Bandit9's Chang Jiang 750 - “Nero”

Forget the intro paragraph where I try and be clever with my big vocabulary and witty banter. Forget the jokes about really, really black things. And forget the interesting back story about Chinese Army motorbikes and a Filipino guy living in Beijing. This bike has Scott and I in absolute awe and is easily the best custom bike we've seen in a very long time. Feast your hungry eyes on Bandit9's “Nero” Chang Jiang.

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Bandit 9's Chang Jiang 750 - ‘Magnus’

China and business. The two are inseperable - like Harley riders and pony tails, or Youtube and funny cats. And in the big, fancy pants world of business and money, when you see a hot prospect you snap it up and get on board in the hope that you can turn a relatively small investment into a big pile of cash that rains down on you like a money storm - or a "golden shower," if you will. Now the world of custom motorbikes seldom ever sees such large amounts of money, but if it did and if this here Pipeburn blog were a strange kind of "cool bikes and how to grow your personal wealth" weird-ass hybrid website, then I'd be strongly recommending that you all buy stocks in Beijing's Bandit 9 Customs. Believe you me, these guys are going places and the man in the director's chair drinking the single malt and shouting at people on his phone is none other than the head-smackingly talented Daryl Villanueva. We've featured his great work before, and now we are very proud to exclusively reveal his second build, the stunning "Magnus".

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4444 Design's “Red/Black” Chang Jiang

It's funny how the world works. Two weeks ago we would have laughed if someone had told us that Chinese bikes would be featuring heavily in our upcoming posts. But here we are two weeks later and presto change-o here's our second sweet-ass Chang Jiang straight outta downtown Beijing. This one's the result of some hard work by ex-pat Thomas Koehle and his shop, 4444 Design. The more we hear about these "Changs" the more we're liking them. Cheap and reliable with a design that essentially hasn't changed since before WW2, the bike is common as smog in China and amazingly (for a Westerner, at least) you can by spares directly from the Red Army. How cool is that?

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