Cherry Lake Bicycle Loop, Rongcheng, Shandong Province, PRC

The Track follows a wide, high-quality, approx. 6-kilometre bicycle and walking-running loop circling Cherry Lake, with an additional side trip to the Yellow Sea and a short segment along the Rongcheng coastal bicycle path.

This track starts at the bike station behind the Kowloon Swan Hotel. There is also a new 3-level shopping complex here, and a tall circular stainless steel ring artwork visible for many kilometres. There is a seafood restaurant on the lake ~200 meters to the east, where speciality dishes can be served to table by robots.

The Rongcheng bicycle fleet are sturdy one-speeds with adjustable seat height, sufficient for this distance, but heavy and slow against a headwind. This invites a "Moderate Difficulty" rating despite the flat terrain and relatively short distance. The bikes are released using a common Chinese cellphone application (this only works if the App Registration is linked to a Chinese ID, so a local contact may be necessary for foreign visitors).

Older maps, including Wikiloc's free Shandong Province offline map, show undeveloped land here. Now the "lake" and shoreline development is finished and major residential building efforts are proceeding in several locations around the lake (February 2019).

All is man-made; the "lake", shoreline and landscaping. This may not be "pure nature", but is iconic of interactions between humankind and the natural environment in China. Now there are very significant swan, duck, coot, and seabird activities so Cherry Lake has apparently been accepted into natural migration flyways. Actually its not really a "lake" perhaps its an "artificial tidal lagoon" because it has a ocean connection at the south end, where significant inflow of seawater was observed on the day.