Meet BBB's Summer Fellows!
2016
2015
And before...

2016 BBB Summer Fellows

In 2016, BBB recruited high school and college students from across China and the world to join the team for an incredible 6 weeks of bike building, community engagement, and some excellent Fellow projects.
With funding from MIT Global IDEAS, Hampshire College Luce Foundation, and Stanford Hass (as well as BBB's own funding), six BBB Fellows led found "what makes them forget time" in: filming videos, interviewing neighbors to make a community message board, a bamboo strength testing machine, a BBB volunteer experience program, a bamboo bike rack and bike light, and a bunch of day-to-day projects!

With the rest of the the BBB summer team, these awesome fellows taught several bamboo bike workshops, did a 2-day bike retreat with the extended community, ate a lot of watermelon, and learned how to do cupping ;-)



Click on their introductions to see their reflections from the summer and the work they did. And the formal introduction .


GaoYang

INTRODUCING BBB TO THE NEIGHBORS (and vice versa!)

GaoYang loved exploring and meeting people. After making her bamboo bike, she rode through the neighborhood interview BBB's neighbors and bringing them to the workshop.
She and her girlfriend made a messageboard outside of BBB introducing the community neighbors, including BBBers, so that everyone could continue feeling comfortable meeting each other!

Eason

BBB VOLUNTEERS!

Eason has always thought about organizations, management, and marketing. As a junior in university in Fujian, he came up to Beijing for the summer, built a bike, and decided that he would love to get more young people in the door. He got the message out by beginning to partner with local youth hostels and businesses, developing BBB's WeChat, and connecting with other media.

Jason

HOW STRONG IS BAMBOO ANYWAY?

A musically inclined Xi'an native and a rising high-school senior, Jason finished his bamboo bike in June and started recieving all kinds of questions from his friends about whether bamboo was strong enough. Being a self-proclaimed science geek, Jason set about designing and fabricating a compact machine to test the different strengths of bamboo poles. Now anyone can swing by the workshop and see for themselves how strong bamboo can be!

Karen

BAMBOO BIKE ACCESSORIES

This polyglot arrived from Stanford University ready to learn some new fabrication skills. After making her bike, Karen worked on designing and fabricating a bike light that turns on automatically when it gets dark out and a bamboo bike rack to meet all the requests BBB gets for such an item.

Max

1ST-PERSON BIKE BUILD

Returning to China after several experiences here, Max, a high school senior, joined BBB's summer hoping to learn how he could start leading his own bamboo bike workshops in the United States. For his project he filmed a first person video of a bike build to help both himself and future builders get a sense of what it feels like.

Carol

EXTERIOR DESIGN

High schooler from Beijing, Carol, joined the team to make a bike. Unfortunately, she had to leave the program early to prepare for her college tests.

BBB 2015 Summer Fellows

BBB started it's official summer fellowship program in the summer of 2015 with five excellent high school and college students. Each fellow built a bamboo bike and engaged in his/her own community project which included community map making, a bamboo skateboard, bamboo craft workshops with the neighborhood committee, and refurbishing bikes.

Yuyuan

BAMBOO WORKSHOPS FOR NEIGHBORHOOD GRANDPARENTS AND GRANDKIDS

After finishing her final year of high school in Beijing, Yuyuan spent the summer with BBB organizing a workshop for neighborhood grandparents and their grandkids. Observing the many scraps of bamboo leftover frrom the bike builds and embracing her own love for painting and crafts, Yuyuan designed a workshop with the neighborhood committee to help the two generations create together!

Coco

REFURBISHING OLD BIKES

Coco is the BBB Fellow who laughs the most and her bright personality is infectious. She spent the summer finding old, thrown out bicycles and rebuilding them into new ones. She would like to start this program in apartment complexes where bikes often lay forgotten.

Jackie

BBB BUSINESS CONNECTS AND BAMBOO SKATEBOARDS

Jackie has the most hustle out of his BBB Fellow cohort. He spent the summer after his last year of high school as a BBB Fellow running around the hutong meeting the neighborhood businesses. He made a map of the local business for BBB community members to peruse. At the same time, Jackie loved making! In between breaths, he used bamboo to make BBB's storefront sign, fix a chair, a bamboo skateboard, and a lot more!

Ruby

COMMUNITY MAP MAKING

As Ruby prepared for her first year of university, she built a huge bamboo display of the photos of the entire community of bamboo bike makers. She also created a hand-drawn map of our neighborhood which highlighted and ranked the best public toilets ;-p

Marshall

BBB LAB

Joining BBB in 2014 and participating in every facet of its development, Marshall found he had a passion for film. Using BBB as his subject, he created all kinds of fun videos about BBB.

Geena

ILLUSTRATED BAMBOO BIKE HANDBOOK & BBB'S WEBSITE

Geena arrived at BBB in the midst of a workshop. Having come all the way from Stanford after her junior year, Geena wanted to practice her design skills. She worked to create an illustrated guide book so people could better understand how we make bamboo bikes. She also refined BBB's original website!

BBB Hall of Fame

The following are the people you will see or have seen inside, outside, and around Bamboo Bicycles Beijing. We serve in the BBB roles needed to teach people to make their own bamboo bicycles, share their stories, and have fun doing it. Some of us are wandering different parts of the globe, others are biking across China, and probably most of us are somewhere doing something that is pretty helpful to someone – That’s the community thing 🙂



Claudio Rebuzzi (肖云)

BBB Partner

Hailing all the way from South Africa, Claudio was a leading partner of BBB responsible for operations, community growth, and all things bike related. He has brought with him a wealth of experience and is our bike expert! Since he was 14 Claudio has enjoyed finding different ways to ride a bike, whether it’s jumping them off of stairs or throwing them down mountains. When not building bikes, he’s usually thinking about them. If not that, then music is his game and maybe doing a freelance article here and there on the side — usually about bikes. We love having passionate individuals in our community and in case you couldn’t tell, Claudio is really into bikes. Claudio now resides in Wales jumping around with his bamboo mountain bike!

Steve Ngo

BBB OLD HAND

Workshop Assistant from South Philadelphia, born and raised, on the computer is where he spent most of his days. Chilling inside, playing all games and relaxing until I graduated and came to Beijing and discovered Bamboo Bicycles Beijing. Since I made my first bike at workshop #3, I’ve been helping out whenever I can to spread the joy of riding such great bikes. I am a animal lover, bike, lover, and book lover. Also he likes food. lots of food. Ride On!

Diana Galimzyanova (迪安娜)

BBB OLD HAND

Meet Diana. Diana has hung out at many a workshop and once managed all of BBB’s online content and our community partnerships. She is also the only person who likes to clean up the workshop 😉 With Diana, BBB is growing from a small little neighborhood workshop to a urban community. Everyone is inspired to act on their ideas around Diana.

Elton Lau (劉胤廷)

BBB OLD HAND

Elton joined BBB as a junior studying at City University of Hong Kong. Elton’s dedication in helping out at our workshops led him to become one of BBB’s workshop assistants, and upon returning to Hong Kong he opened his own workshop, BooCycles. Elton is full of ideas and while some say that his ideas are crazy, a genius by the name of Albert Einstein once said, “For an idea that does not first seem insane, there is no hope.” – and we couldn’t agree more! Currently, He loves the idea of how BBB works as a community and enjoys sharing stories and experiences with members of the community, especially with workshop participants from around the world!

Cheryl Wong (黄爱明)

BBB OLD HAND

Cheryl created BBB's first website while interning with BBB in 2014-15. Cheryl picked up cycling more seriously when living in Australia and missed cycling when she moved back to Singapore that wasn’t very bike-friendly. After working for a bit, she decided to come to Beijing to be involved with the community and content media at BBB. She enjoys the cheap-thrills of cycling in Beijing: dodging motorists coming towards her against traffic, weaving through pedestrians strolling on the bike lane, and her personal favourite – cycling slowly intentionally when there are cars honking behind her to make way for them (in the bike lane). With her newly made bamboo bike, she has been on the hunt to find legit good coffee in Beijing.

Justin Chan

BBB OLD HAND

Justin is a workshop leader at BBB. Originally from Oregon, Justin has always loved building things and anything bicycling related. So when he got the golden opportunity to combine the two together, he jumped at it! When not working on distributing delicious Belgian beer across Beijing, he exerts his energies thinking of cool new things to build out of bamboo, like tandem bikes, bike baskets, and bike cup-holders. He also loves cooking and talking his dog for strolls in the park.

Russ Hopkins

BBB OLD HAND

Russ showed up at the workshop one day and assembled all the bike frames he could get his hands on. As BBB's first and only truly qualified bike mechanic, Russ brought some really professionalism to the workshop. We taught him to make a bamboo bike, and then he made a million more. After leaving Beijing, Russ decided to open his own bamboo bike workshop in Denver, CO: Container Collective where he teaches bamboo bike making, runs a full-fledged bike shop, and his wife runs a yoga studio. This is by far the best place to make a bamboo bike in the United States!

Antonia Burchard-Levine

FOUNDING TEAM

We cannot articulate how much Antonia has contributed to help kick things off at BBB. Always cheerful, always friendly, Antonia is our amazing Master Craftswoman and Founder of BBB. Since graduating from McGill University with a degree in International Development Studies and East Asian Studies, she has been on multiple adventures around the world, and seeing BBB come to life is one of them! Antonia is passionate about urban mobility, bicycles and all things bamboo related. She is a strong believer that building bamboo bicycles in a community workshop will not only foster creativity and hands-on learning, but also stimulate an important conversation about mobility. Having grown up in Montreal and living in and out of Beijing for 7 years, Antonia now calls Mexico City her home. She hopes to work towards a social development project in the future that involves the production of bamboo bicycles – awesome, we can’t wait!

Go Takayama

FOUNDING TEAM

Go is our go-to guy for anything related to photography and video. He grew up in Japan, spent most of his twenties in the States, and is now currently based in Beijing as a freelance photographer/videographer. Over the past 4 years, he has been in pursuit of his own ethnic passion and working on personal photography-related projects across China. Go have had exhibitions around the world and received the award of Best of American Society of Media Photographer in 2012 – yes this guy is great! Check out his incredible work at his website.

Magdalena Gonzalez

BBB OLD HAND

Magda made one bike. Then she made another. Then she started bringing friends to make bikes. This Chilean student of Chinese and all things adventuresome is a Community Leader at BBB making documentaries, organizing BBB community events, and lending a hand at workshops. Magda rides her vintage-style bamboo bike all over Beijing and often lends it out to friends who want to take a spin.