○ Millions of shared bicycles have flooded Chinese cities and revived low-carbon commuting, but chaotic parking has become a headache for the bike companies and city governments
○ An elitist group of "hunters" have dedicated themselves to reporting illegally parked shared bicycles in an effort to deter wrongdoers
○ City authorities' poor management of these bikes is also a target for the bicycle hunters
Jumping onto the seat of a shared bike, black-clad Zhuang Ji, 42, was excited on the surface but angry underneath.
He prepared four torches and one charger for his evening of "hunting" in Shanghai. But his prey is not animals, but illegally parked shared bikes.
Prowling the city with only streetlights for company, Zhuang says he feels like a "lonely wolf" that is punishing violators and bringing order back to China's largest city.
Zhuang came across his first find of the night in a residential community. As bike-sharing companies say bicycles should not be left in these areas, Zhuang took a photo of the offending bike and reported it on the relevant app.
On bike-sharing company Mobike's app, reporters get one credit if their report is verified. Mobike users have 100 credits when they sign up, and users who park a bike in the wrong place can lose 20 credits each time. When users' credit drops below 80, their fare goes from 1 yuan ($0.15) to 100 yuan for a ride of less than 30 minutes.
Hunters need to shoot a photo to make a report, and this image must meet certain standards.
A photo must show the area in which the bike is wrongfully parked and the bike's serial number if it is going to be rewarded with credits.
Zhuang says he enjoys this game and has accumulated more than 2,500 credits since last May.
"I think it's useless to prohibit riders from illegal parking by preaching morals. Hunters' existence is necessary, as we can deter and scare them as we're everywhere," he told the Global Times.
Zhuang isn't really a lone wolf though, he is the leader of a pack. He manages a shared bicycle hunters' group, with over 3,000 members living all over China, mostly white collar workers.
Shared bikes have been a huge phenomenon since 2016, and prompted many urbanites to use pedal power to get around once again.
Beijing has over 300,000 such bikes, according to news portal chinanews.com. Jiefang Daily reported that Shanghai has over 280,000 shared bikes.
These bikes have been praised for their convenience and for helping people get around cheaply and cleanly. But the indifference with which many users' treat parking rules has brought major headaches to the authorities and the firms.
"We want to awaken people's lost spirit of contract," Zhuang said.
Order keepers
Zhuang works as an assistant curator at a Shanghai-based contemporary art museum. In order to help visitors with the 1.5-kilometer journey between the museum and the nearest subway station, he asked bike-sharing companies to put their bikes near the museum.
To his astonishment, the bikes disappeared two days after they arrived."I used GPS to find the bikes. They were all parked in a residential compound. I was indignant. I took photos of the bikes and reported them one by one and rode them back," he said.
Since then, he has identified himself as a "hunter." He soon found other indignant people and they joined hands to solve this problem themselves. "People can get addicted to hunting," he said approvingly.
Jiang Yuxiang, 35, a bicycle hunter in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, has more credits than any other hunter in the group. He has racked up more than 4,700 credits on Mobike since last October.
Jiang runs shop on e-commerce platform taobao.com, but he said he still manages to devote at least one hour a day to hunting down illegally parking bicycles.
"The hunting atmosphere in Guangdong is quite hot. Maybe this is because we have long been influenced by police and gangster movies made in Hong Kong," he said. Shenzhen neighbors Hong Kong.
Jiang said a major difficulty facing hunters is the risk of "being chased by dogs." One time, when he was taking a photo, the last rider found him and then set his dog on Jiang.
"I immediately ran. The dog chased me to the end of the alley and then stopped," he recalled.
Mobike has praised the efforts of hunters and tries to work closely with them. So far Ofo only relies on its own staff members to deal with illegal parking, according to media reports.
