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PANDA CONCIERGEChina
PANDA CONCIERGEChina

Transport

Bikes and e-bikes in the city

Bike hire covers the last kilometre from the metro better than any taxi — and costs next to nothing, provided you leave it in the right place.

5 min readUpdated: 4 September 2026
photo: a row of yellow hire bikes in a marked bay by the pavement

How to take a bike

  1. Find the service in Alipay or Meituan

    No separate app to install: hire lives as a mini-programme inside Alipay and inside Meituan. Payment is there too.

  2. Scan the QR on the frame

    The lock opens itself within a couple of seconds. If it does not, the bike is broken: flag it in the app and take the next one.

  3. Check before you set off

    The brakes, the tyres and the saddle. Hire bikes lead a hard life, and swapping one on the spot costs nothing and takes thirty seconds.

  4. Leave it in a permitted zone

    The app shows the marked parking zones. A bike left outside one either will not let you end the trip or adds a penalty to the fare.

The rules nobody says out loud

A cycle lane in a Chinese city is a proper lane, often separated from traffic by a kerb. Ride with the flow: oncoming traffic here is dense and fast.

Sharing the cycle lane with you are electric scooters and three-wheeled delivery trikes — quiet and fast. Before moving across, look behind you, not just to the sides.

Riding on the pavement is not allowed. At a pedestrian crossing you dismount; not everyone obeys, but the cameras record it.

A helmet is compulsory on an e-bike in many cities, and the fines for going without are real. There is no such requirement on an ordinary bicycle.

Careful

Hiring an electric scooter or a motorcycle is not the same as bike hire: those need a Chinese licence of the relevant category. A foreign driving licence does not give that right by itself; there is a separate guide on it.

Tip

In the rain the bikes vanish from the streets within half an hour, though they reappear en masse at metro exits in the evening. Plan a fallback — the metro is usually within walking distance.

Checked: 4 September 2026

Editor: The PANDA editorial team

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