A Baidu Knight stands in front of the headquarters of Baidu in Beijing.
On Beijing's smoggy days, many try to avoid going outside, but Wang Ji is rushing through the streets to deliver food to the city's shut-ins.
Wang is a "Baidu Knight," the nickname for delivery men from Chinese search giant Baidu's take-out service. Tens of thousands of them, dressed in red jackets, ride their motorcycles, shuttling from restaurants to offices and homes in more than 100 Chinese cities every day.
The quantity of food delivered by these "knights" each day amounts to some 480 tonnes of grains, 400 tonnes of vegetables and 640 heads of cattle. Each delivery man travels about 14,000 kilometers per year on average, about the distance from Shanghai to New York.
Market researcher EnfoDesk said China's Internet-based restaurant delivery services fulfilled 176 million orders in the first quarter of 2015, up by over 340 percent year on year.
"It's a toilsome job. You need to race against time to deliver food as quickly as possible so you can get more orders, and sometimes the work can be very challenging," said the 21-year-old, who left his hometown in Shandong Province five months ago to become a delivery man in Beijing.
"Working late at night can be scary at times. Once I received an midnight order," he said. "While I was walking toward the end of the corridor, a man suddenly appeared by my side, which freaked me out. Later, I realized it was myself in a mirror."
"I also have a frequent customer who lives on the 16th floor. He likes ordering late-night snacks, but the elevator in his building stops working at night," he said. "I have to climb the stairs every time, but he is so considerate that he walks downstairs and meets me half-way."
According to Baidu, 11 percent of orders its service received in 2015 were placed after 7 p.m., and 3 percent were placed after 9 p.m. Most of the late-night orders were in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
"Despite the hardships, it can also be fun," Wang said. A keen observer, Wang has noted some trends.
"Hongshaorou (Braised pork) is the most-loved dish. People in the IT industry favor rice noodles with hot and sour bamboo shoots, and workers in advertising firms prefer rice with fat beef slices. Many women hate coriander."
It is also a well-paid job, Wang added. He delivers around 1,000 orders and makes more than 9,000 yuan (1,386 U. S. dollars) per month, compared to the average monthly wage of 6,463 yuan for Beijing in 2014.
The efficient service is made possible by Baidu's smart dispatching system, which can predict the delivery time of each order according to past records and work out the best routes for delivery staff. The system also allocates orders according to the delivery men's locations and their past performance.
Founded in May 2014, Baidu's restaurant delivery service, waimai.baidu.com, has developed into a leading Internet take-out delivery platform with over 30 million registered users.
Statistics published by the Data Center of China Internet(DCCI) in November showed waimai.baidu.com took 32 percent of China's white-collar worker market, followed by waimai.meituan.com and ele.me, accounting for 31.2 and 29.8 percent respectively.
China has witnessed explosive growth in Internet-based food ordering and delivery services during the past two years. Waimai.meituan.com, launched at the end of 2013, now covers some 250 cities, while ele.me, founded in 2009, has seen its market expand from a dozen cities to about 250 since early 2014.
Wang Huiwen, vice president of waimai.meituan.com, said the strong momentum of China's online take-out delivery services has overshadowed that of foreign counterparts. He attributed the rapid expansion to China's high population density, low labor costs and wide variety of restaurant choices.
