They took a group photo 125 kilometers away from Huai'an. Photo provided by the individuals.
Recently, as universities in Nanjing have started their winter holidays, while many students are crowding onto trains and buses to go home, a group of around 20-year-olds have chosen to cycle back home for the Spring Festival. The student whose home is closest will cycle to Huai'an, while the farthest has to ride all the way north to Beijing, with the journey expected to take over nine days. This is a returning-home cycling team composed of eleven students, among whom the youngest is Gao Xiang, a freshman at Nanjing Normal University’s School of Physical Education, who has just turned 18.
Once cycled around Nanjing city in 11 hours
Yesterday morning at 7 a.m., as the first rays of sunlight hit Xianlin, a group of students dressed in cycling gear were already geared up and ready to go at the entrance of Nanjing Normal University, setting off on their journey home in the cold wind. The initiator of this cycling trip is Zheng Wei, a junior majoring in Business Administration at Nanjing Normal University. He is also a member of the NNU Cycling Association and has participated in almost every cycling event organized by the club around Nanjing. He told reporters, “When I was at my most free-spirited and passionate, it was the cycling club that gave me the thrill of youth.” He even put up a map of China on the wall beside his bed so he could dream of traveling across the country.
“One of the joys of cycling is that you never know what will happen in the next second, nor what the road ahead will look like,” Zheng Wei told reporters. During the ride, he has lost his bike, sprained his ankle, but the more difficult the situation, the more it fuels his motivation. He even hopes to encounter extreme weather like heavy snowstorms and thick fog while cycling—only then, he says, would the cycling life be worthy of fleeting youth. On October 28, he once spent 11 hours and 5 minutes cycling around the southern part of Nanjing city, covering a total of 207.4 kilometers.
Posted online to recruit 30 members
When asked when he got the idea of cycling home together for winter break, Zheng Wei said it was his experience of cycling home during the National Day holiday that sparked the idea, and he had since been thinking how much more fun it would be if seven or eight people cycled back to Huai'an together.
So he began planning the cycling trip home for the Spring Festival, posting on platforms like Renren to gather fellow cyclists, and creating a QQ group called “Huai'an Students in Nanjing Cycling Group.” “If you’re also a Huai'an cyclist studying in Nanjing, why not make friends? In the future, we can cycle home together during holidays and set off together when school reopens. Even if you’ve never cycled before, no worries—I and a friend have, and it’s much easier to ride along with the group.”
After nearly a month of recruitment, 30 university students joined the “Huai'an Students in Nanjing Cycling Group” QQ group. In the end, 11 students from Nanjing Normal University, Xiaozhuang University, Zijin University, and other schools participated in the cycling trip. The originally planned route was also extended multiple times, with a student from Shijiazhuang joining in. The cycling team included not only veterans who had cycled with Zheng Wei several times, but also freshmen.
Farthest destination Beijing, 1,400 kilometers to ride
According to Zheng Wei, they brought along repair tools, spare clothes, and spare tires. The total journey home covers over 1,400 kilometers and is expected to take around nine days. Led by Zheng Wei, the specific route crosses the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge and goes through Liuhe, along G205, passing through Tianchang and Hongze, with an estimated arrival in Huai'an city area by 6 p.m. Then the Huai'an students will disband and head home on their own, while the remaining four students, including Zheng Wei and one from Shijiazhuang, will rest briefly before continuing northward early the next morning, heading straight to Beijing.
Zheng Wei’s previous longest cycling trip was from Nanjing to Huangshan, covering 752 kilometers. The route from Huai'an to Beijing is his first time cycling it, taking national roads. He searched for maps online, took screenshots, saved them, and printed them out as route maps. The plan is to reach Beijing in nine days, covering about 150 kilometers per day—a fairly intense cycling schedule—and he hopes to persevere this time.
At 2:50 p.m., the reporter contacted Zheng Wei, who was resting, and he sent over the first photo taken during the ride. By then, they had already left Jiangsu and entered Anhui. “In the afternoon, two students felt too tired and didn’t continue with the group. We’ll wait for them tonight. Other than that, everything is going smoothly,” Zheng Wei told the reporter. “As we go further north, the weather will get colder and the challenges ahead are still there. I hope we can all hold on.”