Sorry if this is a redundant post, I searched the forum and didn't find anything too recent...

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some decent second hand bike shops. I made the classic mistake of locking my shiny bike to a tree with a shitty Chinese "Gaint" lock instead of taking to any of the dependable bike parking areas for 1rmb.

Looking for somewhere that has a beat up but functional road bike (or mountain, considering the state of the roads here) for maybe 700rmb or less. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated, add my quality of life here had already plummeted in my 4 bikeless hours here.

And remember, don't be an idiot like me and lock a nice bike with a crap lock.

There's a Chinese guy called Alex, sometimes advertises second-hand bikes on goK...belongs to a bike club and sells out of a shop on Longquan Road. If you look through the classifieds, you could find his number..

The xiong brothers sometimes sell their used rentals. They are probably the best maintained used bikes out there. And you'd get free adjustments from them. Run you 700rmb+ depending if and what's available for sale. www.gokunming.com/[...]

Also, new bikes at C4 and Walmart have dropped a lot. 500rmb gets you a basic mountain bike. However, they are heavier and assembled by Walmart. Components aren't the best but not terrible anymore.

Oh yeah, bike thieves must die. This town is the worst too in having your bike stolen.

There is almost certainly a massive underground second hand bike market somewhere. All these stolen bikes end up somewhere, they aren't stealing them for fun!

And it doesn't matter what sort of bike lock you have. The thieves (and I have literally seen this on CCTV when my wifes bike was stolen) use a compressed air powered lock breaker. You would need an inch of steel probably to stop them. They can break all common locks in seconds regardless of quality. My wife's was a decent quality D-Lock, it took less than 5 seconds to go through, less than 20 seconds for the thief to arrive, pull out the tool, break the lock, throw the lock and ride away.

Cool, thanks for the tips. I'll check out what Xiong bros have I think.

The one thing I won't do is lock it outside again, although I'm happy enough that it wasn't stolen within the 5 months I had it. Just another reality of living in Kunming I guess,

Check out Tao Bao Cheng on Bai Long Lu. There's usually a used bike dealer among the new bike dealers.