Surrounded by bright lights with neon signs and Chinese characters screaming from all directions, I walk down the main street in Yining. Many a man (both young and old) parade past me with their shirt rolled up to around their nipples. Guts can hang out, and underpants can be exposed. Everything goes here in China!
Letting the breeze in
I am in the far flung backblocks of China, and it feels like I have almost not left a metropolis. The smallest dots on the map are cities bigger than anything I have seen in the last few months – huge boulevards with high-rise buildings and neon signs screaming out consumerism. When I’m not in a city, I’m on a massive freeway or the very large parallel ‘alternate’ road. With the honks of horns and the whizzing past of cars, peace can only be reached when you stop. Talking to the owner of shops, and playing with the kids. All a lot of fun. It’s not worth trying to leave the main road to take a road through the villages. I did that, and the road fizzled out, as did all the side roads. Twenty kilometres later, I returned to where I started.
Lunch stop
arctic-cycler.com 
The biggest consumer market on the planet!
Indeed!