Have you got an e-bike?

ebikes waiting to go across the street with pedestrians

When my friends and I were teenagers in the city of Kunming, all we needed was a bicycle. We rode bicycles everywhere: to school, to friends’ party, to restaurant gathering, even a day trip to places miles away from home.

The city seemed big to us at that time, because it took a rather long time to ride from one place to another. But it also felt small, because we could go to every corner of the city simply by pedaling our beloved bicycles. Bicycle was for us cellphone for today’s teenagers.

Long gone those days.

Now I am back in the city where I grew up, and I could no longer imagine going anywhere by riding a bicycle.

It is way too dangerous to do that now. There are still bicycle lanes on the roads, but these lanes are mostly occupied by a new type of bicycle: electronic bicycles. They look very much like motorcycles, only that they were powered by batteries. They are faster than traditional bicycles, but are considered non-vehicles and therefore run in the same lane with bicycles.

Worse, they compete with pedestrians for road rights, because as non-vehicles, they don’t have to stop when there is a red light, and they cross the street on crossing lines together with pedestrians.

It sure is not a fair game. So people opt for upgrading their transportation tool. Buying a car might still be too expensive for many people, but an e-bike is much more affordable.

Everywhere in the city, you see people send kids to school, carry cargo with them, or go on a date on e-bikes. All kinds of people are riding them: young migrant workers, fashionable ladies, busy moms, grandparents…

All this makes riding a traditional bicycle to go around, or just walking across the street, much more complicated. Every time I walk across the street, I have to watch for not just roaring vehicles making turns, which have not learned the manner of yielding, but also roaring e-bikes coming right at me from the other side!

No wonder one of my friends, who is Chinese but has lived in the US for many years, said he couldn’t even make it across the street during his recent visit to Kunming.

Fortunately, I am better than my poor friend. I still could manage to run through the stream of e-bikes at the cross walk. And yes, I do feel that I am VERY brave.

ebikes running on the same lane with pedestrians

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