See China’s ‘insane’ graveyard, a resting place for discarded bikes

The area has up to 60,000 bikes just thrown in large heaps.

This chaotic display is the byproduct of China’s rapidly expanding dockless bike-share industry, which has caused significant clutter issues in urban centres in the last two years.

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Though offering an oddly beautiful aerial view with swirling reds, blues and yellows, a photograph featured by The Guardian reveals a disconcerting scene on closer examination: thousands of bikes haphazardly stacked several storeys high.

This chaotic display is the byproduct of China’s rapidly expanding dockless bike-share industry, which has caused significant clutter issues in urban centres in the last two years.

Unlike traditional bike-share programmes with fixed stations, the dockless model allows users to pick up and drop off bikes wherever they please, using a smartphone app to locate WiFi-enabled bikes nearby. However, this convenience has led to footpaths in Chinese cities being congested with discarded or damaged bikes.

This Bike graveyard in China is insane! 😮🚲 pic.twitter.com/POMt3lRJsV

— H0W_THlNGS_W0RK (@HowThingsWork_) November 21, 2023

The massive bike graveyard was discovered in Xiamen, a coastal city of nearly 2 million in southeast China. It remains unclear whether all the bikes belonged to people in the area or were brought from elsewhere.

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Users on X wrote, “This is insane! They need to start repurposing them asap,” and a second user replied with, “I want to buy a bicycle located in the middle of this landfill, can anyone help me find it,” while a third one said,”Utterly insane”.

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Though the aim was to ensure a sufficient number of bikes, demand soon surpassed availability. Transportation experts estimate that a city like Shanghai could benefit from up to 6,00,000 bikes, yet the streets are inundated with nearly three times that number.