Shanghai to Hong Kong

Hi all,

This coming summer I am Hoping to study abroad in either Shanghai or Chengdu, my girlfriend lives in hong kong and if I was to study in Shanghai I am hoping to buy a bike towards the end of my term and ride to Hong Kong afterwards. I have been riding for a few years and have a decent amount of experience bot on and off-road. I was wondering how reasonable this goal is, I will ,by then, be at at least a higher intermediate level of Chinese speaking. I am very used to roughing it and hope to make the trip in 7-10 days. Are there viable roads/paths I would be able to use. I have spent little time in china and was hoping to get some insight from some more experienced riders on this forum as I begin to form an idea of the planning I would have ahead of me.

Thank you for your help!

Having never taken a bike into Hong Kong the following is supposition. China to HK is an international border crossing regardless of it being one country. Which it is not. HK is a big city full of traffic and very few nice riding roads that I have ever seen.

So it would be a lot easier to ride to Shenzhen thereby achieving the " hi honey I road across China just to see you" effect. Then catch the bus from SZ into HK city and have at her.

Really it's just one big urban sprawl and you would have no idea you had crossed the border if you didn't have to stop and queue up for a stamp in your passport.

As I said I have never taken a bike across but I have crossed this border many times and it is very much a T crossed an I dotted place. No good reason to take a bike the last few km into a big crowded city.

Good luck in any case whatever you decide to do.

As far as I'm aware cars can escape Hong Kong and enter China so long as they have double plates. However entering Hong Kong from China last time I checked was very hard and for a bike either way legally probably impossible, although things do change and my knowledge could be out of date.

If you change your plan to ride to the outer edge of Shanzhen and then take the train to HK would make the plan much easier. Personally I'd love to try a shot at cycling into HK, but that also might be verboten.

You have to cross that causeway which is basically a motorway so I doubt a bicycle would fly. You could sure take it on the bus though and a bike would be a nice way to get around HK.

thank you Zhu and ZMC888, I will definitely look into stopping at Shenzen and taking the train over the border. How difficult would it be to obtain my Motorcycle license while already having the American license? I've read recently that if not frequently in major cities it may not be worth it? Would I be able to make that route and avoid spending a lot of time in the more urban areas before Shenzen?

Cant speak for Shanghai but if you end up studying in Chengdu (you should if you want to ride while you are here because Sichuan and Yunnan are freakin awesome) the license process is straightforward . Basically sit the weird and badly translated computer test and hopefully pass it by learning all the tests. A half assed medical, pay a bit of money and you are as qualified as anybody else in China.

The guys living in Shanghai put their bikes on the train and send them to Chengdu to go for a ride so...

In Shanghai, the process is as straightforward as described above by Zhu. At least this was the case when I made my license based on my valid EU license 2.5 years back. The only thing I must say, the English translations of the computer test were better than expected in those days.