Zhao Xiaomeng remembers riding a bicycle in Beijing as a high school student in the late 90s.
"I was living on the west side of the city and, every morning, my friends and I would ride all the way east, along Chang’an Avenue, towards the rising sun,” the 31-year-old reminisces. “During rush hour, there were hundreds of bicycles, and it felt like you were rafting in torrents. It was quite astonishing.”
Scenes like this were commonplace – the city used to be known as the ‘Kingdom of Bicycles’ – yet, as China modernized and aspirations changed, bikes were replaced by automobiles, signaling drivers’ affluence.
"I grew up in Beijing until I was 19,” Zhao tells That’s. “At the time, everybody had a bicycle, [and they] were more than just a transportation tool. Life events revolved around it – not just riding, but also buying, fixing or even losing a bicycle."
"But just a decade later, it all changed. And now everything is about the car – from city planning to social values.”
Zhao wanted to know what became of these once-cherished items. And so, between 2014 and 2017, the photographer, who now lives in Toronto but visits Beijing regularly, wandered around the city in search of forgotten bicycles. The photo series that resulted, ‘Bicycles in Beijing, Now,’ was published as a book last year.
"The emotional connection between people and bicycles has disappeared."
The series shows darkly humorous images of different types of bicycles in various forms of disarray – many in need of repair. One bicycle, barely covered by a sheet of cardboard, lies dead on the ground. One bicycle’s back half stands pitifully on the side of a road. Another bicycle is sat on the ground upside-down, its seat the base, while another is chained to a fire extinguisher sitting inside a tire.
"I have no idea whose bikes they were,” Zhao tells us. “My favorite was a tricycle that had a seat at the back (pictured above). Perhaps the back of the seat had been exposed and it wasn’t very pleasantlooking, so the owner mounted a cropped wedding portrait to replace the broken back. I thought: ‘Well I’m not sure about the marriage, but at least the bike is still working.’”
Since Zhao concluded his photo project, a new kind of cycle has captured the zeitgeist: the shared bike. Available in a rainbow of colors, the shared bike is, unlike the type of bikes Zhao captured, inescapable.
"I use [shared bikes] a lot when I’m in Beijing,” Zhao admits. “[But] they’re just a tool to get you from point A to B. The emotional connection between people and bicycles has disappeared.”
When we ask Zhao whether he has any plans to photograph the shared bikes, he replies: “I’m not interested – they all look the same and don’t have any character.”
Zhao predicts that in five years time, no one will own a bicycle anymore “because they can just rent one anytime they need to.”
Besides, he says: “The new generation of Chinese equates their level of success to what kind of car they drive. To them, bicycles are for the less fortunate, and it’s quite embarrassing for someone to depend on a bicycle. It will take a long time to change these ideas.”
Photos taken by Zhao Xiaomeng. To see more of Zhao’s work, visit his website.
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