【FP】The Rise and Fall of China’s Cycling Empires 自行车王国的兴衰史
China’s bike-sharing firms were supposed to be the next big thing. What happened?
中国的共享单车企业本该创造一番大事业，发生了什么呢？
Morethan 100,000 shared bikes are piled up in an open space in Xiamen, China, on Jan. 13. (Wang Dongming/China NewsService/VCG via Getty Images)
厦门露天场所一处堆积了超过10万辆共享单车
Untilthe late 1990s, China was a nation of cyclists. Bicycles were such a vital partof everyday life that in the 1970s,owning one was a prerequisite for marriage the way an apartment and a car are for Chinese men today. A massive “bicycle army” rolled through the streets of Beijing every morning like a flowing Great Wall. Then, from 1995 to 2002, the government created bicycle-reduction policies in order to encourage the growth of the auto industry and usage of the mass transit infrastructure. But when the SARS epidemic hit, public transport became associated with disease and danger,sparking an even bigger rushtoward cars in cities. Today, Chinese metropolises have some of the worst traffic gridlocks in the world.
Gridlocks：交通堵塞，traffic jam
上个世纪90年代之前，中国曾是一个自行车王国。70年代，自行车是人们日常生活重要的一部分，是结婚的前提，就像今天中国男性必须有要有房有车才能结婚。每天早晨巨大的“自行车队伍”就像长城一样穿过北京的街道。后来，1995年到2002年，政府出台减少自行车政策以刺激汽车行业增长，鼓励人们使用公共交通基础设施。但在SARS病毒席卷中国时，公共交通成为疾病和危险的代名词，这反而更加刺激了人们驾驶汽车而非乘坐公共交通工具。如今，中国有些大城市的交通状况排得上全球最差。
Poise：①If someone is poised to do something, they areready to take action at any moment.
②If you are poised, you are calm, dignified, and self-controlled.
Bike-sharing apps seemed poised to be the solution—and millions of bikes were poured into China’s streets by the private sector in the last three years. But today, as the companies fail, unused units pile up in bicycle graveyards, and queues of angry users demand their deposits back, it’s obvious just how doomed the idea was from the start.The rise and fall of the China bike crazeplayed out like a sped-up version of every tech bubble, an unprofitable idea sustained by fantasy, false predictions, and the power of biggerfirms.
共享单车APP顺应成为解决之策—过去三年，上千万辆自行车涌入中国城市的街道。而今天，随着共享单车企业倒闭，废旧的自行车堆积在自行车坟场，不满的用户排着队要求退回押金，很明显，共享单车从一开始就注定劫数难逃。中国自行车热潮的起起落落就像翻版的技术泡沫，是由幻想、错误的预计以及大公司的权力而支撑起的注定无法盈利的空想。
Local authorities struggling with traffic have been trying to put residents back ontwo wheels. As early as 2007, docked bike-shares were introduced by municipal governments to alleviate mobility issues in cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, and Wuhan, but users found accessing bikes via docking stations to be inconvenient, and the services failed to thrive.
地方机构不满交通状况，而试图鼓励人们使用自行车。早在2007年，市政府推出的定点停靠单车的确缓解了北京、杭州、武汉的交通问题，但是用户们发现要把自行车停靠在定点的地点很不方便，因此定点自行车的服务以失败告终。
The bicycle rental company Ofo was created in 2014 as a Peking University schoolproject, and Mobike was found in the following year, both capitalizing on the shortcoming of all docked bike-sharing services: that the stations limited access and spontaneity, two essentialjoys of cycling. The “little red bikes,” as Mobikes came to be known, soonappeared on the street corners of Shanghai, ready to be discovered via aGPS-enabled mobile app, and rideable with just a 299 yuan deposit, about $45, via mobile payment. The little yellow Ofo bikes soon followed suit by spreading beyond campuses, eventually joined by around 60 other start-ups.
单车租赁公司OFO作为北京大学的校园项目于2014年创立，摩拜则创立于2015年，两家公司都旨在解决定点共享单车服务的两大缺点：停靠站点有限和骑行意愿不高，而随意的停靠站点和骑行的意愿恰恰是骑行的两大乐趣。摩拜公司的“小红车”立即出现在上海的各个角落，用户可用装有GPS 的APP进行扫码，付款299元定金便可供用户骑行。OFO的小黄车迅速在校园外效仿摩拜的做法，最终赢得了其他60家初创企业的融资。
Theimage sold by the firms was fresh and upbeat, riding on the same bright-eyed enthusiasm for the potential ofmobile technology that helped the mobile payment app Alipay, the e-commerce platform Taobao, and the social media app WeChat become staples of Chinese life.Users wanted both a cheap way to get across town and the freedom of cycling. For the government, the bike-share boom was both an opportunity to become a world leader in climate change and also harkened back to a happier, simpler,and more harmonious time when China was the kingdom of bicycles. Mobike’sslogan, “Bring bicycles back to the city,”captured why the program was appealing to local authorities, who at first were willingto give firms a lot of freedom to experiment and grow. While Mobike and Ofoblazed the trail, dozens of other firms such as Bluegogo and Xiaoming Bike sprung up.
Staple：主要部分
harkened back ：to go back in thought or speech; revert; hark back
blaze the trail: to explore new territories, areas of knowledge, etc, in such a way that others can follow 开辟道路、另辟蹊径
spring up: If something springs up, it suddenly appears or begins to exist.
共享单车公司所售的形象清新简约，借着这股对移动科技潜力的信心，共享单车促进了阿里巴巴的支付平台以及淘宝电商的发展，社交软件微信成为中国人们主要的生活部分。用户既希望去往市区的成本低廉又希望可以享受骑行的自由，而对政府来说，共享单车热潮不仅可以让中国成为气候应对的全球领先者，还能回到中国曾是幸福、简单和更和谐的自行车王国时代。摩拜“让自行车重返城市”的口号反映了共享单车吸引当地政府的缘由，地方政府起先也愿意给企业更多的试验和发展的自由。正在摩拜和OFO开辟这条崭新的道路后，上十家公司如bluegogo、小鸣单车如雨后春笋般冒出来。
Butcars were not going to be banished from the streets, and it wasn’t long beforecyclists took mostly to the sidewalks. It took even less time for haphazardly parked bikes in amultitude of colors to begin clogging the sidewalks, already made too narrow by makeshift parking lots and scooter traffic.By 2017, in Beijing and Shanghai, where the bikes were most concentrated, therewere parts of the city where streets resembled urban obstacle courses made ofbikes that citizens had to clamber over and maneuver around. Trucks were deployed daily to collect improperly parked bikes, and workers to stack bikes neatly. Despite efforts to manage the bikes, they were like a brightly colored rash that increasingly drew the ire of both citizens and local authorities.
Haphazardly：not at all organized or is not arranged according to a plan.
Clog：obstruct, block, jam, hamper
Makeshift: things are temporary and usually of poor quality, but they are used because there is nothing better available. 权宜之计，临时的
但汽车不会从街道上消失，很快，自行车便占领了人行道。然而更快地是，大量随意停放的五颜六色的自行车开始堵塞住人行道，使得临时停车点无处可放，造成摩托车拥堵。2017年，在自行车最密集的北京和上海，堆满自行车的街道成为城市的障碍，人们需要翻过甚至绕过自行车才能通行。需要每天雇用货车来收拾这些不合理摆放的自行车，工人们再将自行车整齐摆放好。除了需要大量的精力来管理外，这些五颜六色的自行车就像麻疹一样，不断地引起市民和地方政府的不满。
But atfirst users and investors alike assumed that this over-saturation was just a stage in the industry, just like what mobile payments and food delivery had gone through. Consumers were happy at the dirt-cheapprices as companies raced to the bottom to draw numbers. Many start-ups were flat-out giving out free rides in an all-in bid to win users, and consumers only too happily enjoyed all the perks while smallcompanies quickly burned through their modest stockpile of investor money anddisappeared. As various players began to bow out, there were instances of people not being able to recover their deposits from bike companies that went bankrupt,ominous foreshadowing for things to come for Ofo in 2018.
dirt-cheap prices：dirt cheap,毫无价值的、廉价的， 低价、白菜价
race to the bottom：逐底竞争、向下竞争
flat-out： 1.done at maximum speed going at a flat-out gallop
2. downright; complete and utter 直接底、彻底地
Her request met with a flat-out refusal.
That allegation is a flat-out lie.
all-in bid：全力以赴
bow out：If you bow out of something, you stop taking part in it. 退出、辞职
Perk: Perks are special benefits 特殊待遇
一开始，用户和投资者都认为这一过剩现象只是这个行业必经的一个阶段，移动支付和外卖也曾经历过类似的阶段。为了赢得用户，许多初创企业全力以赴提供免费乘车服务，消费者只是过于愉快地享受所有额外津贴，很快小公司就耗光了投资者微薄的资金而消失不见。由于许多玩家开始退出共享单车市场，用户们无法从破产的单车公司拿回押金，2018年对OFO来说意味着凶多吉少的一年。
It was always unclear how the firms were ever supposed to be profitable. According to analysis published by Xinhua, each bike costs just over $200 to manufacture and$10 for each tuneup by a technician,and they made a profit of just 1 yuan, about 15 cents, per 2 hour ride,following a deposit of between $15 and $45. The mainstream view— pushed heavilyby investors—was that the user data, rather than the service, was the actual product, and that the harvested user data would lead to more targeted advertising.But as so often occurs, these ambiguously defined long-term returns yielded nothing in the endless interim.There was no short-term return on investment for the companies to stay afloat,and the smaller players began to fall in droves.
Tuneup: 预演；调整；准备
Stay afloat: If a person, business, or country stays afloat or is kept afloat, they have just enough money to paytheir debts and continue operating. 濒临破产、艰难经营
in droves: 成群结队地，
共享单车公司究竟如何盈利一直以来是一个谜团。根据新华社发布的分析，每一单车的生产成本为200美元，技工调试费用10美元，而用户每骑行两个小时利润仅1元，押金为15-45美元之间。主流观点(投资者强加的观点)是真正的产品是用户数据而非骑行服务，大量的用户数据可以带来更多定向广告。但是经常发生的现象是，这些定义模糊的长期收益最终一无所获。对于那些濒临破产的公司来说，短期投资收益是不存在的，小公司开始成批倒闭。
BetweenJune and November 2017, Kuqi Bikes, Bluegogo, Dingding Bikes, 3Vbikes, andWukong Bikes all shut down, unable to pay suppliers, maintain operations, orreturn deposits. Around the same time, local authorities began to roll back their initial tolerance byimposing new restrictions and fines. This wasn’t the first time that start-upsthat had previously relied on government lenience had run afoul of newlegislation: Didi, China’s Uber equivalent, lost most of its driver pool aftercities began to demand that its workers hold a valid local residence permit.
Run afoul of: 1.to collide with or become entangled with
2. to get into conflict or trouble with 与…发生冲突；与…相撞
Lenience: tolerance
2017年6月至11月，酷奇单车、bluegogo、丁丁单车、3V单车、悟空骑行都关门大吉，无力支付供应商资金，无法继续经营和返还用户押金。几乎同一时间，地方政府开始收回他们的激励政策，并实行新的限制性法规和罚款政策。初创公司一开始依赖于政府的宽松政策最后又以触犯新法律而告终，这并不是第一次发生了。比如Uber对手滴滴打车丧失了很多司机资源，原因是政府开始要求滴滴司机必须持有当地的居住许可证。
As governments tightened up, cyclists found themselves being hit with fines for riding on the sidewalk across cities of all sizes. In May, the 15th Beijing Municipal People’s Congress imposed fines on bike-share companies for improperly parked units, and more cities soon followed suit. At a neighborhood level, signs forbidding bike-share cycles went up on apartment complex gates, in commercial districts, and even in public parks.
政府实行限制性政策后，骑行的人们发现只要他们在城市的各类人行道骑行就有可能被罚款。五月份，北京市人们代表大会提出对未经合理停放的自行车施加罚款，其他城市纷纷效仿。街道附近，禁止共享单车停发的标志在公寓的门口、商业大厦区、甚至公共停车场四处可见。
In these bloody battles for market share and user data sustained by bonfires of money, only those with the deepest pockets can hope to emerge victorious. In the early days of bike-share investment, money poured from a wide range of sources, such as venture capital firm Black Hole Capital and game developer Elex Technology, which both backed Bluegogo, and peer-to-peer investment company Pufa VC (whose CEO backed hisson’s bike-share, Dingding Bikes). Throughout 2016 and 2017, barely a week went by without a new announcement on bike-share investments. Mobike began by raising capital from multiple venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital,Sinovation Ventures, and Panda Capital,before Tencent joined the fray.Early Ofo investors include Xiaomi and Didi Chuxing, later joined by HonyCapital, Citic Private Equity, and Alibaba’s Ant Financial, before the Alibaba parent company followed suit.
deepest pockets：财力雄厚
emerge victorious:得胜、获得胜利
Sinovation Ventures：创新工厂
Join the fray/ follow suit: 效仿
在这场抢占市场份额和依靠资金维持的用户数据的血腥较量中，只有那些资金雄厚的公司才能得胜。早期的共享单车投资中，融资来自各个领域，黑洞资本的风投公司、游戏开发商智明星通科技都投资了bluegogo，同等投资公司浦发风投（出资了其CEO之子创立的“丁丁出行”）。整个2016-2017的两年中，几乎每一个星期都有共享单车投资的新闻。摩拜融资来自于数家风投公司如红杉资本、创新工场、熊猫资本，之后腾讯也加入到这个队伍中来。OFO早期的融资包括小米和滴滴出行，弘毅投资、中信产业基金以及巴里巴巴的蚂蚁金融也投资了OFO，之后巴里总公司紧跟其后。
Andyet, at the end of every cycle of life and death for the latest tech bubble, it always seems to come down toAlibaba vs. Tencent, China’s two biggest tech giants. User and user data acquisition has much more strategic value for their ecosystems to come up with increasingly targeted services and platforms. Alibaba staked food delivery andvideo streaming platforms. Only Alibaba and Tencent have the heft to operatebike-shares at a loss just to acquire geolocation user data.
然而，在最近的技术泡沫生与死的轮回中，这场战役实质上是中国两家最大的科技公司阿里巴巴与腾讯的之间的较量。用户与用户数据获取对其生态系统来说有更重要的战略价值，以推出更加有目标性的服务与平台。阿里巴巴出资外卖与流视频平台印证了这一点。只有阿里巴巴与腾讯具备足够的资金实力经营亏损的共享单车，以获取更多的地域用户数据。
InApril, Mobike was saved from its financial struggles when it was acquired byTencent-backed Meituan Dianping, an online-to-offline e-commerce and food delivery super-app, itself a product and survivor of the tumultuous tech landscape and the brief fad for coupon services. This abruptly launched thebike-share wars into the endgames. Mobike’s newfound financial stabilityallowed it to pull the rug out from under its remaining competitors bygetting rid of the deposit entirely. Even then, Mobike is now a grizzledsurvivor that has lost its luster. Today it operates with a greatly reduced fleet, and much of its overseas expansions has petered out.
Tumultuous：noisy, disturbed, turbulent
Fad: an intense but short-lived fashion; craze 一时狂热
pull the rug from under someone/pull the rug from under someone's feet…: rug, 地毯， they stop giving their help or support.停止帮助、停止资助
Peter out: If something peters out, it gradually comes to an end.
四月，腾讯出资的美团点评（一家线上-线下的电商与外卖APP）收购了摩拜，使其摆脱了财务危机，而美团点评本身也是科技公司的喧嚣之争衍生的产品而得以幸存下来，且因其优惠券服务而短暂地流行起来。这突然发起的共享单车之战接近尾声。摩拜的经济稳定性使得其无需竞争者的资助，而无需全部退还押金。即便是这时，摩拜依旧像是一个失去活力的备受挫败的幸存者。今天，摩拜经营的自行车大大地减少了，其海外竞争者也渐渐消失。
Meanwhile,Ofo was suffering dire cash flow problems, struggling to pay suppliers and keeping operations afloat, and concentrating all its efforts on putting out fires rather than growing the business. Earlier this year, Ofo halted its costly and overly aggressive expansions abroad to focus on the domestic market—which placed on display the limitations of its own financial reach and its leaders’ utter lack of a plan.After a missed opportunity to merge with Mobike and a failed Didi acquisition,Ofo stands on the brink of financial ruin, its only lifeline an Alibaba buyout that may never come. Sensing the end of the bike wars, disgruntled people lined up outside Ofo’s office in Beijing clamoring for their deposits to be returned while the digital queue for withdrawing one’s deposit reached as long as 13 million users.
clamor for：if people are clamouring for something, they are demanding it in a noisy or angry way. 喧闹、叫嚣
与此同时，OFO却正遭受极端的现金流问题，奋力支付供应商，勉强维持经营，集中其所有精力拯救业务而不是扩展业务。今年早些时候，OFO停止了其耗费精力的及具有侵略性的向海外扩张的计划，转而专注于国内市场—这显示出OFO资金的短缺以及其领导层缺乏计划布局。在错失与摩拜合并、滴滴收购失败后，OFO就站在了资产风险的边缘，唯一的救命稻草就靠阿里巴巴的收购，但这一天也一直未到来。嗅出共享单车的战火后，愤怒的用户排期长队在北京OFO办公楼外叫嚣，要求退还其押金，与此同时，网上排队等着退还押金的用户已达1300万人。
Despite the ongoing Ofo crisis, Hellobike has just raised 4 billion yuan, more than half a billion dollars, from Primavera Capital and Alibaba’s Ant Financial. It seems that there are still some who hasn’t woken up from the bike-share fever dream.
除了OFO的危机，哈罗单车却刚刚从春华资本以及阿里蚂蚁金融融资40亿元人民币。看起来，依旧有人没有从共享单车的白日梦中醒来。
Meanwhile,Shanghai is adding more docking stations,perhaps a return to the boring, but infinitely more manageable, version of thebike-share. There’s always going to be a small audience for cycling—but it turned out to be a bad dream to build giant firms on.
docking stations：停车点、车站
同时，上海正在增加更多的停车点，或许是为了挽回一种无聊、但却更加可管理的共享单车。骑自行的人数量有限，但要为此成立大型的公司将是一场噩梦。
BY FRANKIE HUANG ——DECEMBER
31, 2018 | 1800 words