle and that giant box on the back… we might have done an unintentional wheelie at the lights just because there was so much weight on the bike.
I also managed to carry 3 grown men including myself on that bike.
It was honestly the perfect bike for Beijing.. ring road speed limits were 80 km/h, and this thing.. believe it or not could go 100… although it was super unstable at that speed.
Because it was light, and relatively easy to ride, I taught many friends how to drive a motorbike with that bike. I even lent it to at least 3 friends as they were learning and didn’t have a bike of their own.
I taught my good friend Fin how to ride with this bike, my ex-gf, my Mexican friend, a Moroccan friend, a Chinese housemate…and a few more.. however I can’t remember exactly who.
Because it looked like….well… not something amazing.. it didn’t really have to be super secure at night. I had 1 small measly chain that I’d put around the back wheel and that’s it.
At the time I was riding it, the majority of foreigners I knew were riding R9’s. They were 150cc CVT like scooters which were very easy to ride but was not.. in my mind, a proper motorbike as you didn’t have full control of everything. The clutch and actual gears provides a lot of control in my mind.
All of these were getting stolen because anybody could ride them.. they took little to no skill. But my Lifan, was never stolen…just because I guess… It didn’t look appealing enough.
Top tip- if you’re going to park outside…don’t wash your motorbike… make it look as unappealing as possible…and then it won’t get stolen.
Did I have a license to drive this bike?
Hahahah no. Previously I’d only driven a motorbike (Honda 50cc) on my Auntie’s farm…which is private property when I was 10 years old or something… so no license for me.
I had my Australian car license but not a motorbike one, or any Chinese driving license.
The bike did not have plates… however actually if the bike is 50cc or less then you’re allowed to have a blue plate.. and from what I was told previously.. apparently for a long time 50cc and below didn’t need a plate.
However as is always the case in China, petrol station attendants nor the police ever really knew the traffic subtleties…they just knew what they assumed to be true.
So the general rule of thumb was.. don’t get caught.
We bought a 京B number plate off some dude selling bikes in a small shop.. I think it was stolen actually. It was a real plate…but didn’t belong to the bike. You could tell because the metal was slightly thicker than the fake plates.
I would share the plate between the Lifan and the scooter thing my ex-girlfriend eventually got. You’d just put it in your back-pack…not even on the bike, and take it out whenever you’d fill up with petrol. After a while, they started asking to see the license…which neither of us had… so we asked one of the mechanics… and he just went ‘yep, I’ll organise that for you’ For which when we asked.. is it real? He said “well, it’ll work… don’t worry it’s what everyone does …the legit process is too 麻烦 (troublesome)”
I drove that thing very safely…well as much as you could do in Beijing in 2011.. For instance I drove on the Ring roads…which technically you weren’t supposed to do, but in my justified way.. its better to be there than on the side roads, with all manner of cars, busses, electric scooters, bicycles and other motorbikes starting and stopping, and pulling in and out without every considering to indicate their intentions. Plus on the ring roads traffic went only in 1 direction. Other roads… even though that was SUPPOSED to be the case, it couldn’t always be guaranteed.
Why don’t I still have it?
Well I was riding it back from my friend Fin’s place… after he’d just bought his own motorbike and didn’t need this to practice on anymore… and just as I was relatively nearby my house (like less than 1 subway station away) the belt decided to come off within the cover half-way across a traffic light.
After swearing at the bike… and kicking it a few times…which rather unsurprisingly didn’t fix the problem I dragged it to the side of the road, chained it to a sturdy looking pole and walked home.
I had a Small Suzuki at the time, so I just drove that until I was mentally prepared to come back and deal with the Lifan. But when I came back to the location I left it, it was gone. Instead there was a note on the pole that said that if it was my bike, I could come down to the local police station show my ID, my license and registration papers and come and collect it.
Yep…wasn’t worth the risk.. so that was the end of it.
That being said, it more than paid for itself in terms of enjoyment, learning, and convenience.
I’m very happy I owned that bike.
So positives of the Lifan?
-Cheap
-Ultra fuel-efficient
-Learnt how to drive in a chaotic environment
-Learnt how to drive a different kind of bike with a different kind of gearbox
-Learnt all about motorcycle parts in Chinese because they always broke + learnt what was the likely problem with a bike and could narrow it down so I wouldn’t get ripped off at the mechanics
-It was the key to freedom in my early Beijing days… didn’t have to rely on taxis, busses, or anyone else; could transport myself and gf, or friends to places we wanted to be
-Introduction to number of great Chinese guys who worked on bikes
-Was able to teach friends how to ride
-Light, cheap to repair, could carry a lot
-Could start in any kind of weather due to the choke and kick-starter
-Wasn’t appealing enough for thieves
-Really got me into motorbikes… could see the potential just through this fairly basic bike
Less-than-amazing points:
-broke down a lot, every 2 weeks was at the mechanics repairing something (mostly repairing tyres, or inner tubes)
-Once you relied on it, and were counting on it to get you somewhere it would ‘coincidentally’ develop a problem
Here’s some pictures of the bike
[After teaching my friend Zac how to ride a motorbike, he borrowed it for a couple of months. I had the blue Suzuki pictured below]
[Zak & I worked at the same company, so I’d see the Lifan every other day… the other bike is a CJ750 chinese copy of a German BMW sidecar I think. A very unreliable, but decent looking piece of shit which normally have the sidecars attached and were quite common in Beijing]
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