Deus exmachina

Liu says it took her only a matter of minutes to learn how to ride a motorcycle, and her two wheels have been indispensable in helping her get to photo shoots on time.

"There are so many traffic jams in Beijing that often I could easily be late for work if I drove a car or took a taxi."

Liu says she now makes a habit of going on a motorcycle trip of about 2,000 kilometers once a year. Last month, she says, she spent a fortnight or so traveling from Xi'an, Shaanxi province, to Dunhuang in Gansu.

"When we got to Dunhuang it started to hail and the sensation of hail raining on me at four thousand meters above sea level was amazing."

At weekends or after work, Liu threads her way through heavy traffic and rides in suburban Beijing.

"When you're racing along on the motorcycle you can throw all of your work cares to the wind. It's great fun."

Liu says her top priority is safety, and she pays keen attention to changes in road conditions. She has never had a fall, she says.

Novice females should ride a smaller motorcycle because women are normally not as tall and as strong as men, she says. They can then slowly build up to bigger models.

Bitten by the motorcycle bug, Li Qi, 27, of Hunan province, quit a job in the media in Hainan province a year ago and returned to the capital of Hunan, Changsha, to work at the local branch of BMW Motorrad, a brand of the German car and motorcycle maker. The company sold 400 motorcycles in the first eight months of this year, more than double the number sold in the corresponding period last year, he says.

"Getting into the motorcycle business has made me very happy," Li says, adding that he can now mix work with pleasure, in the best of ways.

His love of motorcycles began nine years ago, the first motorcycle he owned being a rusty secondhand model costing 1,000 yuan ($157) in 2008. These days he gets around on a sparkling BMW model that cost him more than 20,000 yuan.

He has no other hobbies, and he does not frequent bars, he says, and he learned how to ride like a professional the hard way.

It involved a three-day trip from Zhuzhou in Hunan to Lipu county in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, an odyssey that remains fresh in his memory.

"I went there to join a kind of motorcycle celebration event in 2009."

He was unwilling to spend big sums on what he thought was unnecessary gear, such as gloves and raincoat, which cost more than 1,000 yuan at the time, he says. It rained for much of the 600-kilometer trip and the cheap raincoat he wore failed to prevent him from being drenched.