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Speeding along crumbling roads past dusty villages and herds of sheep, a team of cyclists turns heads in China’s Inner Mongolia with their unusual equipment. The group, most of them wheelchair users, were strapped into low-slung, three-wheeled handcycle bikes instead of the two-wheeled mountain bikes more commonly seen on the challenging terrain. Dodging trucks and car-sized potholes, they barreled down country roads towards the regional capital Hohhot, frequently greeted with excited shouts by groups of villagers.

The cyclists are members of Krankin’ Thru China, formed over a decade ago to promote wheelchair users’ participation in open-air sports. China passed an accessibility law last year aimed at creating a “barrier-free” society but everyday life for people with disabilities can still be challenging in many parts of the country. “From the very start we wanted to use handcycle bikes as a way to encourage injured friends to come outdoors,” said Wang Feng, who discovered adaptive bikes years after losing the use of his legs because of a childhood illness.



Krankin’ Thru China has embarked on multiple long-distance trips in remote parts of the country, including a three-month journey in 2017 from the mountainous southwestern province of Yunnan to the capital Beijing. They have also collaborated with a Shanghai-based university to help build a prototype aimed at making handcycle bikes more affordable and widely available, one of which they tested on the odysse.

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