I have been enjoying my time in Shenzhen, and checking this city out. It was never the plan to go here, as winter holiday I am almost always in Thailand, Cambodia, Las Vegas, or somewhere else outside of China. Morocco would have been nice too. Heck even Hong Kong just a few kilometers across the border.
But as it happened, it was Shenzhen and I was making the most of it with fitness, partying, and biking around to get a feel for the place. It was very obvious from the beginning that they don't like bicycles here at all. The infrastructure seems to be designed on purpose to make it as difficult as possible to ride. A key criteria if I ever wanted to move here is whether the place is conducive to cycling or not. Since it is not, I will probably just stay in Shanghai and travel during my holidays.
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 that goes east around the mountains, the other that goes west. Any other routes are off limits because they involve roads or tunnels through the mountains (there are multiple options) for cars only. Any kind of biking in Shenzhen would be horizontal east-west routes on sidewalks that could get boring and inconvenient really frickin fast.
But 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. Worth it though.
At a party later that night. It was a risk to park it there, but we had to jump over a COVID barricade, crawl through barbed wire, and lift the bike over another barricade to get into the party area to begin with so I wasn't worried
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 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
