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Monday June 12, 2017 02 x shenzhen

ROWS of golden bikes were spot-ted in front of the exits of Metro stations, prompting heated discussion among Shenzhen residents in recent days. These app-based bikes are eye-catching not only because of their shiny golden appearance, but also due to the many new functions they feature.

Apart from the normal code-scanning function for unlocking the bikes, the bikes also feature functions such as intelligent seat-adjusting, phone-charging and voice-controlled locks.

The operator of the smart bikes, a company known as Coolqi.com, offi cially launched the bikes in fi ve cities, namely Shenzhen,

Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Xi’an, on Wednesday.

The golden bikes have caused many pedestrians to stop to take pictures, though there are not as many of these bikes as their com-petitors in the market.

The method for using the Coolqi bikes is similar to the others, but users need to make a larger deposit of 298 yuan (US$43.84) to the company. The app requires real-name registration with a prospective user’s ID card number and phone number.

Unlike many bikes, the Coolqi bikes can charge smartphones. A stand is installed on the bike to provide charging modes for all

kinds of smart phones as well as to support to phone’s GPS function.

Users will be required to turn on their phone’s Bluetooth in order to initiate the voice-con-trol function. It was explained that this intelligent function can report the weather forecast and other information such as traffi c rule warnings.

Additionally, the seats can be adjusted based on a user’s height. Users just need to enter their height into the app and the bike will adjust the seat auto-matically. The data is saved in the system and every bike the user unlocks will adjust the seat automatically.

Multifunction app-based bikes debut

Apple smartphones, however, do not support the seat-adjust-ing function because of some technology issues, a person in charge of the bikes said.

According to the price infor-mation printed on the golden bikes, the charge is 1.5 yuan for every 30 minutes. (Zhang Qian)

A WOMAN, who fl ed from the scene of an accident where she had hit an elder woman while riding an app-based bike in Futian District, was caught by police.

A preliminary investigation showed the woman, surnamed Gao, had found an unlocked ofo bike at around 10 a.m. May 27 and knocked down the victim surnamed Jia, 57, near the Shenzhen Talent Park bus stop on Shennan Boulevard. Jia suffered a fractured rib and bruises. Gao, however, fl ed from the scene and changed bikes on the way to get away.

The investigation showed the bike had faulty brakes.

Police asked the bike operator to provide the woman’s data, but were rejected.

Gao, 29, a native of Henan Province, was caught Friday in a hotel in Zhuzilin in Futian District and admitted to the hit-and-run incident.

Gao, who is studying at a music school in Shenzhen, was in a rush to get to her work place. She didn’t ask if Jia needed med-ical treatment or offer any help for fear of being blackmailed. She kept the phone number of Jia’s husband, but never tried to call him. She later deleted the number and escaped on another bike, leaving Jia on the ground.

“If she hadn’t gone in a rush, helped me hail a cab or called my daughter, the witness wouldn’t have called the police,” said Jia, who refused Gao’s offer to pay for her medical treatment and asked the police for leniency consider-ing Gao’s low income.

The ofo operator didn’t cooper-ate with the police investigation. On Wednesday, police sent an offi cer to ofo’s offi ce in Nanshan District after fi nding that the bike had malfunctioned.

Police demanded that the operator provide the company’s data, a way to unlock ofo bikes, Gao’s detailed information and the path of the bike at the time of the accident. (Han Ximin)

Female biker caught after hit-and-run

Zhang Qianzhqcindy@163.com

WEARING a traditional Indian Sari, Purnima Gangam demon-strated how to make a 5-minute healthy homemade dish with authentic Indian fl avors in her apartment kitchen in Nanshan District. Her cooking philosophy is to make nourishing vegetarian food at home.

Gangam now lives with her husband and son in Nanshan’s Xili. Shenzhen has been her home for six years. The stay-at-home mother started teaching how to cook Indian vegetarian food at her home four months ago. She was inspired by a friend who teaches baking.

“I enjoy cooking homemade food and the students I teach are learning a new skill so that when they leave, they can care for themselves or teach their children to enjoy homemade food,” said Gangam.

A mother of a 5-year-old, Gangam values and enjoys cook-ing food for her family. Getting

the whole family to sit at the table and enjoy healthy food is of great signifi cance in her eyes.

“In my childhood, many fami-lies were still fi ghting hunger and poverty. Now, people can order all kinds of food online. But I think homemade food is the best choice for people, even if they are overseas or they are very busy, so I want to teach people Indian recipes and some of them are my own recipes,” said Gangam.

Gangam’s love of healthy homemade food originates from her own vegan family in India. Her grandmother would not even use garlic, egg or onion in the dishes. “I have never tasted meat in my whole life.”

Gangam keeps her ingredients and condiments healthy. She uses only olive and sunfl ower oil, ghee (clarifi ed butter), jag-gery and multigrain fl our in the dishes she teaches.

Having spent years working in Scotland, prior to moving to Shenzhen, she said it was often hard to avoid eating meat while living abroad. However, she did

m a n a g e to only eat vegetarian food.

“I love t e a c h i n g people to cook, but the biggest chal-lenge for me now is that

I don’t have enough time since I have to cater for my son and family in the mornings and evenings, also on weekends,” said Gangam.

Gangam said that it was up to her students as to what dishes they wanted her to teach. People can check her WeChat moments and see if a class interests them before booking it. Gangam pre-pares the ingredients the day before each class. If newcomers do not know which dishes they’d like to learn, Gangam suggests some of her favorite dishes.

Gangam has now taught more than 300 stu-dents, both Chinese and expats, from all around the world.

Indian mom teaches vegetarian food

A SHENZHEN resident lost 270,000 yuan (US$39,723) in a month after he became obsessed with playing lucky draw on a website, according to sznews.com.

The resident, surnamed Liao, wanted to try his luck when he fi rst played lucky draw on www.1yyg.com — a website run by a Shenzhen-based technology company — in early April after a friend recommended the website to him.

According to previous media reports, users can buy a “raffl e ticket” for a product on the web-site with 1 yuan, and one person who wins the lucky draw can take the product home. For example, an iPhone 6S is priced at 4,388 yuan on the website, and users can buy 4,388 “raffl e tickets” to win the phone, meaning the more tickets a user buys, the bigger chance he has.

Liao said he didn’t get suspi-cious about the website because he had won a prize after spend-ing dozens of yuan on it. He continued to indulge in the lucky draws after he won an iPhone 7 Plus after he spent nearly 10,000 yuan. But then he found that it became harder for him to win a lottery as he invested more money on the website.

Liao said that some users of the website had a high rate of high winning. One user’s per-sonal page showed that he had won gold bars and ingots, two cars, and over 100 iPhones, but Liao doubted the fairness of the lucky draws as there wasn’t a third party to supervise the lot-tery process.

The company’s offi ce in its registered address in Shenzhen has already closed down. The website’s customer service rep-resentative said the website fol-lows strict standards in running the lucky draws and it’s impos-sible for anyone to manipulate the results with backstage operations.

According to a previous report by CCTV, such lottery software can be bought online and opera-tors can manipulate the results of a lucky draw in the backstage to make virtual robots win the lotteries.

Liao said he was told by the website’s customer service representatives that it would be diffi cult for him to win back the 270,000 yuan that he had spent on the website. Accord-ing to him, he had complained about the website to several government departments but found that no department could handle the case.

According to the report, the website has been developing so rapidly due to being under the name of a new e-commerce busi-ness and there are loopholes in the existing market supervision system to curb such irregulari-ties. (Zhang Yang)

Man spends ¥270,000 on online lottery

Purnima Gangam

Frenchman Patrice Guilemond (Inset) teaches salsa dance at the Civic Center on Saturday afternoon. Guilemond started by teaching some friends to dance salsa and gradually more and more people joined in. Now the number of people in their WeChat group for a free beginner’s salsa class exceeds 150. Usually, around 10 people of different nationalities come dance every weekend. Liu Xudong

Free salsa class

Golden, multifunctional app-based bikes are seen outside exits of Metro stations in the city. SD-Agencies