May 2021; The rotting, metal monsters

And so here we are again! Hola, konnichiwa and bonjour to my dear readers, it’s been quite a break! As I mentioned last time I was away for just over a month on a couple of work trips. The first was 3 weeks in Shanghai, taking school student portraits for the next generation of leaders, moguls and thinkers, and then on to Beijing to teach some adorable little ones the joy of photography on the Great Wall. Both instances were fantastic experiences, long and tiring days but a whole lot of fun, and I’m very happy to say that I gratefully learned quite a bit from both working environments. Also just getting away from Shenzhen felt so good, seeing different things, talking different conversations and smelling different smells does great things for the soul. But now I’m back, with fresh eyes, restored vigour, and a slightly wider view of the world.

It’s no secret that I absolutely adore both Shanghai and Beijing. I love how they are in such stark contrast to Shenzhen (and each other) in so many ways. The architecture of Shanghai is truly world class, mixing Asian and European and so many other worldly styles into just one city. The architecture of Beijing seems much more “practical,” for want of a better word. It’s not so outlandish and flamboyant, but it does the job it’s meant to do with the minimum of fuss and attention. Shanghai also has such a tasteful sense of fashion and style. People dress really well, the ladies have grace and poise, and yet still manage to look elegant riding a bicycle. The current weather in Beijing suits me down to the ground, warm sunny days and cool breezy evenings, perfect for cuddling up under the duvet. Getting off the plane and being hit with the Shenzhen humidity just killed me. Both cities have fascinating histories, with endless stories of dynasties and rulers, times of war and crisis, and people making it through the worst of times to now be basking in (quite possibly) the best of times. But, as we all know, there is no perfect place in the world. You just have to try and find the place that’s best for you, for the short term or the long term or both. Everywhere has pros and the cons, the benefits and the disadvantages. Shenzhen is a young and vibrant city, surrounded by fantastic nature and landscapes, but it’s really quite soulless and is infamously branded as a cultural desert. Shangahi has all the good stuff I just mentioned, but soooooo many people claim that Shanghai-ers are arrogant and even somewhat conceited, and all the bloody doofus tourists there are enough to make you avoid the downtown area altogether. Beijing is much less bumptious than Shanghai or Shenzhen, but winters are deathly cold (remember that damned tent trip?!?) and not meaning to offend anybody, sometimes that accent can drive me nuts. Some people seriously do talk like they have a mouthful of sweets. “How much is this?” “Schurr shurrrrrrurrr.” “I’m sorry, how much?” (Shop lady now clearly irritated) “SCHURRR SCHURRRRRURRRERRRR.” (It was 44rmb. Did you guess? Neither did I.)

But there’s one thing that really, completely, totally infuriates me about both of these cities even more than Shenzhen. And I know I’m not going to win any friends with this one, but I don’t bloody well care. The thing that makes my head implode with rage, heats my blood to 210-degrees and instantly gives me the temper of a lady giving birth, is ALL THE DAMNED BIKES. Even thinking about it raises my inner demon. But before I begin my reviling tirade, let me clear something up. I love people who buy bicycles, and actually ride them as they are supposed to. These people have already secured their place in heaven, right next to mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi. These carefully peddling souls are nothing less than divine creatures of intelligence and and thoughtfulness. But no, the Sunday scribble isn’t about those enlightened beings. It’s about the hundreds of thousands of rotting, rusted metal corpses that seem to occupy every street, alleyway and corner of these beautiful cities. Let’s just cast our minds back a few years, shall we? Before the abhorrent notion of “shared bikes” plagued our fair lands. People then would think to themselves “mmm, I think owning a bicycle is a good idea for me. I can get some exercise, save some money on taxis, be slightly better for the environment, I can look after it properly and ride it like an intelligent human being ought to.” But now, oh dear, those days are long gone. The term “new normal” has been tossed around very liberally over the last 18 months, and one aspect of that is that seeing these mountains of decrepit metal monsters just filling our cities and towns now is just “normal.” We’ve gotten used to it. I simply couldn’t count the number of streets in Shanghai where walking on the pavement (that’s the bit on the side where the potentially lethal cars don’t go) is actually impossible, because of these damned rotting, filthy shared bike corpses are lined up endlessly. It made me so angry when I saw a senior lady struggling in a wheelchair, having to drop down in to the road full of speeding cars, and having to push herself along within literally 20 or 30 centimetres of traffic, because the pathway was full of dead bikes. This is a truly disgusting way to treat our citizens.

I’m sure we can all remember when the shared bike concept came about a few years ago. I cannot recall the amount of heated conversations I had with people about how I fundamentally thought this was a bad idea. “Oh but it’s so good for the environment” people would hark back. So let me ask you this, was the energy used and pollution created by the manufacture of these millions of bikes, many of which are now just laying stacked up in dead bike mountains or filling our pathways, somehow good for the environment? The Southern Weekly (a Chinese media outlet based in Guangzhou) estimate that there are over 20 million shared bikes now in China. Let’s take a guess at how many have been manufactured (again lets say 20 million) compared to how many are actually now in good, working order, and being regularly used. I’m gonna guess at 20%. So my personal guess would be that around 16 million of these shared bikes are piled up to rot, or filling our streets. 16 million. And this is “the new normal?” How can we be so apathetic about our living environment, the place where our children play and our seniors are forced to walk in the dirty roads. And then it all went tits-up, and most of these shared bike companies went bankrupt, surprise surprise. Millions lost their deposit money. I can hear people thinking “but it was only 100rmb.” If it’s only 100rmb then send me “only” 100rmb right now. Is it still only 100rmb? Thought not. So let’s ask the million dollar question; Who is responsible for cleaning all this up? Well, that seems to be…. nobody.

It’s common knowledge that you can’t run a business and make money from public space. That’s why all the amazing street barbeque stalls and fruit vendors are unfortunately (mostly) a thing of the past. But, these companies were given the green light to use public space to run a business and make money. And not just in one trial city, but across the whole country. Hmmm… Somewhere along these intense business negotiations there was a lot of money greasing the wheels to allow this. Call this an act of telepathy, but I think now we all have a similar idea now of whose responsibility it is to clean up these monsters and restore our beautiful cities back to their former glory. And we all also know that isn’t happening, and more than likely will never happen. So what to do? If, for example, I was to remove these bicycles personally and dispose of them it would be a criminal act. Destruction of private property, and theft. This is not good. But, if someone were to (for example) leave an old ironing board or TV out on the street, someone would come along and load it in the back of a truck and recycle it. This is good. So my argument is this; These bike sharing companies are clearly not acting responsibly, and have left these bikes out to rot. They have given up ownership of the terrible contraptions. So why can’t somebody authorise the clearance to allow people/some company to take them away and recycle them?! It seems pretty obvious to me, but am I missing something?! This seems like a win-win strategy to me. The local authorities make a ton of revenue on recycling them (which could be spent on public services, perhaps a few public toilets scattered around here and there, or maybe even donated to help eliminate poverty.) The streets would be sooooo much clearer, our cities much nicer to look at, and we could all learn from the lesson that, in many places, public property simply does not work. It has to be near indestructible to work. Park benches work, they can’t be stolen, can’t be moved, and they are really quite hard to damage. Shared bikes do not work. The hard truth is that most people don’t give a shit about something that’s not actually theirs. Tell me I’m wrong.

*Side note; Public toilets. Another thing I truly love about Beijing is all the public toilets. Fantastic. As humans, we all need to put stuff in our mouths to create energy and function. And that stuff also has to come out sometimes. Finding a public toilet in Shenzhen is like finding a talking dog (and oh how I would love to find that.) Why oh why do we now presume that public=KFC or McDonalds? It’s kind of hard to criticize people peeing and pooping everywhere they please if there are no public toilets available. Please local authorities, please oh please build more public toilets. I’m getting old now, I need them more and more.

But past the grievances towards these shared bike companies, here is where I make a few nostrils flare and raise a few tempers. I’m just gonna come out and say it, and I’ll stand by this statement till the day I die. Most people who ride shared bikes are morons. (Yes this deserves to be in bold.) Let’s do a mental test right now. Think about how many people you see riding shared bikes. How many of these people are actually carefully riding that bicycle, looking where they are going, concentrating on riding safely and cautiously thinking about others. How many? Almost bloody none, that’s how many. It seems that now the normal thing is to; A) Clamber onto bicycle. B) Wobble around for a few metres because you can’t actually ride a bicycle properly. C) Play with your phone as you incompetently and dangerously ride one-handed. But there are others, even lower down the evolutionary scale, who unfathomably seem to think that loading a small child into the front basket thing is acceptable. Oh. My. Word. When I see this, which I hate to say is almost every day, it absolutely makes me shudder, and I’m not even a parent. In many countries this would rightfully be illegal. It’s beyond irresponsible. In my mind these are the same breed of people that let children jump around inside moving cars and let them stick their head out the sunroof. Let me break this down; People ride bicycles often next to roads. Fast, big cars drive in those roads. Sometimes other bicycles or pedestrians have collisions on these paths next to roads. Kids fall out of front basket things rather easily and could fall into those roads. What do you think happens next?… Some people, in fact many people, should be sterilised before being allowed to spawn.

This weeks Sunday scribble may leave a slightly bitter taste in the mouth, but if I wrote about how everything was all hearts and flowers it would get pretty boring pretty fast. Trust me, there are a bunch of foreigners here that make a comfortable life by kissing ass all day long, but as anybody who personally knows me, that’s not me. “Ooh everything is so amazing! The food is so yummy and the people are all kind and caring geniuses! This place is nirvana!” It’s completely because I love this country I hope to generate a little more care and thinking about the place. Does anybody think millions of rotting bicycles filling our beautiful cities are a good thing? No. Does anybody think riding a bike like a drunk imbecile and endangering others is a good idea? No. Does anybody think loading a small child into basket of a bike and riding next to (or on) a busy road is a good idea? Unfortunately, some people do. Common sense is clearly not so common any more.

I really wanted to bash into the subject of delivery bike drivers, another thing that makes my blood boil, but my dear friend Jerry told me that sometimes my Sunday Scribble waffles on for too long (so I’ll save that particular subject for another time.) Thank you all for being so caring and supportive while I took a break, I received some beautiful messages and they spur me on to continue writing this every week. Wishing you all a lovely week ahead, and if you ride a bicycle, please ride carefully.