A smiling Xu Bin stands next to his fourth-generation gyroplane, by Andy

I first became acquainted with the legend of the LBX who built his own flying machine about two years ago when a friend sent me a link to this viral video on Youku. I was blown away at the time but hadn’t given any thought to the feat — or any of the other LBX-built flying jalopies popping up on the internet — until Andy and I got a chance tip from our Free More News interviewer, Lu Junting. Responding to my personal interest in aviation, she told us she had followed for a story — and more importantly knew how to contact — the nongcun Leonardo of web fame: Xu Bin (徐斌). Armed with his general location, Quzhou city in southwestern Zhejiang province, and his cell phone number, we made plans to stop in on our way west to Jiangxi.

A few days before arrival in Quzhou, I called and arranged a meeting. Xu sounded understandably confused on the phone — “You’re three foreigners… riding bikes… around China… and you want to talk to me…?” — but in the end all was arranged. Once our injured teammate/photographer Andy had bused into town to rejoin us, we set our meeting on the night of Christmas Eve.

As promised, he was waiting for us in the new economic zone way outside the city center, looking even more confused than he had sounded on the phone to see three scraggly bearded foreigners piling out of a cab to see him. All the same, he transferred us into his little Toyota sedan parked in the courtyard of his family’s hotel next door and drove us to a fish restaurant he knew around the corner. Once in, the 35 year old Bin, about 5’4″ and weighing maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, finally asked what we were up to. He betrayed a glimmer of disappointment upon learning that we were not in fact foreign aviation experts, the same disappointment he expressed later to find out that we Americans haven’t quite achieved Jetson’s-like frequency of personal aircraft ownership.

From Farmer to Flier

Xu Bin, you see, was born a peasant in Jiangshan about forty kilometers from where we were dining. His father had been a carpenter (in addition to being a farmer, like everybody else at the time) who had learned how to build water pumps. Once he had the art down and the planned economy was opened up, the elder Xu hung up his carpenter’s square to open a small manufacturing operation out of his house. It was in this environment that Xu Bin grew up and acquired all the machining skills he would later put to more creative uses.

Even before his father opened the small shop, Xu had always been technically inclined. He recalled for us his disdain for the laborious chore of planting rice seedlings and how he invented a motorized planting machine to ease the burden. Later, around the age of 19, he assembled from a salvaged small tractor engine and various scrap parts a three wheel motorcycle for his family’s ease in getting around their mountainous village. At the time, motorcycles existed in various places but were neither available nor affordable to such a backwater family as Xu’s.

Xu studied only to the second year of high school before dropping out to work in his father’s workshop full time. School, it dawned upon him, “couldn’t teach me anything useful anymore.” In the following year or two he “learned all there was to learn” in the factory about simple pump parts, the designs to which his conservative father never allowed him to modify. Brimming over with unvented creative energy, Bin saw it was time to get to some really important business: realizing his lifelong dream of building a flying machine.

He began in 1995 with the grandiose vision of assembling his own helicopter. Mind you, back then the internet wasn’t available for peasants like him. So he had to rely on pictures in periodicals and whatever technical material was available in circulation — so not a whole hell of a lot. Unfortunately, it turned out that helicopters are about the most impossibly complicated machines around. “America is so advanced, but look at all the helicopter crashes they have,” he said by way of explanation.

However, a few years later his lucky day finally came when he first read about gyroplanes (autogyro is the formal name). It’s the easiest flying machine for a novice to build and arguably the safest, since it glides gently to the ground under its rotors in the event of engine failure. Thus it happened that with some rough designs he had seen in the magazine, his few years of accumulated amateur aeronautical knowledge, and a whole lot of gumption, he headed into his father’s shop and got to work. Several times over the next few years he polished his designs and paid frequent visits to the China Helicopter Design Research Institute in nearby Jingdezhen. At the same time he built a test gyroplane to be hauled from behind his friend’s truck to teach himself how to handle the thing in the air — an internationally accepted training method he employed hundreds of times before actually attempting powered flight. Over the years that he worked on his machine, the internet gradually became available, allowing Xu to further polish his creation, which he frequently tested at extremely low heights and times to guarantee its safe handling.

When finally he did fly more than a foot off the ground in 2005, the media was there (video in Chinese). He took off not far from his father’s new pump factory, which had moved to the industrial zone of Quzhou a few years earlier. After the flight, which stirred up instant buzz all over the country, Xu was summoned to the local Civil Aviation Bureau (民航局), where he was told that he had “brought honor to Quzhou.” In a pretty clever political move, he had painted “Made in Quzhou” on the side of his gyroplane for the event. The next time he flew with cameras in the area, however, the headlines highlighted the flight’s illegality, rather than the innovation. That’s where the trouble started.

The Fight for the Right to Flight

The authorities were less cordial on his second trip to the Civil Aviation Bureau of Quzhou: “Who told you you could go around flying like this?” The eventual result of that little visit was a 10,000 yuan (~$1500 USD) fine and a warning not to violate again — or else.

The law for which he had been cited was flying without permission, not flying an unlicensed machine. According to Xu, his aircraft is perfectly legal in China even without a license. The laws governing aviation in China, he told us, were essentially borrowed directly from the US aviation code, including those concerning ultralights. The US law allows for aircraft under 155 kg and carrying less than 19 L of fuel to fly without restrictions. Unfortunately for Xu, however, what’s written on books often doesn’t carry over into actual implementation in China’s legal system. Local officials play stalling games every time he requests a takeoff, so he’s effectively forbidden to fly in his home of Quzhou.

In an attempt to throw down the gauntlet, Xu made a trip to Shanghai to speak with members of the State Aviation Bureau, whom he described as extremely glib but completely unwilling to hear his case. He stepped it up a notch by bringing press cameras with him the second time out, which elicited an unexpected reaction. “They talk and talk when I’m alone with them, but show the officials a camera, and they shut right up,” said Xu. Even when he threw a copy of the actual aviation code, highlighting the portion about ultralights, onto the desk of the Bureau in Shanghai, they told him flatly, “No go. We can’t give you authorization.” Eventually a few months later, they gave him a call and admitted, “We’ve discussed the matter out and reread the law. We see no reason you can’t fly as long as you get authorization from the local bureau.” Unfortunately, the locals have yet to see it Xu’s way and continue to give him the runaround.

Now that he’s pretty sure that testing his luck again with this bunch will end in something pretty bad, he doesn’t try flying more than a few feet off the ground at home base anymore. Nevertheless, the resourceful Xu has been successful in finding ways to get airborne. His entire gyroplane, including rotors, can be deconstructed in two hours and packed into his Toyota sedan (yes, it’s really that small). This mobility allows him to bring his air show on the road frequently, to various localities where he’s been invited to put on exhibitions, to visit friends in more flight-friendly areas, and to any other unpopulated areas where he can get the gall up to fly. This summer Xu plans to travel to Xinjiang in response to the invitation of a flying club there to showcase the craft and try to break some new personal height records. So far he’s gotten his craft up to a height of around 500 meters and a top speed of around 100 km/h.

What’s more, Xu has adopted several “apprentices” in the art of building and flying gyroplanes. The two closest of these kindred spirits come from Anhui and Guangdong. Both have much better relations with their local aviation bureaus, and Xu often finds himself making the trip to visit them for a spot of implicitly permitted, semi-illegal fying. In addition to granting him access to more aviation sites, his apprentices, and by extension all those to whom they teach the trade, are all potential customers in Xu’s grander scheme: manufacturing and selling custom gyroplane parts.

A Look to the Future

After all the stories had been told, and we’d stuffed ourselves on the delicious food, Xu rushed to the counter to pay for the meal despite the fact we’d invited him and were all screaming with hundred RMB notes in our hands at the server. Despite his quirky history, the man’s Chinese core comes out when it’s time to display generosity. After dinner, he loaded us in the car again to drive us over to his pride and joy for picture taking and more discussion. When we arrived at his dad’s pump parts factory five minutes later, I commented how conveniently everything was spaced. “Oh yes, reporters love coming to interview me. We put them up in the family hotel, where we live. The factory is just around the corner, and so is the site where I first flew.”

A worker in the Xu family factory produces pump parts, by Andy

Once past the locked gate, the barking dog, and the old man sleeping behind the front door, we were inside a little wonderland of machines, pump parts, wildly strewn scrap metal, and… several chickens, just in case we had forgotten we were in China. Right in the corner adjacent to the door sat the shining beauty, which honestly looked like a glorified three wheel go-kart with a Chinese flag themed aileron welded to the back. Xu led the close inspection, pointing out the throttle, the steering stick, and all the other moving parts he had assembled from scratch. In a shed out back which seemed to have been the site of an explosion, Xu showed us three more gyroplanes — including a two-seater — in various states of disassembly. “This is my workshop,” explained the quintessential messy genius. The engines, the most expensive bit, were all secondhand, Japanese-made machines picked up here and there. He claims to be able to build an entire gyroplane on less than 40,000 yuan (~$5900).

One thing was missing from all of the planes though — hey, where are the rotors? He led us back to his fourth-generation model and pointed at the rotors he had disassembled to fit the machine through the door easily and which go back on, “in a snap.”But then I noticed behind the machine not just one rotor, but nearly a hundred aluminum blades stacked neatly against the wall, and finally Xu’s plans for the future unfolded.

“It’s illegal for me to sell a whole gyroplane, or even to sell something as a part of one under current regulations in China. Of course, I could try, but if there were a problem, they’d come find me.” So what Xu does instead is sell parts he personally machines in the factory or rotor blades of his own design that he has manufactured by the hundreds. Since the essential parts he sells are almost unheard of in China, and he’s the biggest name in gyroplanes due to his media attention, business has been growing exponentially for Xu. Once he realized he could prosper from his gyroplane business alone, he washed his hands of the pump business and devoted all his energies to his new endeavor. Currently he’s adding an additional wing to his father’s pump factory, under construction when we visited him, which he told us will house his own aeronautical works — with neatly arranged pieces and machines, he promised — and even his own employees one day. Once his gyroplane line is more or less perfected, Xu hopes to begin experimenting with other forms of ultralight flight, maybe even fixed wings.

Is he worried that the regulations won’t slacken up, or that his business will be shut down? “I’m convinced that over time the officials will understand that this is harmless and allow us to fly with fewer restrictions.” Is he worried that the economy might tank and discourage potential buyers from frivolously spending on flying gadgets? “As far as I’m concerned, everything always has to get better, so the economy should keep on getting better too.”

That night the pictures we took came out a little dark, and so we met him again on Christmas morning for general cheer and more shots of the flying gismos. This time around he met us with his personal business cards, which featured the name of his company which has not been registered and probably couldn’t be registered since it includes the word “flying machines,” a picture of him flying for the first time, offers for parts and training for flying machines, and his personal bank account number. The over-the-top cards rounded out the feeling of his whole enterprise as distinctly rural Chinese — complete with that allure of shanzhai je-ne-sais-quoi. All in all, the feeling we got was that Xu’s future prospects are on the up and up.

The Personal Life of a Misunderstood Genius

Despite the rising star over Xu’s niche of Chinese private aviation, it hasn’t quite been smooth sailing back at the homestead. For one, his impassioned pursuits have put great strain on his relationship with his father, whose mindset is as bullheadedly traditional as Xu’s is pioneering. Once Xu got bored with his repetitive work at the pump factory, he started neglecting his duties there to the point that business was affected. His father, along with many in his family and the greater community, saw his tinkering as grossly over-extended, adolescent time-wasting. Nobody from his close circle, a group of people who had grown up during and immediately after the darkest years of Mao’s specter over the country, saw value in much outside of pure survival, let alone countless hours pored on reconstructing a seemingly impossible apparatus that could bring no apparent benefit to the family. Nevertheless, his father never denied use of the factory and equipment to Xu, despite vehement disapproval of his lifestyle. Everything took a positive turn in family relations for Xu from the day of his first successful flight, after which he told his pops something along the lines of, “I ain’t gonna work in the pump factory no more,” withdrew himself entirely therefrom, and devoted all his creative energies to his own business.

Strife, however, is a two way street in the Xu family, as Xu told us that he blames his father for the condition of his daughter. Little Xu Wei, we were told, was born two months premature and was placed into the hospital’s ICU due to her severely low body weight. The doctors ordered that she be cared for in an incubator for at least a month to be given a shot at growing up normal. The extremely traditional elder Xu, however, insisted that she be brought back to the family home in Jiangshan immediately. After a heated fight with the hospital staff, Xu removed his little daughter after only seven days back to their mountainside village home, far from modern medicine. Xu is sure that it was the hasty retreat from the hospital that resulted in his now 7 year old daughter to be unable to walk or use her hands very dexterously. “I’ll never forgive him for that,” said Xu, who on that very day was going to drive his father back to Jiangshan to help him process his government pensions. Thus is the Chinese way: burying bitter enmity toward kinfolk while seldom deigning to dally in the realm of the unfilial.

We met Xu’s precious little daughter playing cards by herself under the protection of her grandmother in the hotel’s lobby. All things considered, she is probably lucky to have for her father the resourceful Xu, who looks at his daughter’s condition as just another challenge in the complicated puzzle of his life. Upon learning that the best care for children in her condition is regular physical therapy, Xu located and contacted a group of reputed therapists in far away Shijiazhuang up in Northern China. Seeing the difficulty in regularly transporting his family over a thousand kilometers for treatment, he conjured a very elegant solution to his problem. First he rallied all families of special needs children from his area together, and then he invited a group of specialists from the northern hospital to establish a permanent clinic on the second floor of his family’s hotel, in addition to providing them free rooms. Now not only does his daughter have access to therapy nearly seven days a week just a flight of stairs above her home, but similar children from all over Quzhou have access to treatment not previously available. Talk about making lemonade. Since the birth of his daughter, Xu and his wife of 29 have had a son, who was born in good health.

Xu Bin posing with us in front of his newest gyroplane, by Andy

Despite all the various obstacles in the way of his dream, Xu Bin is a man spilling over with optimism and energy. “Flying has completely changed my life,” he told us. ”I used to be afraid to talk to people I didn’t know or even to leave my home. Now I travel all over the country and love to promote myself.” He has found his calling in the development of personal flight in China and sees himself — justifiably — as one of the pioneers in that field. We certainly hope that the next time we find Xu, who warmly welcomed “his first foreign friends” to return to visit as often as possible, he’ll have surmounted even more of the walls in the way of his greatness.

For more photos from Xu Bin’s workshop, click here.

Chinese material on Xu Bin:

Article 1

Article 2