How can I ride China????

[euphonius]

Dear Vrroom,

Welcome to MCM, and interesting puzzle you've posed. This may sound crazy, but if you are working with a company that has a permanent presence in China, you could ask them to sponsor you for a (fictitious) permanent position (i.e., six months or longer) so you could qualify for a residence permit as opposed to a short-term visa. Then you'd have to do more pretending with the police, showing them evidence of a legal residence (like a rental contract). This way you'd establish "resident" status in China, but of course -- like thousands of expat residents -- you could spend a whole lot of your time "on the road" outside of China (back at your real home). Not sure if your employer/company would see any benefit in this, but if you are a frequent visitor it would mean you can enter China as often as you like without fussing with visas except once a year.

This then would allow you to have a Chinese license, and ride legally in China. You could rent bikes here, or, if you are a frequent visitor to, say, Beijing, you could buy a bike there, register it outside the the 4th Ring, and be able to ride it whenever you visit. That does not limit you to Beijing. You roll your bike onto a train and a couple of days later it pitches up in Lanzhou or Urumqi or Chengdu or Kunming or Guiyang or Xining, and you fly in to meet it. If it were me I'd probably register and park it in Chengdu!

We have one member in MCM who has bikes stashed all over the world this way, including Fuzhou, Seoul, Beaverton, Hong Kong, Pirmasens, Saigon.... Come to think of it there are quite a few of us who have bikes in different countries. Even I've got a bike stashed in California!

Good luck!