The Great Wall of China, an ancient barrier constructed over centuries, is embracing 21st-century logistics as a viral video this week shot footage of a food delivery drone flying over the Badaling section and dropping a meal directly into a waiting tourist's hands.
The video, posted by an adolescent tourist, captures her placing food orders through an app as she strolls along the ancient ramparts. Shortly afterward, the drone arrives, gliding down a package to a assigned QR-style landing pad set on the stone rampart. The package contained a Subway sandwich, which was said to be fresh and unbroken.
Meituan Pioneers 'Air-Drop Delivery' At Historic Site
The new service is an effort by Chinese delivery giant Meituan, among the country's largest on-demand service platforms. The firm introduced the service at the Badaling section, the most visited and accessible part of the Wall close to Beijing, to enable tourists to order food and beverages, as well as emergency essentials.
The service is set to address an age-old challenge: the long, tiring walks among sparse food stalls along the highly frequented but out-of-the-way parts of the Wall.
- Operation Hours: Drones are in operation 10 AM to 4 PM daily.
- Payload: They can send packages weighing up to 2.3 kilograms (five pounds).
- Cost: The cost of delivery is a mere 4 yuan, comparable to a standard ground order.
- Speed: Meituan says the drones travel a distance that would take someone walking in 50 minutes within five minutes.
The drones draw on a rooftop location nearby as a base station and depend on coded landing markers at some watchtowers for high-precision drop-offs.
Part Of China's Low-Altitude Economy Push
Although the video has been causing mirth on social media, the service is a serious aspect of China's wider plan to expand its low-altitude economy, where drones are projected to transform logistics, tourism, and even medicine.
Meituan has even experimented with more than 50 drone delivery routes in big cities, delivering to university campuses and office rooftops. The pilot at the Great Wall also demonstrates the technology's ability in areas that have been historically preserved where it is not practical to add new commercial infrastructure or pull carts around, accordingly weighing tourism convenience against heritage preservation.
In spite of the convenience, the new service has caused a debate, with some users being amazed by the technology while others consider the buzzing drones an unpleasant spectacle at a UNESCO World Heritage site. In any case, the pilot program has proved that even a building designed to exclude humans can now welcome modern technology in, sandwich delivery at a time.
