Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Text | Dedee

Just imagine, you suddenly find a 28 bar speeding down the road at a speed of more than 70 yards per hour. What's more, there is not only one cyclist on the 28 bar, but also full of hundreds of jin of bananas. The most fatal thing is that the bike is speeding downhill along the winding mountain road, and the cyclists look cheerful and calm.

Immortals? Monsters? Indian?

Thank you! Neither.

He is just an ordinary African youth struggling on the line of subsistence. In Africa, there are countless cyclists who are so bearish on life and death. Their daily work is to carry hundreds of jin of heavy bananas, bricks and even human beings at the fastest speed between mountains, villages, towns and towns.

If they can, they will also achieve the fastest speed with the help of all the motor vehicles around them-in the most labor-saving and dangerous way.

Yes, the 28 bars, which was once invincible in China 30 years ago, has become a big baby for African brothers to sweat and vent hormones.

A few years ago, Gordon Pirie, a professor at the Center for African Urban Studies at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, released a survey that focused on all kinds of imported products from Africa to Asia in the past 20 years, including rice, palm oil, household appliances and various modes of transportation.

"in 2005, the total volume of finished products from Asia to Africa was 187000 TEUs. This figure has tripled in a decade, reaching 605000 TEUs in 2014. Of these, at least 200 containers are specially loaded with bicycles, shipped from Safei via the port of Beira, Mozambique, to African countries, especially some landlocked countries. Africa imported 100, 000 bicycles in just one year."

Most of these bicycles originated in Asia are secondhand, mainly from China, Japan and India. More interestingly, most of the second-hand bicycles from Japan are also made in China.

It is understood that there are also locally branded bicycles in Africa, but they are extremely rare. In many countries and regions, nine times out of ten, bicycles common on the streets are made in China and India. In particular, the classic 28 bars of the old domestic product "permanent" and "Phoenix" can be said to be the favorite of the local people.

Take Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city, as an example. The price of a bicycle ranges from four or five thousand to ten thousand Kenyan shillings. Among them, the local brand is the cheapest, four or five thousand shillings (equivalent to 200 yuan) can buy one, followed by India, about 8,000 shillings (equivalent to 400 yuan), and the most expensive are Phoenix and permanent brands. each costs tens of thousands of shillings (more than 500 yuan).

The reason why "permanent" and "Phoenix" are particularly popular is that apart from their special ability to bear hardships and stand hard work, what is more important is that they are mostly classic 28 bars, and the special "head-to-body ratio" is as tailor-made for African brothers with thin arms and long legs.

No wonder although Chinese-made second-hand bicycles are the most expensive, they still can't stop their African brothers from yearning for it.

Unfortunately, for the average African, the cost of this car is equivalent to a few months' salary, which is not a rigid demand that everyone can easily have-quite similar to China half a century ago.

But the 28 bars are so fragrant that the people of Africa benefit their hearts and make them an integral part of their lives in another way-in a new look and state.

First of all, any second-hand 28 bars can not escape the fate of "plastic surgery". The most primary transformation is to paint the local people's favorite colors and patterns, decorate the handle with ribbons, tassels and sequins; intermediate modifications are reinforced and installed with lights and rearview mirrors; advanced modifications are mainly aimed at the back seat of the car. usually covered with a thick sponge, coupled with dark velvet outsourcing, so that the back seat looks wider, longer, luxurious and dirt-resistant.

Generally speaking, the cost of a complete set of transformation is about 1000 Kenyan shillings (equivalent to about 50 yuan).

After the modification, the African version 28 big bar is officially on the road "business". Yes, it is literally "business", becoming a taxi that can carry both people and goods.

Yes, if you look at greater Africa, whether it is Kenya (except the capital Nairobi), Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Malawi in East Africa, or Senegal, C ô te d'Ivoire, Togo and other countries in West Africa, you can see these special "taxis" in the busy streets of these countries, and business is very booming.

In Kisumu, which connects Kenya and Uganda, they are called border-border; in Bujumbura, the economic capital of Burundi, and they are called Uwunguruza abantu n'ikinga. But whatever they are called, they all share the same fate: self-propelled taxis.

Most of these self-propelled taxi drivers are young and able-bodied workers in their 20s. During the day, he waited for business at the crowded intersection all day, receiving more than 20 transactions on average. They are not expensive, equivalent to only 50 to 1 yuan per kilometer, usually about 10 yuan per day, even if business is bad, and if business is good, it can exceed 50 yuan.

There will also be a lot of small African bosses with some spare money who will buy several 28 bars and rent them to young people who have no money to buy cars every day, charging 5 to 10 yuan per car every day.

As a result, in some important cities in Africa, the number of self-powered taxi drivers can exceed 10,000, and the competition is extremely fierce. A Chinese compatriot who has taken such a taxi said that he had talked to the driver. At that time, it was a hot summer, and even he was hot in the back seat, but his African brother pedaling his bike said to him earnestly, "I wish it were hotter so that more people would take the car."

It is precisely these taxi drivers who share the same train of thought with Chinese charcoal sellers, who are not only the most desirable occupations of the bottom workers in Africa, but also the heroes and idols of countless African people.

For example, in Burundi, which is rated by the International Monetary Fund as one of the poorest countries in the world, because of a bicycle taxi association with 15000 people, many people escaped the genocide in Burundi between 1993 and 2005 (of a nature strikingly similar to the Rwandan Holocaust, which killed 300000 people. It is also the Hutu who kill the Tutsi, who once plummeted to only 5000 in Burundi, nearly wiped out.

It is said that the rebels blocked a few paved roads in Burundi at that time, and many members of the bicycle taxi association not only dragged their families away from the slaughter, but also helped many people escape to the mountains and forests.

However, the more legendary group of taxi drivers in Africa is Rwanda, next door to Burundi-they are not only the breadwinner taxi drivers, but also the main reserve force of the "Rwandan road cycling team".

For more than a decade, cycling, relying on these bicycle taxi drivers, has become the most popular sport in Rwanda.

In 2007, Rwanda set up an officially recognized national team, the Rwandan Road Cycling team, which produced Adrien Nyonsuti (Adrien Niyonshuti), who represented Rwanda at the 2016 London Olympics and made a documentary called "rising from the ruins".

"Tour Rwanda" even officially became the UCI2.1 level in 2019 (the professional cycling level approved and set by the International self-Union).

It is particularly worth mentioning that there are several female players on the team. One of the girls, Jeannadak, became a national idol for both men and women in Rwanda, relying on God's extraordinary talent to enjoy meals and the excellent results that put men to shame.

Jean Nadak's mother admitted that her daughter didn't touch the family's only 28 bar until she was 10 years old and began to carry people to play at the age of 15. She could not imagine that her daughter would become a member of the national team and completely shake off the fate of traditional African girls-you know, once she became a national team driver, she would earn at least $10,000 a year, enough to support the whole family, help brothers and sisters go to school, and even build a new house for the family.

Many young girls in Rwanda have taken "cyclists" as their goal and worked hard for it. They have also won the support of the whole family and become the hope of the whole village.

Just over a decade ago, conservative Rwandans did not allow girls to ride bicycles because they thought the latter would take away their virginity.

Today, many provinces, cities and even villages in Rwanda have their own bicycle teams, and countless taxi drivers are both labourers and racing drivers, and their 28 bars are both taxi and racing-and this special experience and skill is unique to countless African cyclists.

Even in Africa's most famous Tour of Burkina Faso, you can see well-equipped European intercontinental convoys, dilapidated second-hand, third-or fourth-hand variable-speed bicycles and even 28 bars.

It is rumored that at first the European drivers turned a blind eye to their African brothers and their broken equipment. But after entering the gravel road, European drivers quickly settle down, because these gravel roads are not only rugged, but also often come to a wild sand dance without saying a word. In the face of these situations, the African brothers are obviously too calm, because they and the 28 bars under the crotch have already run-in with the land of Africa like the right and right hands of an old husband and wife.

In Africa, the 28 bars are not just used for carrying passengers and racing cars. Because after each bicycle taxi is honorably retired-it will not be discarded, but will be resold to the brothers who need it more, or become a special load-carrying bike, or become the rigid demand of many families.

Yes, no bike will be wasted in Africa, especially a slender and charming 28 bars. In the eyes of their African brothers, they are fast horses who do not eat grass and Popeye who do not need spinach. Wen Neng carries white-collar workers in formal clothes, women with children in their arms, and Wu Neng carrying hundreds of jin of bananas, bricks and furniture.

Especially in the Malawian countryside, a 28-bar can also act as an ambulance-10 years ago, a kind of steel wire bed with wheels appeared in many local villages, and they also had special tractors to connect to bicycles to form the simplest and most convenient self-propelled ambulance, which can transport patients and pregnant women to hospitals more than ten kilometers away with the least cost and time.

Malawians confess that a bicycle is an employment opportunity and an important source of income. Chinese bicycles have changed our country.

This is not random, of course, because in 2001, a 13-year-old Malawian boy, William, built a windmill with a Chinese-made N-hand 28 bar from his father and saved his own countryside with no harvest.

The cause is actually very. Africa.

Let's go back to Malawi. Even if it is not as miserable as Burundi or Rwanda mentioned earlier, it is also one of the poorest countries in the world. Malawi, located in the interior of eastern Africa, is a typical agricultural country. Nearly 90% of the country's population are farmers, and 70% of the country's income depends on tobacco exports, followed by cotton, corn, coffee and tea.

In 2001, Malawi suffered a series of natural and man-made disasters. Natural disasters refer to the floods caused by the rainy season, followed by drought, which directly led to the destruction of domestic farmland that year and no harvest. Man-made disaster means that the 9 / 11 incident caused global economic chaos, and economic aid to the African region was comprehensively tightened.

As a result, the parity of public grain provided by the government has plummeted and the number of mobs has soared.

This combination of punches has dealt a devastating blow to Malawi's agriculture. Farmers have not only lost their precious seeds, but also have few food rations left.

Thirteen-year-old William lives in a corner abandoned by God.

He built a small wind turbine based on an undamaged water pump he found in the dump, his father's 28-bar bike, and several wooden boards.

It sounds like science fiction, but the process is actually very simple, because his father's 28-bar bike is not our common "Phoenix" or "permanent brand", but a real N-hand old bike. a small brand that appeared in China in the 1960s: elephant bicycles.

The biggest feature of this elephant bicycle is that it comes with a motorcycle lamp, which belongs to the ancient bicycle parts. And the general motorcycle lamp this kind of parts, mostly some imported bicycles before the 2000s will have. So Xiang Pai, an irrational bicycle, was definitely a rare species in China at that time-it soon disappeared.

The most interesting thing about the "motorcycle lamp" is that it comes with a "friction generator". It can produce contact friction with the tire and generate electricity by turning the tire. When the electric lamp is lit, it will also make a "chua chua chua" sound, which will turn on and off rhythmically with the rotation of the wheel. It is very charming at night and has a sense of the times.

Coincidentally, the bicycles in William's area were almost "wrapped" by elephant cards. His science teacher and his father, all owned bikes are elephant bicycles with their own "motorcycle lights"-they don't need to rely on batteries, they just need to keep turning the wheels, and the "friction generator" can power the pump. The higher the speed of the wheel, the more enjoyable the pump will pump.

Malawi is poor in money but not in the wind. After being beaten by his father, William successfully built a small wind turbine with the simplest way and the most rudimentary parts, driving a pump to pump groundwater and saving the entire village.

William also built more windmills, which began to appear in other Malawian villages.

This incredibly legendary and inspirational story will certainly not be buried.

In 2019, Nigerian Chevat Egaft, the hero of 12 years a Slave, found Netflix, and the two sides adapted the inspirational film "Wind Boys" based on William. The latter became Netflix's first award season player that year and won the Alfred Sloan Award at the Sundance International Film Festival.

The movie also did not forget to give enough close-ups to elephant bicycles and motorcycle lights.

Professor Gordon Pirie once said: "in Africa, bicycles are cheap and people can buy one without much cost. By transporting passengers and goods, Africans can support their families and contribute to society, thus gaining the dignity of their work and realizing the value of their lives."

However, Professor Pirie does not realize that for countless young Africans, owning a bike from Asia is not only a simple way to support a family, but also a dream and a miracle.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: autocarweekly (ID:autocarweekly)

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