China's Report Card
Having completed cycling through China we thought it'll be fun to write up a Report Card using our made up "Tour Cycling Prestige over Important Pointers (TCP/IP)" five star system.
China received a TCP/IP score of ★★★☆☆
Important Pointers
After some consideration we came up with five pointers to grade a country based on our tour, obviously these are the opinions of us two.
People & Culture (PC)
- Extremely hospitable people offering food, water, and shelter
- More cultural diversity in Xinjiang and Qinghai
- Ethnic integration still got a long way to go
- People taking your photos and videos on the sly
Infrastructure, Safety and Politics (ISP)
- Roads are in excellent condition
- Fairly safe, no incident of thief or sca
- Strict police control in some areas making it quite stressful
- Police treat non-Han Ethnics very unequally
- Foreigners required to stay at special and costly hotels
- Several near misses on the road as some drivers don't respect cyclists
- Xenophobia is alive and well
Landscape & Nature (LAN)
- Western China's landscape is amazing and diverse
- Eastern China is crowded and lacks greenery
- Anywhere with road access will have litter
- Whenever we found a deserted spot in the wild it was true bliss
Value for Money (VM)
- Cheap vegetables with fruit only slightly dearer
- Cheapest hostel we found was ¥30 ($6) a person
- Occasionally our grocery trip costs ¥50 ($10 NZ) which lasts us 3 days
- Eating out can cost between ¥10-50 ($2-10 NZ) a person
Camping & Outdoor Living (COL)
- Camping at parks in small towns are fine as the locals don't really mind
- When it's cooking time we are the star zoo attraction
- Clean and hot water can be collected from almost any store or house
- Several occasions police didn't allow us to camp saying it is "unsafe", even though the locals were absolutely fine with us
Return for a Retour?
As much as we hated the strict controls in China, we try to not let that stop us.
With a score of more than 1★ we may return, but after the government control is more relaxed.
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