Social cycles

A Beijing workshop helps to build community as well as bamboo bicycles. Clare Buchanan reports. Clare Buchanan

Bamboo. For years pandas have eaten it and builders have climbed up it, but in a workshop nestled in a traditional Beijing hutong it's being transformed into beautiful, bespoke bicycles.

As the Chinese capital stirs to life on a Saturday morning, I pick my way through a pile of bamboos, which I'm supposed to have turned into a bike frame by the end of the weekend.