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Trio of young Chinese ladies stradle electric motor scooter in Suzhou, China. Photo by Patrick Benjamin.
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Photo Essay: The E-Bikes of Suzhou
Exclusive photo essay captures the mood of a city that runs on electric wheels.
By
Patrick Benjamin
Open Access Article Originally Published: January 02, 2010
I remember the first time I became aware of the bicycle culture of Asia.
I was about five years old, and watching a Chinese film where bicycles
featured quite prominently. I was astounded that a nation of people
could subsist on bicycles as primary transportation. I remember thinking
- "Don't these people have cars?", and "Wouldn't all that pedaling get a
bit tiresome?"
As a teenager, I visited Taiwan, and then later as an adult, mainland
China. I was charmed to discover that, yes, the Chinese are still quite
fond of bicycles - and yes, all that pedaling does tend to tire a
person, which is likely why they started using gasoline and electric
bicycles. Years (and laws) have passed, and the gasoline motors have
disappeared. What remains is a culture of electric bicycle
transportation that I found to be cheap, simple, and exceedingly
practical.
This past summer, I was fortunate enough to spend two months in
Suzhou, China - about two hours by car from Shanghai. Suzhou is an old
city, in the way that the English language is old; established sometime
in the fifth century, Suzhou has been spending the better part of the
past two millennia becoming one of China's most beautiful urban
environments. This place impressed Marco Polo, and not just because it's
the historical center of silk production in Asia - it's just a lovely
city, period.
Today, Suzhou is home to about 2 million residents within the city
proper - and I don't have the exact numbers on how many of those people
have bicycles, but my unscientific guess is "a heck of a lot of them".
There are taxis aplenty, and some people do in fact own their own car,
but traveling in this way is still rare enough that
bikes outnumber cars and busses by a fair margin.
Roads swarm with bicycles traveling alongside their larger,
air-conditioned cousins - and in many places, have special lanes with
thick concrete medians separating them from the road proper. During rush
hour, every stoplight in the city has a phalanx of bicyclists waiting
patiently for the light to change - as a river of their compatriots
glide quietly through the intersection.
There are
bike shops everywhere - selling, fixing, hawking, replacing, upgrading, tweaking - but never standing still for too long.
Parking lots
have two sections - cars, and bikes (the bike section is always
bigger). People ride to work, to the store, to school, to meet
friends...
I'm told that the average cost for a regular, human-powered bicycle in
Suzhou is quite small; anyone can afford one. An electric bicycle is a
bit more expensive - one can buy a dozen or so pedal-powered bicycles
for the same cost. A high-quality electric scooter is two or three times
more expensive than a bike, though still well in reach of the average
middle-class Chinese.
While violent crime doesn't really exist in Suzhou, petty theft is
common. The average number of locks I saw on parked bicycles and
scooters was three or four. Batteries, when they can't be adequately
locked to the bike frame (realize, of course, that three locks is
regarded as "adequate" in the mind of a Chinese), are carried by their
owner into the store, or work, or what have you. Exceptionally fancy
bike lots will have plugs for charging your bicycle as you attend to
your business elsewhere.
All of this is in stark contrast to the American "Cater To The Car"
culture, where heavy gasoline-engine vehicles are the rule, and there is
essentially no exception. When I pitch the idea of an electric bicycle
to Americans, the response I get is always "But the motor ruins the
point of a bicycle, which is to exercise! You're not supposed to get
anywhere with them - that's what cars are for!", and it becomes very
difficult to explain the concept of an alternative transportation
culture. Ironically, in my 18-24 college student demographic, my peers
lust after $20,000-$30,000 (or more!) vehicles that burn $3-$5/gallon
gasoline, incur piles of insurance costs, tickets, and frequently
expensive maintenance. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, people
are accomplishing 99% of their transportation needs on a vehicle that
would cost westerners a few hundred dollars.
The combination of a thriving manufacturing and service base, along with
cities actually designed to specifically accommodate two-wheeled
vehicles, creates a situation in which using a bike as your primary
transportation is remarkably practical. At the end of my stay in Suzhou,
I found myself smitten with the steady flow of bicycles and scooters.
From sun up to sun down, these simple, surprisingly modern machines
defined the flow of life in this ancient city in a way that few things
do. Personally, I can't wait to return.
Slideshow
Click the 35mm
icon below to view Patrick Benjamin's photos.
Patrick Benjamin is a 23 year old freelance illustrator and photographer, whose interests in world culture and visual communication
have taken him to a variety of interesting places, including the
Ringling College of Art + Design, where he is currently studying
Illustration. He plans to become more involved with foreign cultures in
the future, and travel often to observe, learn, and work. His father, Ed Benjamin, is a respected expert on electric two-wheel vehicles, and an occasional contributor to EV World.
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Oh, and if your 50cc moped doesn't actually have pedals on it? Then it's a motorcycle in New Jersey and brings with it all of the additional requirements and license restrictions. The downside of NJ classifying most anything as a motorcycle is that I could take the driving test for a motorcycle license on a 50cc scooter with automatic transmission and receive a license that allows me to go right out and buy/ride a chopper or a Ducati Monster sportsbike. We're probably not the only part of the world that's going to need to reform a lot of archaic laws in order to be ready for the coming electric/two/three wheel vehicle explosion.