Cycling 10,000 kilometers in 60 days is itself something of a feat, especially at altitude. But for college student Shui Zheng, it was the beginning of an artistic journey to fame) as he made a documentary about Xinjiang. One-hundred thousand netizens have given him the thumbs up.

Equipped with a bicycle and a camera, Shui Zheng cycled to more than 20 cities or towns in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, including Yili, Kashgar and Aksu, covering a distance of around 10,000 kilometers.

Equipped with a bicycle and a camera, Shui Zheng cycled to more than 20 cities or towns in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, including Yili, Kashgar and Aksu, covering a distance of around 10,000 kilometers.

The result is a five-minute documentary hailed by netizens for capturing the true essence of the region and inspiring many to plan a trip there themselves.

“Many people think of Xinjiang as riding a horse or a camel to school, a life of herdsmen. My video has incorporated many modern things of Xinjiang, for example the skyscrapers of Urumqi, the highway built on the river banks. For sure there’s also the familiar grassland and deserts. This is a place of merging the traditional and the modern,” Shui Zheng said.

The effort was as much an endurance test as an artistic one for the Xinjiang Arts University student from Shandong province on the other side of China. Oxygen deprivation, extreme fatigue, and hunger were major challenges, though overcome with the help of locals.

“When I was trekking over the Duku Highway, I had run out of food. But a brother from Kazak gave me two pieces of milk curd, encouraging me to keep going. My bicycle broke in an area covered with cole flowers, but an uncle from the Hui minority offered to give me a lift to my destination,” Shui said.