Billions of dollars in venture capital money flooded in, creating opportunities for other entrepreneurs to copy. Soon there were too many bikes. Instead of consolidating, more start-ups cropped up. The start-ups, focused on growth, charged riders little or nothing. Mobike , one of the companies, still charges around 20 cents for a 30-minute ride.

“Even the companies that grew so big still haven’t figured out how to make money,” said Fu Yifu, a researcher with Suning Financial Research Institute, an organization attached to a Chinese internet finance company.

Bikes in every color of the rainbow were made in Wangqingtuo and shipped to cities near and far. Yellow bikes became synonymous with Ofo , orange bikes with Mobike, blue with Bluegogo .

Wangqingtuo, which began putting together two-wheeled rides in the 1970s, became a bicycle hub during China’s economic rise, the way other places became centers for making lighters or zippers. A sign at the town entrance proclaims, “China’s bicycle industrial base: Wangqingtuo welcomes you.” It suffered as increasingly affluent Chinese turned to cars and scooters, and it turned to making bicycles for other countries.

Then the bike-sharing boom hit. The Shanghai Phoenix Bicycle factory in town took on so many orders for Ofo’s bright yellow and black bikes that by 2017 it was churning out 10,000 bikes a day, according to Gao Yuntian, an employee from Shanghai. Most, he said, were for Ofo.