Tourists walking the Great Wall of China can now manage their hunger by ordering takeout that will be delivered from the air via drones from food delivery service Meituan.
A major Chinese food delivery service, Meituan, is offering a new service for anyone walking the Great Wall of China who find themselves feeling hungry on their journey. Meituan will deliver food, drinks, and other goods like medical supplies to customers at the ancient monument, but it won’t be delivered via driver. Instead, the company will be using drones to deliver the goods.
This marks Beijing’s first official drone service, however, China as a whole has a rapidly growing drone delivery service market, and the country is the largest manufacturer and exporter of civilian consumer drones in the world, according to reports.
The quickly growing industry has been conveniently delivering goods to people living within both cities and rural areas in China. For the delivery service to the Great Wall, the drone route extends from a nearby hotel rooftop to a watchtower that is on the southern extension of Badaling, which is the most popular section of the monument.
Yan Yan, the public affairs director of Meituan’s facilities said that this new service is going to be integral during the summer months.
“Through drones, we can make trips that take 50 minutes on foot in five minutes and deliver heat relief items and emergency supplies to visitors.”
The extension of the Badaling was opened last year, and has worked to preserve the “ruined state of the ramparts on the wall, which typically experiences sweltering summer temperatures and has no commercial facilities,” wrote Nectar Gan and Hassan Tayir for CNN.
According to Meituan, the drones can fly through moderate wind and rain conditions, and carry about 5 pounds of goods per trip. The company announced that the delivery fee is just 56 cents (4 yuan), which is the same as regular Meituan deliveries, according to Beijing Youth Daily.
The service itself will take orders from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and after they will carry trash to recycling stations. Gan and Tayir wrote that the drones will still need some assistance from humans before they can complete their deliveries.
“Once an order is received, a Meituan worker will pick it up from a nearby store and bring it to the hotel rooftop, where it will be weighed and packaged. An operator then attaches the package to the drone, which will fly on autopilot to the watchtower, where another worker waits to receive it.”
App users utilizing the service will be able to pick up their package from the worker at the watchtower.
In 2016, JD, an e-commerce giant, launched the first trial of unmanned aerial vehicles for delivers in China’s countryside. “Carrying up to 15 kilograms over a maximum distance of 20 kilometers (about 12 miles), those drones shortened delivery times from four hours by car on winding mountain roads to just under 20 minutes, state-run news agency Xinhua reported at the time.
In addition to boosting rural logistics, drones are also increasingly used to fetch quick takeout for people living in China’s metropolises,” Gan and Tayir wrote.
Meituan currently operates more than 30 drone routes in multiple cities, which have completed more than 300,000 orders along 30 drone routes in many cities.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
