China has everything one might need for a road trip: a massive network of roads; exotic locations with stunning vistas and some incredible mountain landscapes – good for getting your knee down, and relatively cheap gasoline. The newly asphalted highways driving in from the coast only adds to the allure. With a rising income and a penchant for luxury BMW, Harley and Ducati much be chomping at the bit.

Except that in China the ‘road trip’ storyline is still a hard sell for true adventurers and weekend warriors alike. The volume of accidents; the fact that motorbikes are still considered the first affordable motorised transport (supplanted by electric bicycles in urban centers) – anyone who can afford an up-scale brand will still have vivid memories of 5 people to a motorbike, the motorbike tractors and other forms of 2-wheeled workhorses.

Related: the motorbike thread from here and abroad.

Photo: motorbikes for the disabled are a common sight – in some parks ‘gangs’ of disabled motorbikes cluster like wagons circling.