Hi guys,

I'm not teaching anything to anyone when I say getting a foreign bike into China is either a lot of hassle, or costly, or both if ever possible. I was in Kyrgyzstan in summer '08, saw guys try to get in through Torugart or Irkeshtam, seen them back. Agreed, trying to enter so close to Tibet and the Olympic Games was never going to be a cakewalk but still.

So I'm thinking, the best way might be to buy a Chinese bike, register it there, and ride it to Europe until pollution laws stop it, or to Northern Africa and sell it there.

There's quite a bit of information about getting a bike in, not so much about getting it out. Any of you either know something or can direct me to a place that may? (For the record I already found MyChinaMoto, asking for help there too).

Thanks in advance

First of the two bis offical No-Gos for your plan:


1. Without a chinese resident permit you are not allowed and not able to register a bike in your own name, therefore not able to officially enter other countries.

2. Without a chinese drivers license you are not allowed to drive in China


So the the official way would be to get a resident permit and make the license. If you know someone with a company over there that might work for you, but I do not know the process or if any limitations are given for the first year or so in China.

The other way to ride home would be to get a bike from a private person and get fake papers and a fake license. It's the easy and fast way as the chinese are pretty good at coping stuff. But faking a resident permit might be a bigger problem. Don't know, haven't tried, not planning to try as that will very probably be considered a major insult. But that way you can take it home.

Or, the simplest way without a lot of possible negative outcome would be to buy it in china, not give a damn about any papers and sell it in China again. Or maybe juts for the hell of it try to get out of the country with it, cause what's the worst to happen, they take your 200$ bike of you. As soon as you're out of china though you might get pretty far cause I'm pretty sure the papers are written in Mandarin.

It's simpifiied chinese.

Well, Mandarin written in simplified Chinese to be accurate

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Yeah timae I bet these are definite no-gos. I whack myself for not thinking about 1. but I couldn't have guessed 2. would arise as a problem. Heh, that's why yo ask on the interwebz beforehands, to avoid getting your hopes up on something not feasible.

So now it comes down to: have a Chinese national register it for you, fake your documents and/or try your luck and ride with incomplete documentation and/or no license. Or change plans ^^

. It's "Standard Written Chinese" every educated knows it BUT nobody spokes in REAL situation !!! Mandarin dialects had those BS "er... ..." or regional words .

As long as it's not Pinyin or how they call the westernized chinese they use to teach Chinese to Westerners and kids it will still look like nothing at all to 99,999..% of all borderguards on the way back to wherever.