In its lower reaches, the Yellow River meets the sea on the Shandong coast, but it wasn’t always so. Over the years, the river has changed course many times due to being blocked by accumulation of silt and flooding. Until the 19th century the river ran further south, emptying into the Yellow Sea south of the Shandong peninsula. But in 1855 there was a flood-driven breakage known as an ‘avulsion’, which saw the Yellow River’s course shift dramatically, creating a new outlet 400 kilometres away to the north of the peninsula, into the Bohai (渤海) Sea.
It was at this estuary that I arrived in April 2025 to start my bike journey along the Yellow River. The nearest town was Dongying (东营), some 70 kilometres from the coast, to which I travelled by train from Weihai, changing at a town called Zibo (淄博).
Dongying was an unremarkable petroleum industry town that sat on top of the second largest oil field in China. After a night in a cheap hotel I put my folding bike into the back of a taxi and told the driver to take me to the closest place to the river outlet that I could find on the map: the Yellow River Estuary Ecological Zone.
After an hour’s driving across a flat plain of marshland and canals, the taxi dropped me off outside a large new visitor centre. Like many of China’s natural sightseeing spots, the Yellow River estuary zone has been turned into a tightly regulated tourism operation in which visitors are required to buy a ticket and then transported on shuttle buses along a set path of sightseeing stops.
This put paid to my plans of starting my bike ride at the exact spot where the Yellow River empties into the sea. When I wheeled my bike up to the park entrance barrier to ask if I could cycle through to the mouth of the river, the security guard shook his head and pointed me in the direction of the ticket office. I would have to travel the first nine kilometres of the Yellow River like everyone else, on a shuttle bus. At least I got a half price ticket because I was over 60.
So I chained up my bike in the carpark and climbed aboard an electric buggy that carried me and two other passengers along a service road over a treeless plain of wetland mud intersected by canals. There was plenty of birdlife to see along the way: pheasants, ducks, gulls and storks nesting on top of telephone poles, but the river remained elusively out of sight.
A strong breeze was blowing over the estuary and I was almost shivering by the time the bus driver announced: ‘xia che!’ [下车, ‘get off’] at the last stop. A modernist glass cube building that was the ‘estuary zone management centre’ stood alone in an otherwise featureless flat landscape.
I leaned into the wind and walked over to a concrete platform that provided a view over the final stages of the Yellow River. It was disappointing to find that even here it was not possible to ‘see the sea’. The river was a few hundred metres wide at this point and flowed off into the distance between low banks lined with grass and bushes. The Bohai Sea was somewhere over the horizon.
The white-capped waters of the river were a creamy brown colour, reflecting its high silt content. The sediment had been carried here from far inland China, where erosion of the loess plateau deposited fine particles of sand and clay into the river. Over time huge amounts of this silt had washed up on the sides of the river and accumulated to form embankments. When the river levels rose in spring and overflowed these dykes, the subsequent flooding caused devastation across the surrounding plains, hence the river being known as ‘China’s Sorrow’.
At the end of the viewing platform was a jetty where a couple of motor launches were bobbing vigorously on the choppy waters. They were offering sightseeing tours along the river, but I decided this was far enough for me. The handful of other visitors must have shared my reluctance because we were all soon getting back on to the waiting electric buggy to trundle back to the park entrance.
With a day’s cycling ahead of me I also opted to skip the Bird Museum at the visitor centre, and at the exit I was relieved to see that my bike was still where I’d left it in the car park. It was now joined by two other touring bikes with panniers. The riders were a pair of older Chinese guys who told me they’d just arrived at the estuary as part of the long-distance trip they were making down the coast from their home in north-east China. When I told them I was aiming to cycle along the length of the Yellow River, they looked at my folding bike with scepticism and said: “Too small!”
I responded by saying I was confident the Dahon should at least be good enough to get me across the plains of northern China, as far as Xi’an. Once there, I could reassess what kind of bike I would use for the more challenging route up into Inner Mongolia.
After an obligatory selfie and adding each other as contacts on WeChat, they gave me the thumbs up and wished me: “Yi Lu Shun Feng!” (一路顺风, ‘have a nice trip!’). And so, with a feeling of trepidation, I set out on the first part of my Yellow River cycle tour. With a wave from the security guard, I exited the car park onto a long straight road heading back in the direction of Dongying.
It was a chilly spring day and I was pleased to note that I had the wind on my back, coming off the sea. I was also glad that I’d brought warmer clothes with me from Guilin. The route initially took me down a long straight treeless road through reedy marshland. There was little other traffic on the road and I was able to continue my bird spotting with sightings of avocets and hoopoe, which were common here but rare species by UK standards.
After a few kilometres the bike route diverted away from that of my earlier taxi journey, down a minor road that my map showed would run alongside the Yellow River. In reality, I only got occasional glimpses of the river because it was hidden beyond rough farmland, with the view blocked by dykes and lines of trees.
The terrain was completely flat, and I got my first real experience of how the Dahon e-bike performed in long distance use. In theory, a fully charged battery would provide a range of up to 80 kilometres according to the manufacturer’s manual. But my previous experience with e-bikes made me sceptical of any such claim. A more realistic daily range would be about 60 kilometres on one battery, I guessed. And with plans to cycle up to 100 kilometres a day, that meant I’d have to find ways of conserving battery power, especially for when I really needed it, such as on hills.
On the flat I was able to coast along at 25 km/hour using the lowest ‘economy’ mode of the bike’s power levels. And with the wind still behind me, I found I could pedal quite easily at around 20 km/hour without any power assist. This was when travelling light with just a couple of panniers on the back of the Dahon, carrying what I considered to be the minimal amount of kit needed for a bike tour when staying in hotels rather than camping.
For clothing I was using what had worked well for me on my previous China bike trip in Yunnan. Over a base layer of a T-shirt I wore a lightweight long-sleeve hiking shirt that was baggy and had plenty of vents. The ‘loose and lightweight’ philosophy also applied to my trekking pants and a pair of old Scarpa walking shoes.
For an outer layer I had a windproof Fjallraven Skogso jacket. It wasn’t waterproof, but previous experience had taught me that Gore-Tex 'breathable’ waterproof shells were just too sweaty and uncomfortable for cycling. Since I’d be cycling in dry weather most of the time, I brought a waterproof cycling cape to use in the rain.
I didn’t have a cycling helmet but instead wore a broad-brimmed hat because I worried more about the sun than a skull fracture. Being from Australia, I was all too well aware of the risks of exposure to UV rays (having had two suspected melanomas excised from my skin) and hence I also covered my face with a neck muffler. I would later add a pair of gloves after the backs of my exposed hands turned deep brown within the first week of cycling.
This first day on the road saw me adopt a variety of techniques for bike travel that would become a routine for the next three months. For navigation I used the Gaode Map (高德地图) app, on which I set Dongying as my destination and selected the ‘cycling’ option. The app showed me a couple of route options, with details of the distance, uphill and downhill sections, and also highlighting features such as tunnels and bridge crossings. I had the phone mounted on the handlebars and once I’d selected my preferred route it was simply a case of following the route on a GPS-type display. It was so easy and convenient it felt like cheating.
After an hour or so of pedalling alongside irrigation channels and empty fields, I stopped at a small village to find a restaurant that offered a bowl of beef noodle soup for 12 yuan. Back on the road, I became nervous when I realised I was passing an army compound, inside which soldiers were drilling in formation and yelling out “sha!” (杀! ‘kill!) slogans. I pulled my scarf up to cover my face and hastened my pace in case someone suspected me of being a foreign spy.
There were a couple of long concrete road bridges that spanned the Yellow River before I eventually reached the outskirts of Dongying. Suddenly the road merged with another and became busy with traffic and I had to pay attention to the cars and vans now rushing past me.
At a third bridge I turned south and headed away from the river, towards the centre of Dongying. It was a raw industrial town with the local economy based on oil extraction and processing. A huge oil refinery covered several blocks and filled the air with acrid sickly fumes. Beyond it I came across the first of many backyard ‘pumpjack’ oil installation stations that I’d later see dotted about the region. Located incongruously in front of an apartment block, the pump’s horsehead beam was bobbing slowly up and down like a dinosaur bird pecking at the ground.
By late afternoon I was pulling back up to the door of the Jufeng Hotel, where the reception staff welcomed me back like an old friend.
“We don’t see many foreigners in Dongying, you are our first foreign guest,” beamed the young manager. “If you need anything let me know,” he added, giving me his business card.
After my bad experience with the e-bike-hating hostel manager in Weihai I was careful not to draw attention to it at this hotel. I simply folded it up and carried it as discreetly as possible to the lift and up to my room.
When I started to charge the battery in the room, I was startled by a sudden knock at the door. In a panic I pushed the charger out of sight under the bed, before opening the door a fraction. Outside in the corridor stood a female hotel clerk, smiling and proffering a bowl of fruit. “Ni hao - compliments of the manager,” she said.
I sighed with relief and hoped the rest of my tour would be as easy as this.
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