PAUL Stepanek can't stand cycling in the city, which makes him an oddity among Shanghai bike store owners.

"It kind of sucks to be riding in the city, quite frankly," Stepanek said. "I've had enough of it myself."

Although Stepanek, 38, is clearly in a minority among the thousands of Shanghainese cyclists who clog the streets each day, he's not alone in wanting to escape.

Many expat bikers have taken to the surrounding countryside to ride the hills and trails of Pudong and Hangzhou, often with the club Stepanek started in 1998, the Shanghai Bike Club.

Rough start

However, when Stepanek first started biking in Shanghai, things weren't so simple.

"I wanted to buy a decent bike for myself and couldn't find one," said Stepanek, owner and founder of Bohdisattva Mountain Bikes. He added that all the big mountain bike sizes seemed to be exported.

Stepanek was confused, recalling that in the United States, most bikes were either made in Taiwan or the Chinese mainland.

Stepanek finally bought one, which he said "looked kind of nice." It broke in less than a day.

"Literally, in an afternoon," Stepanek recalled. "I pedalled the pedals off of it."

Stepanek then decided to track down a bicycle-exporting factory. He sat down with them and designed his own bikes.

"I just bought some for my friends," he said.

However, his friends weren't the only ones interested. The orders started increasing and soon rose from 10 bikes to 30.

"Those 30 come in," Stepanek said, "and all of a sudden I'm 'Paul the bike guy'."

When it started becoming a hassle to him, with a new order for 80 bikes and his living room - not to mention all his free time - occupied with assembling them, Stepanek decided to turn all this into a business. "I gotta make some money or it's not going to be worth my time to be doing this," he said.

Looking back, Stepanek believed that it all happened "accidentally".

China boom complex

Accidentally or not, it seemed to be in the cards. Stepanek came from a large family and his parents encouraged all of his brothers and sisters to start their own businesses.

In 2000, Stepanek started his own management consulting firm, USActive, in Shanghai. He described the Bohdisattva store as a hobby.

Fluent in Mandarin, Stepanek first had thoughts of China in his teens at his family's summer home in northern Wisconsin. After perusing what he remembers as either a Newsweek or Time Magazine article on Japan's booming economic success, Stepanek questioned its ability to last. A neighbouring librarian told him that China would be the next "big boom" economy.

By this time, Stepanek started to piece together the puzzle of his future career. First, he would go to university to study engineering, graduate, then work for a couple of years. After that he would get an MBA, work for a few more years and try and get himself sent to China.

More than halfway through university, his plan hit a snag and started lagging.

"In the third year of engineering, I was like, I've had enough of that," he said. "To get to my goal, this is the wrong road to take."

The result was a drastic leap from the graphs, charts, and complex math of engineering to the tomes and equally complex Chinese characters of an East Asian studies degree.

The road to Shanghai

"So I changed the road map," Stepanek said. "I flipped it on its head."

He soon won a fellowship to study Mandarin in Taiwan at the National Taiwan Normal University. In his second year, Stepanek started working for various companies in Taiwan and attending school part-time in the evenings. He returned to the United States to graduate, eventually making his way back to Taiwan and then to China mainland.

"I've never looked back," Stepanek said. "And I've been in manufacturing ever since."

His years spent in Taiwan were the start of his love for cycling.

During this time, Stepanek's two brothers started biking across the United States in sections - repeating a pattern of flying in to a city, biking for two or three days, and flying back. Stepanek joined them for part of their trek.

Stepanek said he also thought cycling was a better way to see China's countryside than hiking.

He named the company after a term he came across in his East Asian studies.

A Bohdisattva is a Jesus-like figure in Buddhism: a being motivated by compassion and love, seeking enlightment for themselves and others. Literally translated, the term means enlightened being. Stepanek doesn't claim the bikes are enlightened or that they help attain it, but the company's slogan remains "actively pursuing enlightenment".

Stepanek described his bike company as filling a niche that wasn't being served in the Chinese market. He called his bikes "simple, sexy and functional," but didn't have many kind words to spare for his competitors.

He said the other bikes in Shanghai - including, no doubt, the one he broke - were "gaudy". He also said the other bikes are plastered with decals and splashed with neon colours to hide their awkward components and poor construction.