Thirteen days, 16 cities, 1,883 kilometers... Zhang Feilong, a 25-year-old traffic police officer from Wuxi, rode a mountain bike all the way from Wuxi, Jiangsu to his hometown in Fuxin, Liaoning. In 13 days, he spent 2,400 yuan, wore out his mountain bike, lost 16 kilograms, and when he stood before friends and family, some barely recognized him. After the official Weibo account of the Wuxi Public Security Bureau "reported" on the story, the "extreme cycling cop" Zhang Feilong quickly drew attention from netizens.
The official Weibo account of the Wuxi Public Security Bureau, "Ping'an Wuxi," posted this message yesterday: "In May, Officer Zhang Feilong from Wuxi set off alone, traveling from Wuxi to his hometown in Fuxin, Liaoning—13 days, 16 cities, 1,883 kilometers. He lost 16 kilograms by the time he got home. He kept going, simply put..." Followed by dozens of photos Zhang took along the way. The post received numerous replies from users, many calling it "amazing."
Yesterday, reporters contacted Zhang Feilong. Born in 1987, he graduated from school in 2010 and has only been working in public security for two years. He is currently a traffic officer in the Second Squadron of the Beitang Brigade of the Traffic Patrol Police Detachment. The reason he chose to cycle home was that it had always been his dream. Zhang has long loved cycling and formed a small cycling club with several other officers his age, often riding to nearby cities during holidays. As an out-of-towner, Zhang gets 20 days of home leave each year, and this time, he decided to use his vacation to cycle back to his hometown. After planning the route, Zhang set off.
Day 1, May 11. He set off from Wuxi toward Jiangyin, taking a ferry across the Yangtze River. After crossing the river, he cycled all the way to Taizhou. From Taizhou to Yangzhou, passing through Huai'an and Shuyang, by the evening of the 13th, he had reached Shuyang. "By this point, I could already see some familiar scenery. The south is all rice paddies, with the seedlings growing quite tall, but up north the wheat is much shorter, and in some areas it hadn’t even been planted yet," said Zhang.
Day 4, May 14. Early in the morning, he set off for Shandong, arriving in Linyi at 3 p.m. Since it was still early, Zhang thought about cycling a bit farther. That decision led to trouble—he reached the edge of Linyi around 4 p.m., but couldn’t find any place to stay. This was his first crisis. Eventually, the owner of a small restaurant managed to recommend a place for him, "behind a gas station, meant for long-haul drivers to rest, costing 20 yuan a night." That’s how he finally found lodging. The next morning, he set off for Laiwu.
Day 6, May 16. On the road from Laiwu to Jinan, he hadn’t gone far when the local mountain roads gave Zhang a memorable “welcome challenge.” Because the uphill was steep, he had to push his bike up the mountain road—it took two hours to climb a full 10 kilometers. "I was completely exhausted." After that, the journey became smoother. He traveled from Jinan to Dezhou, Cangzhou, Tianjin, Tangshan, and Qinhuangdao, finally reaching Liaoning on the 22nd.
Day 13, May 23. Early that morning, Zhang set off from Jinzhou toward Fuxin, arriving back in his hometown by noon.
Over the 13 days, Zhang woke up at 6 a.m. every day, cycled for 7–8 hours before resting.
Along the way, flat tires were a major issue. Shortly after reaching Jiangyin, Zhang got a flat tire. He swapped it with the spare he had, and once he reached his resting place for the night, he used the rubber patches to fix it. But that was only the beginning of dozens of flats he experienced. Later on, the flats became more frequent, and his spare wasn’t enough, so Zhang bought replacements along the way. In the end, he was carrying a total of four spare tires, ready to switch them out anytime.
Throughout the trip, Zhang mainly relied on his phone's navigation, though it led to a few mix-ups. "In Linyi, my phone guided me onto a small road, and before I knew it, there was no path ahead. After that, I stopped using small roads and stuck to national or provincial routes whenever possible."
On May 22, Zhang cycled the longest distance in 13 days—from Qinhuangdao to Jinzhou, covering 230 kilometers. The next day at noon, he finally arrived back in his hometown of Fuxin, where two friends were waiting for him in the neighborhood with beer... By the time he got home, the mountain bike he had ridden was almost falling apart.
His mother, who was at work when he arrived, was shocked to see how dark and thin her son had become. Her colleagues almost didn’t recognize Zhang either.
When he set off from Wuxi, Zhang had brought 1,000 yuan in cash. Little did he expect that by the end of the trip, he would have spent a total of 2,400 yuan. When returning to Wuxi, he took a train—the ticket cost 355 yuan one way. That means if he had taken the train both ways, the total fare would have only been six or seven hundred yuan. But cycling home cost over two thousand. Still, Zhang doesn’t think it was a waste. "I did it to experience it, to fulfill a dream."