For college students in the city of Zhengzhou, Henan province, it was a brief moment of freedom: a short-lived craze for cycling overnight on ride-share rental bikes to the nearby city of Kaifeng for a bit of fun, food, and frivolity. But the sheer volume of cyclists on the road—as many as 100,000 or more per night—led to traffic jams, littering, safety concerns, and seas of abandoned rental bikes. It may also have piqued government suspicions about the students’ possible motives for making the late-night trek en masse. There soon ensued a crackdown on the trend, with increased patrols by traffic police, restrictions on the weekend use of roads and cycling paths, curfews and lockdowns at local college campuses, and bike-sharing platforms remotely disabling their vehicles if cyclists tried to ride them out of certain designated zones.

Zhengzhou, a city of 12.6 million, is home to 40 colleges and universities, with many students living in crowded dorm rooms that do not afford much privacy. Some welcomed the 50-kilometer (30-mile) bike ride to Kaifeng as a chance to escape their oppressive school routines, celebrate their youth (“Youth is priceless!” was one popular slogan of the rides), and sample Kaifeng’s famous soup-dumplings and scenic spots before making the one-hour train trip back to campus. Although the nocturnal cyclists seemed to be in it just for the fun, the spectacle of these youthful crowds seemed to make government officials nervous, perhaps calling to mind the large gatherings of young people that galvanized the White Paper protests of late 2022 and the Shanghai Halloween revelry of 2023.

Although late-night Zhengzhou-to-Kaifeng cycling went viral on Chinese social media, there has been a fair amount of online censorship of the topic. CDT editors have archived 11 related articles and essays, of which three were deleted by platform censors. One essay reported that, at least for a time, the name “Kaifeng” was being blocked, so netizens were forced to resort to using the abbreviation “KF.”

CDT has translated a lengthy excerpt of a first-person account by 18-year-old college student Yang Yu, who made the four-hour nighttime bike ride to Kaifeng with her boyfriend and some friends. She talks about the journey, her motivations for going, the criticism she received afterward from her mother and others, and the experience of being infantilized by college administrators who instituted curfews and confined Yang and her classmates to campus on the weekends:

One night, my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to bicycle to Kaifeng together and take the train back [to Zhengzhou]. I didn’t really want to go, but he called me up, we talked for a long time, and he finally talked me into it. When I asked why he wanted to go, he said, “Because I’ve never done a night climb of Mt. Song (Songshan) or Mt. Laojun (Laojunshan), and I don’t want to grow old and have no memories to look back on. Just this once, I want to do a crazy, late-night, bike ride to Kaifeng, so that when I’m older, I won’t regret missing out on it.”

Hearing those words, I decided I’d go on this crazy trip with him. I didn’t dare tell my family, because they’d definitely scold me and say it was too dangerous to go out cycling at night. At that time, our school hadn’t yet cracked down on students not coming back to the dorms at night. When I told my roommates I was going to make the late-night bike ride to Kaifeng, they said I was crazy.

The first problem isn’t the ride itself: it’s finding a bike

[…] Setting out on time was harder than we expected. The first problem wasn’t the ride itself, but finding a spare rental bike.

We took the subway to Zhengzhou Sports Center Station, but all the shared bikes at the subway entrance were gone. After walking around the area for 20 minutes, we still weren’t able to find any bikes, so we pushed back our departure time to 10:00 p.m.

[…] At 10:00 p.m., we still hadn’t found any bikes and our group had split up. Someone suggested trying Longzihu Station [the next station on the No. 1 subway line]. After wandering around for a while, the two of us went back to the area around Longzihu College Park. We saw a few unused shared-bikes along the roadside, but they were all broken.

After looking for ages, we still hadn’t found bikes, and we were no closer to setting off on our trip. I was tired already, and feeling a bit irritated.

Eventually, we went back to the campus entrance and found two “Qingju” shared bikes parked in a corner. As soon as I scanned the QR codes and unlocked them, I started to get excited. By then, it was 10:30 and our other friends were still out searching for bikes, but we weren’t able to help them find any nearby.

[…] Before we had even gotten on the road, we’d wasted nearly two hours just trying to find bikes.

[…] By around 11:00 p.m., we were finally cycling along Zhengkai Avenue, where we met wave after wave of other college students making the night-ride to Kaifeng.

At first, everyone stayed in the bike lane, but when we realized there weren’t many cars on the road so late at night, some bicyclists started using the lanes for motorized vehicles. Some of the other cyclists rode too slowly, but since the bike lane was so crowded, sometimes I’d just use the motorized vehicle lanes to pass them. My partner reminded me to stay in the bike lane, because the lanes for cars were too dangerous.

Later, we slowed down a bit, so I took out my phone and started playing some music. The whole way, people were riding and singing “red” songs, pop songs, old tunes, all kinds of songs. No one seemed the least bit tired, buoyed by high spirits as we all cycled along Zhengkai Avenue together.

[…] At 2:00 a.m. on November 2, we reached the boundary between Kaifeng and Zhengzhou, which was marked by a huge archway with a sign reading “Kaifeng City Limits.” A lot of the bicycling college students stopped there to take pictures. Passing the boundary, we continued riding, and were soon able to see an enormous illuminated snowman (the brand mascot of Mixue Ice Cream & Tea) atop Kaifeng’s city wall, not too far in the distance.

Passing through the gate in the city wall meant that our journey was nearly at an end. I used my cell phone to capture a photo of the moment, and felt that all the exertion and effort along the way had been worth it. When we got near Kaifeng Museum, we decided to park and lock the manual bikes we’d arrived on, and switch to electric rental bikes instead.

The [Qingju] bike-share app showed me that the ride had been 50 kilometers (30 miles), taken 240 minutes, and cost a total of 16.5 yuan ($2.30). After paying, I bid farewell to my trusty “chariot.”

Kaifeng is littered with bikes; students fall asleep sitting up

[…] It was 5:00 a.m. when we arrived at Kaifeng’s Drum Tower, and my hands were numb from the cold. When I saw how many shared bikes were parked in front of Drum Tower, I was shocked. Shared bikes blocked the entrances to the shops on both sides of the road, and even spilled out into the surrounding streets. I imagined how startled the shopkeepers would be when they showed up for work the next morning and saw that bike-filled landscape.

The entrance to Drum Tower was crowded with college students taking the requisite tourist photos, and with various street vendors selling snacks. After a long night of cycling, everyone was on the verge of exhaustion, tired and hungry. I talked to a vendor selling guantangbao [giant savory soup-filled dumplings, a local Kaifeng specialty], but I didn’t buy any because at 15 yuan ($2) per bamboo steamer, they were too pricey.

Later, we passed by a dumpling restaurant. It wasn’t open yet, but there was a large crowd of college students sitting on the steps outside, so we sat down and joined them. The wind had given me a runny nose, my hands and feet were freezing, and I was struggling to stay awake. Some of the students were sleeping on the steps, and some were just sprawled on the ground. We sat and slept a while, as well.

When we woke up, it was daylight, but the restaurant still wasn’t open. Refreshed from our nap, we wandered around Drum Tower and then headed over to the Mt. Wansui Martial Arts Theme Park. It was the weekend, and the place was so packed that we could hardly move.

[…At the end of the day,] we went to Kaifeng Railway Station, which seemed to be filled with college students, most of them heading back to Zhengzhou. On the train ride back, some of the passengers were discussing why there were so many college students on the train.

I was sitting opposite a mother and daughter. The mother said to her daughter, “Look how amazing these big brothers and sisters are! They rode bicycles all the way to Kaifeng—even by train, that’s a one-hour trip. You ought to be like them and get more exercise.”

Feeling a bit proud of myself, I posted some content about the “night ride to Kaifeng” on my WeChat Moments, with the caption “Passion!!!” A lot of my friends liked it. At this point, it had been nearly 24 hours since we set out on our trip.

100,000 bicyclists launch “nocturnal raid” on Kaifeng, snarling traffic

When my mother found out what I’d done, she gave me a good scolding. She also watched a lot of the Douyin [TikTok’s Chinese counterpart] videos of college students riding to Kaifeng, and said, “You kids are crazy.”

[…] Suddenly my roommate wanted to go to Kaifeng, and she asked if I planned to go back. I said there was no way I could handle another trip. When I’d first told her about the idea, she’d thought I was crazy, so I asked her why she wanted to go now. “Who’d have guessed ‘night-biking to Kaifeng’ would blow up like this?” she told me. “I’m seeing it on Douyin all the time, and I want to try it, too!”

Online, I saw that more and more people were joining the “night-cycling brigade,” including city residents, online influencers, and college students coming in from other places. What shocked me most was when, on the night of Friday, November 8, more than 100,000 cyclists launched a “nocturnal raid” on Kaifeng.

The throngs of cyclists taking to the road snarled traffic along many sections of Zhengkai Avenue. Bicycles monopolized the motorized vehicle lanes, blocking cars and causing huge traffic jams. Large numbers of traffic police and makeshift medical stations appeared along the route, with officers and staff working overtime until dawn. Many of Kaifeng’s landmark buildings were fenced in by parked bicycles, and bike-share company dispatchers shuttled back and forth between Kaifeng and Zhengzhou every day, picking up and returning the bikes.

Reading that news, I felt that the whole phenomenon had soured. It was a different vibe from when I had ridden there. That initial burst of so-called “youth, passion, freedom, and enthusiasm” had turned into a “mindless exercise in bandwagon-jumping,” “an online popularity contest,” and was close to the point of insanity.

On Douyin, I noticed that a lot of the news and videos about “night-cycling to Kaifeng” had comment sections filled with heckling and insults.

[…] After the freedom came campus curfews, scoldings, self-recrimination

On the evening of November 8, some colleges in Zhengzhou announced that they were instituting campus curfews and lockdowns. For students who hadn’t yet made the trip to Kaifeng, the news hit like a thunderbolt. When the friends who had planned to go night-cycling with my roommate got a lockdown notice from their college, they had to cancel their trip to Kaifeng.

The next day, our college political advisor also sent out a notice, which read: “Due to an overwhelming number of students taking night-time bike rides to Kaifeng, we cannot guarantee the safety of our students. For the safety of everyone, the school is restricting all students from entering or leaving campus on Saturdays and Sundays.” [The “college political advisor” (学校辅导员, xuéxiào fǔdǎoyuán) is in charge of one or more classes of students at a school or college, and is responsible for students’ political, ideological, and moral education; mental health and safety; career guidance; and Communist Party and Communist Youth League–building.]

When we read that notice, we were collectively gutted. That was on Saturday, and my roommate had been planning to go see some friends. She had gotten up early, put on her makeup, and just as she was getting ready to head out, she received the notice. I had been planning to go shopping, so it ruined my day, too. Confined to our dorm room, we groused about how unfair it was: it’s not like we were planning to go cycling, anyway. How dare they tell us we’re not allowed to go out!

To prevent us from leaving campus, the college implemented nighttime dormitory inspections, photo check-ins, and location check-ins. They also made students go to classrooms for roll call on weekends. After the class monitor finished taking the roll call, the teacher held a class safety meeting, and then started showing movies. We weren’t allowed to eat until 6:00 p.m., when the class monitor announced that we could go to dinner. After dinner, we had to come back to the classroom for another roll call, after which more movies would be shown. I remember that they showed “The Eight Hundred” [a propagandistic WWII movie]. Very few students actually watched the movies. We basically kept our heads down—watching Douyin, texting, or playing games on our phones—until they finally let us go back to our dorms at 9:00 p.m.

[…] Today, the school issued its latest notice: in order to prevent us from leaving campus on Saturdays and Sundays, classes have been rescheduled to weekends. I have no idea when things will return to normal. [Chinese]