Roller that delights...

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I must return to the electric scooters in Cangzhou. They have truly become my “little sky-blue friends,” and I've seized every opportunity for movement to ride these scooters. The flexibility for every planned destination, the quick direct ride to the goal, the cool breeze in the summer heat, and the uncomplicated handling make these rolling companions the ideal partner. They are a very popular and frequently used mobility device, especially since there are usually dedicated lanes or even separate paths for scooters. You can see them riding and parked everywhere; even in the entrance area of our residential building, although there are specially covered parking spots with charging options right at the door.
We rent the scooters conveniently, as there are literally rental spots at every street corner, usually marked with a pictogram or white boundary lines. This marking is important, as we will realize later when parking.
Booking these rental scooters is incredibly simple: My wife and I each open the Alipay app on our own smartphones (there are also other providers) and access the scooter rental function. Now we each look for a scooter and scan the barcode located in the middle of the handlebar and on the fender of the rear wheel with the app. The app displays how many kilometers the battery of the scanned scooter is expected to last. If we anticipate our intended route to be longer, we look for another scooter. Now we confirm the rental in the app, and the scooter itself greets us with a cheerful “Hello!” in Chinese. Now we're ready to go, and we zip towards the city center. For this, we usually take the smaller parallel street to the main road on the other side of our residential area. However, we first have to overcome the small hurdle of a small concrete service road. Since we live on the outskirts, this connecting path is no longer part of the city area according to our intended street. The little scooter, equipped with its Beidou function (the Chinese GPS), realizes that we want to “escape” from the city. It starts talking and reminds us that we are only allowed to ride within the city limits and not venture into the vast plains of the Yellow River. For us, it’s time to step on the gas, as after another warning, the scooter simply turns off to prevent a more significant escape attempt. By this time, we should have already reached the street; otherwise, we must pedal hard and cover the last meters with muscle power. Alternatively, we can also request seven more minutes of electric power through the app to re-enter the permitted zone. We often turn this into a sporty challenge, as we cannot approach the curve too timidly if we want to reach the street before the shutdown. After that, it’s smooth sailing without obstacles.
Finally, we reach our destination. Now there are two options: Either we set the scooter to standby and lock it via the app so that no one else can unlock it. However, the (admittedly low) fee continues during this time. Better is to park and check out via the app, as we can simply rent a new scooter for the return trip. To check out, we need to be at the designated parking spot I mentioned earlier. The app verifies this using the scooter's Beidou function. If you are just a few meters away, you can forget about checking out and will keep paying. So, we park the scooter next to its fellows and hope that its Beidou signal is accurate. Now, after checking out, we receive a cheerful Chinese goodbye from the scooter. With a heavy heart, we bid farewell to our beloved sky-blue friend, knowing that we will soon enjoy the joy of the return ride.
With this, my travel blog for 2023 comes to an end, and I hope for many new Chinese experiences in the new year 2024! 😀