Retired carpenter bikes 20,000 km around China

Over the past six years, Sun Lin has cycled more than 20,000 kilometers around China.

Sun, 69, a retired carpenter from a state-owned enterprise in Harbin, capital city of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, began to cycle in 2014 to fulfill a childhood dream.

"When I was in primary school in early 1960s, I had heard that some people cycled around China and even cycled abroad," he said. "I really envied them and hoped to cycle freely, but for most families, a bicycle was one of the rare luxuries at that time."

With a bicycle that his father assembled using some waste materials, Sun learned to ride, but wasn't until 1975 when he began working that he saved up and bought his own bicycle.

In the following decades, cycling became his only commuting tool for work.

After retirement in 2010, Sun began to take some part-time jobs.

"The jobs could bring me extra money," he said. "More importantly, I am not a man who enjoys having nothing to do."

In 2014, he quit his jobs and began to think carefully about trying something different.

"I am getting older and I don't want to have regrets in the future," he said. "Therefore, the first thing I wanted to do was enjoying the delight of cycling."