HKU Bulletin February 2013 (Vol. 14 No. 2)

Books Women in particular became enthusiastic cyclists and an estimated 30 to 50 per cent of bicycles sold in London in the 1890s were to women. “Bicycle mobility provided a very visible sign of the transformations and conflicts in gender relations and in the (re-)gendering of social space in late Victorian society,” Dr Smethurst says. The material and symbolic presence of the bicycle made it a common object of study in art (particularly the new field of lithography) and literature. “It became an expression of the struggle of the mind to overcome the inertia of matter,” he says. Slow to take up in China In Asia, Japan was the first to modernise and as such was the first to adopt the bicycle, soon producing its own. China was one of the last places in Asia to embrace the bicycle, despite the pervasive image of urban streets clogged with thousands of Chinese on their bikes. The Chinese were curious but largely indifferent to the bicycle when foreigners brought it to the Treaty Ports in the 1890s. Workers could not The bicycle has been all things to all people, associated with both Chinese communism and Western industrial capitalism, high-tech luxury and back-to-nature movements, women’s liberation and patriarchy. Mix that together with its intimate associations with modernity and continued symbolic strength in a post-modern world, and it is a rich subject of study. Dr Paul Smethurst, Associate Professor of School of English, is putting the finishing touches to a book that looks at how the bicycle as an everyday object has reflected social change and at the same time marked the modern experience of space and time, starting from the West and spreading around the globe. afford it and rich Chinese were more inclined to pay others to carry them in sedan chairs or in rickshaws. The first Chinese bicycle factory was established by a Japanese entrepreneur around 1930. “The bicycle industry began to figure in the state policy of the nationalists, but when the communists came to power in the 1940s, the bicycle was yolked to another revolution in which it would become an emblem for a unified, working-class China,” Dr Smethurst says. The decline of the bicycle in China is indicative of economic and social change. The number of bicycles on the road in China decreased by 35 per cent between 1995 and 2005, falling from 670 million to 435 million, while the number of registered motor vehicles in China has now reached 233 million. Internal contradictions A significant difference between the introduction of the bicycle in Asia and Africa compared with the West was that it reinforced a gender divide. While it was associated with the New Woman in “As a prime example of everyday technology, the bicycle lends itself to comparative historical and trans-regional analysis. It is the subject of a complex history in which its cultural value provides a lexicon for the social formation of global modernity,” he says. Predecessors to the modern bicycle were mainly clumsy playthings of the rich, but when the safety bicycle was developed in Europe in the 1880s – incorporating new inventions such as the ball bearing, pneumatic tire and reverse tension spokes in wheels – it captured the imagination of the wider public. “A seminal product of the second industrial revolution, the bicycle’s other connection with modernity the West, in developing countries women were largely excluded. The bicycle continues to be imbued with many meanings. In recent years it has been presented as a prop for selling designer clothes, and a vehicle of choice for anti-globalisation campaigners. And while trendsetters from New York to Shanghai splash out thousands of dollars for a bicycle for ostentatious exercise, you would find it hard to locate a children’s model in Africa where bicycles remain an object of necessity. “Given its global everyday social embeddedness, the future of the bicycle seems assured; it continues to operate as a telling, if contradictory, symbol of the times,“ Dr Smethurst adds. The Bicycle will be published by Reaktion Books as part of their ‘Objekt’ series later this year. M was social modernity and the imperative for mobility,” he says. Social mobility The mobility provided by the bicycle enlarged local labour pools and empowered workers, as well as provided recreational exercise. It influenced the development of the suburbs and changed relations between city and countryside. As it spread through the classes it became a social leveller, going from a novelty for the wealthy to a recreational vehicle for the middle class and a necessity for the working class. Each generation has reinvented it and found new purposes for it, up to the latest carbon fibre luxury bicycles costing US$7,000. ! " # $ # % Cycling through Space andTime The bicycle was the first mass-produced form of human-powered transport. As such, it’s a fascinating symbol of the world’s progress and yearnings over the past 120 years, as a forthcoming book illustrates. It became an expression of the struggle of the mind to overcome the inertia of matter. ü ý & ' ( ) * + ÿ ' ý + , - 41 The University of Hong Kong Bulletin Feburary 2013