Tour de Dandong

What happens when 25 Canadians stage a race on motorized roadsters through rural China to the North Korean Border? A lot of fun apparently.

Craig Engleson, should know as he was the "Tour de Dandong" organizer. Starting in the resort town of Dalian, the tour wound it's way over 2.5 days to Dandong on the North Korean border and the "Broken Bridge". This is probably as close a most westerners ever get to Kim Jung Il without being imprisoned.

Craig says "Basically, the concept was to have 5 bike companies become teams and we then had a race from Dalian to Dandong over the course of three days. Fei Ge, Feng Huang, Yong Jiu, Jin Lu and Hong Qi were the bikes that made the ride. 5 guys per team.

The idea came from a love and respect of Chinese bikes and wanted to put them to some type of test - both ourselves and the bikes. Everyday we see working men rides these things around and many of us just fell in love with them. We hired 2 mechanics to come along and help out and two unit camera crew to document the race."

The race was not without it's sense of humor of course. Each team adopted a fashionable dress code in semi-standard Chinese regalia which you can see above. Each team adopted some tpye of uniform. SOme better than others. In my opinion, Team Yong Jiu (Forever) made the best choice with the Security uniform.

The powertrain?..."We sourced the bikes with 9 horsepower, 2-stroke engines that we commonly see the average working man use in this area"

One can hardy expect to go nearly 400KM over rough roads with a buzzy little engine and not experience some difficulties. Over the course of the tour, they experienced their fair share of breakdowns, but seemingly found help wherever they went. 

There was a fair amount of do-it-yourself help as well.

The road itself lent for many picturesque moments of the riders. Note that in the right hand picture, both bikes have had their rear reflector shaken loose.

  

 
 

And at the end of the race, everyone arrives safely, with a well weathered machine and a helluva story to tell.

Be sure to can check out all the details about the ride at the Darren Brown's blog, Madness in the Middle Kingdom.  He was the race marshall. Craig Engleson's blog, The Engleson Files also gives a fine blow by blow account. All pictures are by Hubert Wong. Craig also has about 13 hours of film which he is editing for a documentary.

Comments

[EC]

I'll bet those guys were sore after that ride. It would have been worth it though!

Keep up the good work! It sure is good to get perspective that I may have never had otherwise.

[Rick]

I want one of those engines!

[B-rent]

The flying pigeon project lacks exclusive pictures of an actual flying pigeon. Fei ge all the way!!!

[JS]

Umm...incorrect, for both the bicycle and the bird.

Scan the blog for the bikes. Go here for the birds.

http://www.flyingpigeonproject.org/2008/12/flying-pigeons-and-flying-pigeons.html#tp

[Tony]

I am still in Dalian and the Chinese bike loving foreigners still have a presence here! We spent all last summer and most of the fall riding 3-4 times per week. Most of the time was spent venturing to the beach in Jinshitan, small village like tourist area on the coast, having a good local meal and a tossing back a few beers. We have even escalated our interests to the CJ750, or Chang Jiang 750 sidecar motorcycle.