The Startup That's Helping Bring Bikes Back To China's Streets-自行车将重新回归中国街头
November 11, 20177:57 AM ET
Miranda Kennedy
Steve Inskeep
A man rides a Mobike bicycle past the CCTV Headquarters building in Beijing.
一名男子骑摩拜单车去央视总部大厦。
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
There was a time in China when the solid steel-framed bicycle was the perfect representation of its pace of life. A man in a black cap pedaling down a market street, bearing fruits and vegetables in his front wire basket — that was the full expression of Chinesecommerce.
在中国的时候，坚实的钢架自行车是其生活节奏完美的表现。一个戴着黑帽子的男子骑着自行车在市场街上骑着自行车，手里拿着水果和蔬菜。这是中国商业的充分体现。
But that has long since changed. Bicycles began disappearing from Beijing and other cities two decades ago, replaced by cars as China's fortunes rose. There are now 6 million cars on Beijing's streets alone; last year, some 28 million cars were sold across China.
但这早已改变了。自行车开始在北京和其他城市消失了将近20年，汽车作为中国的财富增长象征取代了它。现在北京的街道上有600万辆汽车。去年，在中国售出了2800万辆车。
But China's push to loweremissions, and the sheer impracticality of driving on traffic-clogged streets, means that in some places bikes are having a second coming — in the form of bike-shares. The new image of the streets of Beijing is a millennial riding a sturdy, brightly colored bicycle — orange, yellow or green, depending on the brand. More than two dozen bike-share companies are operating in China now.
但中国的在推动更低的排放准则，街道交通堵塞让驾驶完全变得不切实际，意味着在一些地方自行车有再次回归街道。北京的街道新的景象是图像是一个年轻人骑着结实的自行车，颜色鲜艳的橙色，黄色或绿色，代表不同的品牌。超过二十多家自行车股份公司正在中国运营共享单车。
A man prepares to unlock a Mobike shared bicycle parked along a street in Beijing.
一名男子准备打开摩拜单车。
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
There are between 16 million and 18 million shared bikes on China's streets — dockless, with an automatic electronic wheel lock. Once locked, the bikes can be safely left unattended, and they are — thousands at a time. On busy city corners, they are tossed into messy piles, frame upon colorful frame.
有1600万-1800万共享单车在中国-电子锁替代机械锁。一旦锁定，自行车可以安全地留在原地。五彩缤纷的它们被扔在杂乱的繁忙的城市的角落。
A MoBike app allows you to locate a nearby bike. You unlock it by scanning a QR on the frame with a free app on your phone, and pay for the use in half-hour increments, with no signup fee required.
摩拜单车的APP可以定位你附近的自行车，你可以通过手机扫车架上的二维码来解锁自行车，支付以半个小时为单位的使用时间来计算，无需注册费。
In some parts of Beijing, the sidewalks are so crammed with piled-up bicycles that they force pedestrians into the streets. The glut has led toa ban on new bikes.
在北京的一些地方，人行道上塞满了堆积的自行车，迫使行人走上街头。供过于求导致了新的自行车的禁令。
A customer uses a cellphone to scan a QR code, which allows them to unlock one of the shared Mobike bicycles parked in Beijing.
客户使用手机扫描二维码，这使得他们能够解开的北京街头的摩拜单车
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
To Hu Weiwei, all this is simply the natural outcrop of her company's success. Two years ago, she foundedMobike, China's first bike-share company. The concept proved itself quickly, she says.
对胡伟炜来说，这一切只是她公司成功的自然体现。两年前，她成立了中国第一个共享单车股份公司。她说，这个概念很快就被证明了。
"China is leading the world in many ways. We have a good manufacturing base, but we aren't just that. We have innovation," says Mobike's president Hu Weiwei, shown here in June.
“中国在许多方面领先世界。我们有一个良好的生产基地，但我们不只是只有这些。我们还有创新”摩拜单车的CEO胡伟炜六月在这里说。
VCG/VCG via Getty Images
"At the beginning, nobody could believe it, how these bikes could work without being stolen," she says in a mix of Mandarin and broken English. "We've learned that there's a pattern to it. When we first launch in a city, there are always cases of the bikes being stolen. They don't realize we have technology to track the bikes. But then they learn."
“起初，没有人会相信，这些自行车是如何工作而不会被偷走的，”她用混合汉语和蹩脚的英语说。我们知道有固定模式是。当我们进入一个城市里，总是有自行车被盗的案例。他们没有意识到我们有追踪自行车的技术。但后来他们知道了。”
The founder and president of this $3 billion company is 35 — old enough to remember something of China's earlier bicycle era.
这30亿美元的公司创始人兼总裁只有35岁，还记得中国的早期自行车时代的东西。
"It's a very nice memory, actually," she says. "I personally like riding bicycles, and I was thinking, 'How can I bring bikes back?' "
“事实上，这是一个很好的记忆，”她说。我个人喜欢骑自行车，我在想，‘我怎样才能把自行车带回我们的生活？”
Weiwei grew up in a modest home in a town in eastern China. Her parents are woodcarvers who make decorative doors. After leaving her hometown, she worked as a business journalist before catching the entrepreneurial bug.
伟伟成长于中国东部小镇一个简陋的家庭中。她的父母都是木雕装饰门的人。在离开她的家乡，他是一名曝光企业问题的的商业记者。
A woman walks past Mobike shared bicycles parked along a street in Beijing.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
Her story speaks to those of millions of China's citizens who have followed their dreams from the provinces to the cities — with no promise of success.
她的故事告诉数以百万级的中国年轻人应该追寻自己的梦想，可能都不一定会成功。
"We're in an age of exploration now in China," Weiwei says. "Unlike our parents, people of my generation want to move to the mega-cities, and we often choose to stay here.The pace of life is fast. We can watch whatever we want, unlike in my parents' generation, when everyone watched the samesoap operaat the same time. There are many stars in the sky now."
“现在的中国是探索的时代，“伟伟说。”不像我们的父母这一代人，他们想搬到大城市，而我们选择留在这里。生活节奏很快。我们可以看任何我们想看的东西，不像我父母那一代，每个人都在同一时间看同样的肥皂剧。现在的天空中有很多的星星。”
People ride Mobike shared bicycles along an expressway overpass in Beijing.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
Against the chill of a damp October night in Beijing, Weiwei wore a black fleece bearing her company's logo, a casual outfit that would fit in well in Silicon Valley. She joked with a colleague that she hadn't had time to wash her hair that day. She works up to 20 hours a day, she says.
在北京潮湿的十月夜晚的寒风中，伟伟穿了一件公司的标志的意见休闲羽绒服，会很适合在硅谷。她跟同事开玩笑说她没有时间洗头发，她每天工作20小时。
Mobike does not yet turn a profit, though she insists that's a choice, saying the company is focused on growth right now instead.
MOBIKE尚未实现盈利，虽然她依然选择坚持，说公司的重点是增长。
Having raised more than $900 million from investors, including Internet giant Tencent — one of the world's largest Internet companies, which also boasts a close relationship with China's authoritarian government — Mobike appears to be on fairly solid ground. But it faces tough competition from half-a-dozen bike-share companies in China and worldwide, includingCalifornia-based Limebike, which launched almost simultaneously with Mobike 18 months ago.
从投资者募集了超过9亿美元，包括互联网巨头腾讯-世界上最大的互联网公司之一，它还与中国政府拥有密切关系，Mobike拥有相当坚实的背景。但它面临着数十家共享单车公司在中国和全球范围内的激烈竞争，包括加利福尼亚的limebike，首发18个月就几乎达到MOBIKE一样的市值。
People ride bicycles and scooters past Mobike shared bicycles parked along a street in Beijing.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP for NPR
Mobike is still very much in startup mode. To prospective employees, it tries to make a virtue out of its long days, ad hoc environment and disorganized office space. In its cramped Beijing complex, some employees have set up laptops in the lobby and in conference rooms, for lack of other space. They work shifts late into the evening; the company has lunch and dinner buffets on offer in the office every day.
MOBIKE仍在起步阶段。对于招聘员工，它试图从漫长的日子、临时的环境和杂乱无章的办公空间中获得具有美德的人。在狭窄的北京综合大楼有些员工在大堂设置笔记本电脑和会议室，为节省空间，他们轮班工作到深夜；每一天.，公司都在办公室提供午餐及晚餐自助餐
Weiwei's British colleague Chris Martin, who is leading the company's international expansion, says that conducting interviews with potential employees around the world clarified something for him.
Weiwei的英国同事克里斯马丁，他负责公司的国际拓展业务，他说，与世界各地潜在的雇员进行面谈时，他都会明确的说明这点。
"We had candidates from overseas asking for book recommendations on Chinese business culture, and we realized that we couldn't think of a single Chinese thing about the company," he says. "We decided that the perfect fit for our employees is not Chinese culture, but rather startup culture."
他说：“我们有来自海外的应聘者，要求我们推荐有关中国商业文化的书籍，我们意识到，我们无法想出一个单一中国公司的东西。我们决定最适合我们员工的不是中国文化，而是创业文化。”
This week, nearly 30 American CEOs accompanied President Trump to China, urging Beijing to open up its market to foreign companies to try to repair thetrade deficit. Chinese companies like Mobike are just as eager to get access to the American market.
本周，近30位美国公司的CEO陪同特朗普总统前往中国，敦促北京开放其市场的外国企业试图修复贸易赤字。就像MOBIKE的中国企业正如渴望进入美国市场一样。
So far it has expanded into several countries, launching in the Netherlands this week to go with operations in Singapore, Italy and the U.K. Although it has only made it into one American city thus far — Washington, D.C., where it finds itself head-to-head with its American challenger, LimeBike, and others — Weiwei refuses to be disheartened by her competition's home team advantage.
到目前为止，它已经扩展到几个国家，这周去荷兰洽谈业务，依次是新加坡、意大利和英国。虽然只是使它只进入了一个美国城市，华盛顿D.C.，在那里它发现强劲的美国对手，limebike和其他公司但伟伟并没有因为丧失主场优势而心灰意冷。
"China is leading the world in many ways," she says. "We have a good manufacturing base, but we aren't just that. We have innovation."
“中国在许多方面领先世界，”她说。“我们有一个良好的生产基地，我们还有创新。
Sheer determination has brought her this far. As tired as she looks heading back into her shared office at 8:30 at night, she still sounds energized by the challenge.
不忘初心使她走了这么远。尽管她看上去已经很疲倦，晚上8点半回到办公室，但她仍然能接受新一波的挑战。
Miranda Kennedy is a senior editor atMorning Edition. You can follow her on Twitter at@mirandatk. NPR producer Alyssa Edes and contributed to this story.
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原文来自 NPR Miranda Kennedy November 11, 20177:57 AM ET