摩拜

Móbài

proper noun

Meanings

1 Mobike - bike-sharing brand (now part of Meituan)
2 Mobike (orange-wheeled bike-share originally launched 2015)

Characters

to rub (phonetic)

to bow / worship (phonetic)

Examples

HSK 3

我以前每天骑摩拜上班。

Wǒ yǐqián měitiān qí Móbài shàngbān.

I used to ride a Mobike to work every day.

HSK 7-9

摩拜后来被美团收购，改名美团单车了。

Móbài hòulái bèi Měituán shōugòu, gǎimíng Měituán Dānchē le.

Mobike was later acquired by Meituan and renamed Meituan Bike.

Tips

culture

Mobike (摩拜单车) and ofo (小黄车) led China's mid-2010s bike-sharing boom - at peak, every Chinese city was flooded with orange Mobikes and yellow ofos. Mobike was acquired by Meituan in 2018 and rebranded to 美团单车. ofo collapsed by 2019. The era left a lasting vocabulary of QR-code unlock (扫码开锁) and shared-economy phrases.

memory

摩拜 reads móbài, mimicking the English brand 'Mo-bike'. The chosen characters 摩 (rub/touch) + 拜 (worship/bow) have no semantic relation to bikes - it's a pure phonetic borrowing.

In Pop Culture

摩拜单车 Móbài Dānchē

Mobike

Chinese bike-sharing pioneer (founded 2015, Shanghai), acquired by Meituan in 2018 and rebranded to 美团单车 in 2020.

Stroke Order

摩 mó

拜 bài