Perhaps you have heard that the bicycle rental industry is doing amazingly well in China. In fact, in Beijing, the citizens are getting frustrated by some of the bike rental companies that display their bicycles at a narrow location in the sidewalk. This greatly reduces the amount of space for the pedestrians and, yes, even cars. Yes, cars and motorcycles do drive on the sidewalks in China! Oh, and they park on the sidewalks also, so you must always be on the lookout for moving objects of various sizes and speeds headed your way!
Although the rental bikes are very popular, I have found a potential problem, as you can see in the photograph above. The bicycle rental companies have an app for their clients to download, and this app does many things. It will locate the nearest bike for you, accept your payment, and give you the code to unlock the bike. Well, I am not sure that the app has a contingency plan for when your rental bike has a flat tire. Does anyone know how to resolve this issue as a client using the app?
China has done a wonderful job of putting signs in travel locations, like the airports, in Chinese and English. During my last trip I noticed a sign that caught my eye. I used a smaller railroad station this time, and it is called the Beijing East Station. Unfortunately, the sign in the photograph above doesn’t quite give all of the information needed if you wanted to use this station’s name again. The word “dong” in Chinese means east, so if you didn’t know that, you wouldn’t know that the name of this train station was Beijing East. That one word may make a huge difference in your next trip or having someone pick you up at the station! Hopefully all of the signs will be completely translated very soon!
Enjoy your traveling!