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The four great inventions of imperial China – the making of paper, the printing press, gunpowder and the compass – were milestones in the long march of human progress. Last year, the Chinese official media highlighted the modern "four new great inventions", but clever readers quickly pointed out that high-speed trains, mobile phone payments, e-commerce and bicycles shared had all been used elsewhere for some time. The argument seemed to be that China's adoption of a new level related to an invention.
In China, for example, bicycle sharing companies were building concepts seen for the first time elsewhere, the real innovation being dockless bicycles. can be unlocked and hawked almost anywhere, as long as you have your smartphone at your fingertips.
The Chinese bicycle sharing industry gets cold with another bust
I was one of the first to be appalled Republic of the car. In the years before Ofo or Mobike, the flight was a real concern, seriously limiting the possibility of taking a bike. It was liberating to ride a bike to a subway station, to park the thing and to forget it.
One day, however, while I was walking through a Mobike house, I noticed two more in a canal. With President Xi Jinping describing the shared economy as "China's gift to the world" and the government generating generous tax breaks to the industry, the saturation point had already been reached in the capital; There were too many bicycles competing for too few commuters.
As I discovered in 2017, I found everywhere abandoned bicycles: abandoned in parks or blocking alleyways. Despite their obvious advantages, two-wheeled debris accumulates, exposing both public and corporate negligence. An environmental solution became an environmental problem. The bikes were broken or damaged, prompting local authorities to dump excess machinery in makeshift complexes. "I first saw bike cemeteries on TV," says Wu Guoyong, a photographer based in Shenzhen. aluminum mountains. "I did not grab the location, so I asked my friends on WeChat if they knew where the bikes had been left." I finally discovered and took my drone to take some pictures. "
Wu is a newcomer to the scene of contemporary photography in China, although his interest was sparked in the early years of the reform, when a cameraman came to work in Tianjin, in northeastern China. "I just saw it taking pictures and I found it interesting, so I bought a Fenghuang camera.It was in 1984 and it cost me 180 yuan when my salary it was only 40 yuan a month. "
Born in what Wu calls" the old heart of China "- near Xiangyang Prefecture, Hubei Province – 1963 He studied hydraulic engineering in the provincial capital of Wuhan before joining the ranks of the state employees responsible for the management of the waterways of China.
"At that time, you did not choose where you wanted to work, unit of work sent you.I spent five or six years in Tianjin, then I came back to Hubei.I found my way to Shenzhen in 1992, working on bridges and pipes, that sort of thing. "
Contributing his expertise to building a new city would be testan But the lucrative 90s saw Wu focus on educating a family and making money. But in 2008, with his children, he returns to his passion for photography. "I bought a digital camera in 2008 because I started traveling," he says. "I just took pictures of pretty things because I had no real idea of art photography.In 2011, I was able to take early retirement and focus on photography. "
A few years later, a mutual friend introduced Wu to Li Zhengde, a photographer based in Shenzhen. "Zhengde has made a huge impression," Wu says. "He taught me that a photographer could be an artist, that we could ask social questions with a camera." I left his house, I borrowed at least two books. "
Seeking to emulate Li's opinion that the voice of A photographer can be as powerful as that of a writer, Wu invested DJI designed and built the Shenzhen drone and set to photograph the city. His signature style and his commitment to waiting for light and conditions – sometimes checking into distant hotels or staying up all night – earned Wu his praise and a Nanshan government commission to contribute to two promotional photo albums. district.
Still, Wu was still searching for this important "social issue" to ask, and when the bikes began to accumulate, he saw that the drone would allow him to illustrate the phenomenon under another angle.
"I went to Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, you call him," said Wu, who visited 15 major cities for the project.
Chinese bicycle sharing companies fire 3,000 bicycles unloaded from rivers
The result is a reward winning series entitled "No Place to Place" which – all in captivating beauty – questions the brutal efficiency of the Chinese industrial machine, as well as the human ability to neglect the products to a scale never seen in history Wu is from a generation, after all, who once considered a bicycle as one of the "big four things" that everyone in China aspired to possess, with a sewing machine, a wristwatch and a radio
I see shared bicycles as useful, but the cemeteries expose a moral problem in the landscape of China ", explains the photographer." We throw bikes! That does not seem right. "
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