Bike China Adventures

Bike China Adventures

About Us

Company Profile
Bike China Adventures is an American company set up for the purpose of providing adventure bicycle tours in China for Westerners. Our company is focused on you and your needs so you can experience China at its best.

Our Company Philosophy
We hire local people for drivers mechanics and bilingual guides. We stay at locally owned hotels and frequent independent restaurants featuring local food specialties. We have one bilingual guide/ride leader on every tour. The guide/ride leader will be available at rest stops and at the hotel to assist you with your needs.

Mission Statement

Peter Snow Cao, Founder

Our mission is to provide meaningful and enjoyable bicycle touring experiences in China at a reasonable cost. Founded by Americans who live in China, and who hope to share its delights with those who want to ride in this intriguing country, our company is dedicated to promoting bicycle touring in China. We are convinced that there is no better way to see China than from the seat of your bicycle, riding from village to town to city through the fascinating countryside. China is an entirely different world that can be experienced under your own power, as it is by most of its 1.2 billion residents. The journey is not the destination, but rather the experiences that you have while traveling from one place to another.

Why ride in China?

China is a fascinating country full of contradictions, and is rapidly changing. The cities are being transformed into forests of modern high-rise buildings, while the countryside has remained relatively unchanged. China has tremendous variation of landscape, and the Chinese people are delightful. As the world’s most populous country and the undisputed cycling capital of the world, China remains firmly committed to universal bicycle transportation. Imagine cycling through Chinese cities with thousands of others, almost like a daily bicycle parade or critical mass ride. Cycling through cities and towns you are able to view first-hand how people live and work. Unlike westerners, the Chinese tend to work out-of-doors, including open-air markets, furniture makers, and dentists. Much of Chinese life is visible as you cycle by.

Tours and Routes

Why choose Bike China?

Bike China offers affordable tours, great service, and fantastic routes. Our trips are fun, exciting, challenging and rewarding for experienced touring cyclists.

Affordable
We have worked hard to keep the price of the tours affordable while still maintaining quality. We have structured our tours to provide the essentials without the fluff. This means the hotels are tidy and comfortable without being extravagant. The restaurants are chosen based on good, clean food, not costly furnishings.

Experienced Staff
We have experienced cycling staff out there on the road to provide repair assistance, translation help or encouragement.

Support Vehicle
We can supply a support vehicle to provide refreshments, mechanical assistance and carry sagging riders when they have had enough. And for those who wish to have their luggage transported, an undeniable indulgence, we offer optional luggage transfer service for a modest fee.

No Camping or Cooking
Bike China features bicycle tours that do not require any camping, cooking, or cleaning up afterwards. You'll sleep in a bed every night, and you'll eat in restaurants for most of your meals. This means that you'll have more time to explore your surroundings! And the flexible structure of our rides will allow you to ride at your own pace.

Our tours are graded for varying abilities of cyclists: easy, moderately difficult, and strenuous. The routes explore this fascinating nation in ways unparalleled with any other way of travel. You can have an intimate experience with this once closed and forbidden country, able to stop and smell the roses, watch rice being planted or take photos along the way. While we encourage camaraderie among our guests, we do not hold anyone back from riding at the speed and in the style that is most comfortable.

Bike China trips begin and end in major cities, allowing connections from around the world, but we spend most of our time in China's countryside, cycling through and spending nights in villages and small towns. It is here that one can really see the soul of China. Open, friendly, and very curious, the Chinese make foreigners feel that they are celebrities.

Tour Planner
To help you get started on your special bike China bike tour, we have created the Bike China Tour Planner Questionnaire to keep our company focused on you. We use this to fit your style of cycling to a Bike China tour. Please take a moment to fill it out and we can get started discussing how to make your trip the best ever.

This web site is designed to provide information for people who hope to visit China, whether they intend to use our services, those of another company, or travel independently. We encourage your comments and questions, because they will help us to improve this site and your trip. In addition, if you have just returned from China and would like to share any information, please write as well.

Tours and Routes

Bike China Staff
Peter Snow Cao, founder of Bike China Adventures, is an avid cyclist, having taken and led numerous bicycling tours, both domestically in the US and abroad. The longest being the "Grand Asian Tour" which spanned three years through 17 countries, and included extended travel in China where he met his lovely wife. See Spoke Notes for a brief digest of his lifelong affair with cycling, including travel in China.

In his other lives, Peter was born in Philadelphia and spent many years in the Midwest, attended and graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering. Peter worked as a professional engineer for consultants in Connecticut and for the City of Kansas City. Following the Grand Asian Tour, Peter and his wife went to live in San Francisco where they enjoyed the vibrant multi-cultural life in that pearl of the west. While in the Bay Area, Peter went to work for the Port of Oakland. After many years of dreaming about living a life abroad, Peter returned to China with wife and their daughter to Chengdu, the Capital of Sichuan. There he lives a life centered around his favorite people and things; his family, China, bicycling and travel.

Elizabeth Castronovo
Tireless stateside member who handles all the nitty-gritty financial details and emergencies that crop up from time to time. Elizabeth’s middle name is "Active". She spent a year touring around the US and Europe not long ago. She rides both bicycles and motorcycles, plays racquetball, skis, snowboards, runs long distance, teaches yoga, and has a Chinese tutor for language studies, hence she is rarely home.

Rainer Mautz
Rainer Rainer handles our European operations and is a veteran of many long bicycle tours. Rainer has ridden around the world and made several extensive rides through China as well as many through Europe. His personal 24-hour distance record is 475 km (295 miles).

Local Guides, and Assistants
Local bilingual guides, employed by Bike China, are knowledgeable of the area, and of China customs and values. They will assist you with interpreting the map and the menu, as well as questions and answers that you will be getting from the people you meet along the way.