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Wang Mingxi, a bicycle collector, used to put a lot of efforts into looking for a place to keep the 370 bikes he collected from 16 countries over the past 60 years.

Wang,77, a Beijing resident who repaired bikes for a living, started collecting them when he was 18, but he couldn't find anywhere large enough to house his collection until four years ago, when an official asked him to put them in a planned museum.

Yang Jie, Party secretary of Bazhou, a county-level city 120 km from Beijing, visited Wang in early 2008, when the county had plans for a museum for folk culture and collections.

"Economic competition between different counties will be determined in the future by the development of culturally related sectors," Yang told Chinese and international reporters during a media tour on Sunday.

Overseas journalists covering the 18th Party Congress, which will open on Thursday, have been invited to visit several cities before and during the event.

"I read reports about Wang in the newspaper and thought that a bicycle collection is a unique piece of culture," the Party chief said.

So Wang's 370 bikes were moved from a dark, damp basement in Beijing to the Huaxia Museum of Private Collections in Bazhou on Oct 28, 2008.

In June 2009, the museum separated an independent space for his bicycles and named it the China Bicycle Museum.

Wang's most valuable piece, the Platinum People, an English bike made in 1910, was placed at the center of the museum's exhibition hall.

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