I have been enjoying my time in Shenzhen, and checking out what this city has to offer. I was trying to make the most of it with fitness, partying, and biking around to get a feel for the place. While there are many positives, the infrastructure seems to be designed on purpose to make it very difficult to get around by bike. A key criteria if I ever wanted to move here is whether the place is conducive to cycling or not. Since it is not, it is written off.
Even so, I wanted to ride to the northern areas of the city. To get there basically involves only two cycling routes. That is it. Two routes. One goes east all the way around the mountains, the other goes west. Any other routes are off limits because they involve roads or tunnels through the mountains for cars only. Basically the only way to bike in Shenzhen is horizontally along the lower part of the city, i.e. east and west
They make the most delicious fried noodles at this compound near the Hilton that you have to show a QR code for travel history and take a temperature check to get in.
At a party later that night. It was a risk to park it there to a pole (see last entry), but to get here the group of us had to jump over a COVID barricade, crawl through barbed wire, and lift the bike over another barricade. I wasn't worried about the bike after all that to get here.
This is what makes biking so frustrating in Shenzhen. To cross a street like this you have to bike for miles to find a suitable underpass or set of stairs. The regular traffic light crossings don't allow bikes
You want to cross the street? It's just asking for an accident. In fact I saw a delivery guy wipe out in one of these areas to avoid hitting a pedestrian. He spilled all his food orders. I helped picked up his e-bike but he was more concerned about his damaged orders.
Shenzhen has been criticized for being a city of no soul, i.e. no culture, but I did manage to find this in the north of the city. I imagine there would be more of them
