On two wheels from the back of beyond and back

Cyclists from Hunchun Bicycle Club take a break 16 km from the Tumen River. [Photo provided to China Daily]

It does not get much more off the beaten track than this. Snuggled between three countries - China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Russia - in the extreme southeast of Jilin province in Northeast China, is a city called Hunchun.

The city, whose name roughly translates as fine jade spring, and which some have dubbed the gateway to Japan, is small by Chinese standards, with a population of just 250,000. Its location in the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture, one third of whose population is ethnic Korean, gives it an even more exotic feel.

However, as much as Hunchun has pretensions as a tourist center, such ambitions are vastly overshadowed by the success of Jilin's top tourist attraction 230 kilometers or so to the southwest, Changbai mountain, which feeds the 520-kilometer Tumen River that flows by Hunchun on its way to the Sea of Japan and forms part of the boundary between China, the DPRK and Russia.