Brunn demonstrates a trick.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"At the time, if you still rode a bike it meant you were poor," Brunn says.

It was not as though she had not done her bit trying to bring the fall in sales to a halt, or at least to slow it.

After her initial visit to the country she had left, but returned in 2004 with the intention of staying permanently. Aware that the number of cyclists was falling, she began working with environmental organizations encouraging more people to adopt the two-wheeled lifestyle.

"People were listening but they didn't want to change," she says. "I realized that trying to change people's attitudes toward bicycles was not working."

She opened the fixed-gear workshop believing that if cycling was presented as a trendy lifestyle this would greatly help promote the use of cycles.

Her customers were not only individuals but governmental organizations, too, such as the European Union embassy in Beijing.

Brunn then opened another workshop, in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.