Xiamen Was Designed for Bikes
You may be wondering what it’s actually like to ride in the city where your bike was made. Xiamen is undoubtedly a global powerhouse in carbon fiber. The name Xiamen pops up constantly when people discuss where their bikes (both Western and Eastern) come from, but what’s it actually like to ride in a city so famous for cycling brands?
The Perfect Testing Ground
As ridiculous as it sounds, whoever shaped the landscape of Xiamen some 4.5 billion years ago, likely had a bicycle on their mind.
Xiamen has some of the most awesome routes that you’ll find anywhere on the planet – a mixture of epic climbs, buttery-smooth descents, and gravel playgrounds with 30% gradients.
(Did we mention we’re fans of being underbiked?)
This makes it the perfect testing ground for the bikes that are being designed and produced here. It’s commonplace to head out on a weekend ride and see someone in the pack testing a new unpainted frame, stickerless wheelset, or handlebar covered in marks for future adjustments.
The Benchmark
The cycling community here is full of riders who work for local brands and race for domestic teams.
It’s an area of healthy competition where everyone is trying to design the next best thing, and get it on their bike for an edge in upcoming races.
Heading out to the Tong’an countryside, a 2okm ride from Panda HQ, you’ll find yourself at Jun Ying, or “The Barracks”.
This is the benchmark climb, where locals and visitors converge to give it their best stab, and see how they stack up. The climb itself is about 16 km long, with an elevation gain of 815 meters. The current KOM time is a mere 38:37.
On any given Sunday, you’ll see a line of absolute weapons fly past in their team kits, in a bid for glory.
The Quarry
Wu Tian Shan is another one of the iconic Xiamen routes.
It feels a bit surreal as you climb up through the clouds and look down on the road that appears to be draped on the mountainside.
The epic-ness of this route is compounded when the final section of the (over one hour long climb) has some of the most brutal gradients imaginable, 500m at an average of 14% just drains the last bit of whatever you had left in the legs right.
This route has been the scene of some epic-weather rides and never disappoints!
The "Road" Less Travelled
Xiamen also dabbles as a gravel playground.
About 20 minutes from the Panda Podium HQ, there’s a water reservoir surrounded by gravel roads and some abusive 30% gradients.
If we ever need to get out and give some new gravel or off-road gear a thrashing, this is the first place we start.
There are an infinite number of little paths and and unexplored routes in the mountains which always means some interesting and challenging riding.
One specific descent dubbed “The Dominator” comes to mind which is really just a downhill mountain bike track at this point, but we’ve found ourselves “yeeting’ down it on gravel bikes and just hoping for the best on more than one occasion.
(Once again, did we mention we’re fans of being underbiked?)
The Locals
What this all boils down to is that Xiamen is home to an unbelievable number of brands powered by passionate cyclists.
They are constantly innovating and testing the next big thing in the hopes of bringing you some world beating gear.
Frantically designing and developing during the week and out testing their ideas that same weekend.
Click on one of the links below to check out some of the best cycling brands Xiamen has to offer!
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