Pedaling Big Macs Into Phone Juice

In the past 30-something years, I've entered a McDonald's maybe a dozen times:  to use the free Internet or the bathroom.  All right, I actually had an ice cream cone at a McDonald's in Turkey:  My host and guide on the Aegean coast thought he was doing something nice for me, an American.  And I actually went to chez Ronald just off the Rue de Rivoli because of its colorful display of macarons like the ones you see in Parisian patisseries.  They were actually better than I expected, though no rivals for the ones from Fauchon.

Never, though, have I ever been under any illusion of improving my health when walking under the "Golden Arches."

That means I'm not part of the target market for a Shanghai, China branch of the chain I regarded as "the Evil Empire" until Starbucks.  (Then came Amazon.)  You see, I would never, ever believe that such a global monolith would install stationary bikes so its customers could burn off the Big Macs, fries and shakes they're consuming.  

OK, so that makes me a cynic (or, perhaps, just a New Yorker).  But I'm not smart enough to figure out, on my own, just why the company that all but singlehandedly introduced the Standard American Diet (SAD) to a people that had subsisted, for milennia, on rice, vegetables and whatever fish or fowl they caught that day.

So what are those faux-Peloton devices doing in a branch of Mickey Dee's?

Well, you see, since Chinese are smart (or at least skeptical) enough to doubt that the top brass of what Ray Kroc wrought are trying to promote fitness, the next logical step was to "greenwash" at least one of their franchises.  If you want people to think you care about their well-being and their kids' future, you do something that helps the environment--or at least seems to.

So, that Shanghai branch installed those stationary bikes to generate power.

That sounds, if not noble, than at least wise and conscious. But customers burning off their burgers aren't generating electricity for the lights or fryers.  Rather, the "juice" is used to charge customers' phones and other portable devices.

.@McDonalds “get slim” meal in #Shanghai 😂 pic.twitter.com/xjyF6swehl

— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) December 17, 2021

I have to wonder, then, whether it actually helps to generate sales:  After all, wouldn't some customers buy more of what McDonald's sells if they're burning at least some of it off?

Funny how China, ostensibly a Communist country, has learned how to use capitalism in ways that we in America haven't even imagined.

Trade War Sends Giant Back To Its Roots

When Trumplethinskin announced tariffs on goods from China, one thing was clear to anyone with an IQ of room temperature or higher:  Jobs would not suddenly re-appear in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania.  Of course, El Cheeto Grande, not being a member of that exclusive club, went ahead with his move.  

Maybe I am not giving him enough credit for his intelligence:  After all, sold the promise of jobs returning, as if they'd simply migrated for a season, to large numbers of people.  Then again, at least some of those people are as desperate as he is avaricious or delusional, depending on what you believe.

So what are the results of those tariffs, so far?  Well, for one thing farmers--many of whose livelihoods are tied to exporting what they grow--are losing sales.  And it doesn't look like jobs are coming back to the US, at least not in the bicycle industry.

Prices are already increasing for many bikes and related goods.  But the world's largest bicycle producer found another way to deal with those new import taxes:  going back to its roots.

I am talking about Giant.  Chairwoman Bonnie Tu said, "we took it seriously," when Trump announced a 25 percent surcharge on almost everything coming from China.  "We started moving before he shut his mouth."

Giant's factory in Taichung City, Taiwan

That meant, of course, she had a very short window of time in which to act.  But act she did:  She shifted production of the company's US-bound bikes from its Chinese factories to the company's headquarters in Taichung City, Taiwan.

The first Giant bikes sold in North America during the 1980s were made in Taiwan.  So were all of the products the company exported to the America, and most to the rest of the world, during the 1990s and early 2000s.  

Bonnie Tu

Ms. Tu says, though, that the company's long-term plan involves moving as much production as possible as close to the markets as is feasible.  Right now, in addition to its Taiwanese facility and the five factories it operates in China, Giant also has a plant in the Netherlands and has announced they are building another in Hungary.

Will Giant start making bikes in the US?  Ms. Tu hasn't said as much, but it wouldn't surprise me if they set up shop in some low-wage "right to work" state in the South.  If they do, I just hope the bikes are better than some of the stuff that came out of Schwinn's since-shuttered Greenville, Mississippi plant.

Keeping Kids Off Bike-Share Bikes

I haven't been to China.  At one time in my life, it was at the top of my "bucket list" of places to go.  That was after someone I knew spent a couple of months there about a quarter of a century ago.  She, like other visitors of the time, described it as a "land of bikes", where pedaled two-wheeled conveyances far outnumbered any other kind of vehicle "by about five hundred to one".  And she is an old-school New Englander who isn't given to exaggeration!

From what I heard, that started to change a few years later, as more Chinese people could afford automobiles.  I read accounts of bicycle-thronged streets that had become choked with cars ten or fifteen years later.  It seemed sad, but, really, no different from what happened decades earlier in the US and other places:  Once people had the means to drive, their bicycles were left to collect dust, or dropped in the dustbin.

These days, from what I've been reading, the bicycle has been making a "comeback".  A few years ago, Beijing's bike-share program seemed like a "bust", as automobiles came to be seen as not only symbols of prosperity, but as prerequisites to marriage, at least for some families.  But in cities like the Chinese capital, streets--particularly those in older neighborhoods--are narrow and in other ways ill-suited to automotive traffic.  Plus, thickening smog led to illness and in other ways degraded people's quality of life, and people found that their commutes were taking longer and longer due to snarled traffic.  

So the bicycle seems to be experiencing a renaissance in The Land of Dragons.  Beijing's bike share program is booming, as are those in other Chinese cities. (Of the world's 15 largest bike share programs, only two--those of Paris and London--aren't in China.)  And start-up companies like Mobike are eliminating the ports or docks other share programs use by offering an app that locates bikes that can be unlocked with a code that's sent to a user's phone.

Making bikes easier to access sounds great, at least for some people.  It has, however, led to some unintended consequences.  As someone who teaches and who didn't touch a computer until age 41, I know firsthand that kids are often more tech-savvy than their elders--in part because they have had access to the same devices, but at much earlier ages.

Using the Ofo bike-sharing app in Shanghai

Thus, a kid can access a bike-share or "Uber" bike as easily as anyone else can.  One problem is that Chinese law forbids children under the age of 12 from riding bikes on public roads.  But the consequences for a kid can be even worse than merely becoming a scofflaw:  Although bicycles are once again becoming a common sight, there is still a lot of motorized traffic on major thoroughfares, and even on side roads.  Adult Chinese cyclists, like their counterparts in other countries, have to exercise caution.  Even doing that, though, may not be enough to ensure a child's safety.

That point was driven home with the death of an 11-year-old boy in Shanghai.   While details of the tragedy haven't been revealed, we know that he was riding a bike from Ofo, one of the two main share companies in that city, on a busy road in the downtown area.  

Ofo is cooperating with the investigation and says it working on a way of deterring under-12s from using their bikes.  Some have suggested that the bright yellow color of its  machines (and the bright orange of Mobike, its rival) might entice young riders .  Others have said that Ofo, Mobike and anyone else who might enter the bike-sharing business should restrict access to their wheels in and around schools and other places frequented by children.