Planning a bike tour down the east coast, any suggestions?

[klortho]

Dajia hao! I'm tentatively planning on doing a bike tour by myself from Shanghai down to Xiamen -- along the east coast of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. I did a search on this forum and was a little surprised to come up blank on bike touring info -- can anyone point me to previous threads on this topic?

Failing that, anybody have any suggestions? I'll have about a month to do it, and it's about 1000 km, I think, so it should be a very leisurely ride. The thing I'm unsure about is how to pick the best route. I've been to the store and there's a good selection of road atlases, but no resources that I've found on how to find the most bicycle-friendly roads.

Also, any suggestions on how to buy a bicycle? I don't need a great one, but, considering what I'm undertaking, reliability is at a premium.

[wushijiao]

Sounds like an amazing trip. I've often thought of doing such a trip as well.

You can buy a Giant brand bike in Shanghai. Decent ones range from 400-5000 RMB. The shops also can set you up with other bags, helmets, gadgets...etc.

The Lonley Planet website has a biking section, and I've read through some of the treads, and there are people there who have biked in China. So, I'm sure you can find some good info there.

http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/categories.cfm?catid=32

[watergrass]

An amazing plan!

I'm from Wenzhou, Zhejiang. Just wanna say, there're lots of mountains

in zhejiang and fujian. And in some places people are not very friendly

to strangers... But anyway, the scene would be very very nice, you will enjoy it!~~

[pandaxiongmao]

Even if you get a name-brand bike in China, they don't tend to be as reliable as they are abroad. You should buy whatever tools you need to repair your bike should it have problems along the way (which it will, if my experience doing bike trips out in the west is any indication).