slate.com asks... "why are there no hipsters (and track bikes) in China?"

...and no "ironic" fixed gear bikes, in particular. Despite the fact that 51 million bikes were sold in China in 2009, the fixed gear trend apparently hasn't caught on there.

Why? Well, as Slate tells it, "the anemic fixie scene seems to offer an object lesson in the difficulty of marketing fashion irony here":

"There is a saying in Chinese: 'Laugh at the poor, not the prostitutes,' " Juanjuan Wu, a professor at the University of Minnesota and author of Chinese Fashion From Mao to Now, told me. "Hipster fashion only really works by communicating your irony—in other words, someone needs to 'get it.' Hipster irony in dress would most likely be misinterpreted in Chinese society as simple poverty or weirdness."

(Bonus: The Flying Pigeon Project blogs about classic Chinese bicycles. Here's the Wikipedia article about Flying Pigeon, a Chinese bike company. Fun fact: Flying Pigeon bikes have 28 x 1-1⁄2 inch wheels.)