Shunyi district is an oasis of calm in the north of Beijing. Home to residential compounds with names such as Champagne Town, where long-term expatriates and well-heeled Beijingers live in gated seclusion, it's not the sort of area in which you'd expect to find a motorcycle gang. But most weekends the streets echo to the roar of powerful bike engines as the Beijing Dragons gather for their weekly ride.
A motley crew of businessmen, corporate types and diplomats, the Dragons share an obsessive love for a piece of vintage technology that originated in Germany in the late 1930s but is now as Chinese as chopsticks. The Chang Jiang motorbike, with its distinctive sidecar, was once the primary mode of transport for police and the PLA. Now, the bikes are playthings for foreigners and white-collar locals.
'They're just cool. There's no other bike out there built on 1938 tooling,' says Jim Bryant, a 53-year-old American from New Hampshire who organises the Beijing Dragons. 'But the main attraction is that you can go for a long ride and take your family with you in the sidecar and on the back. My kids love it. A lot of time we'll be out and we'll almost get run off the road because car drivers will be trying to take pictures with their cellphones.'
Known to their devotees as 'Changs', growing numbers of the bikes can be seen weaving through traffic in Beijing and Shanghai. These are no ordinary motorcycles. Reminiscent of the old German army bikes that can be seen in countless war movies, they're fitted with hefty, thirsty 750cc engines. Chang Jiangs would be illegal under mainland traffic laws, which prohibit bike engines bigger than 250cc, were it not for the fact that their sidecars enable them to be classified as three-wheeled vehicles.
For the people who ride them, they're an all-consuming passion. Bryant first came to China in the early 1980s to open a chain of shoe factories in Shanxi province.
In the 90s, he introduced Subway sandwich shops to the mainland. Then, in 1997, his wife bought him a Chang Jiang for his birthday and his life changed. Now, Bryant runs Frank's Classic Sidecars and spends his days restoring and customising the bikes.