With millions of riders on the road, China’s food delivery industry has long prided itself on being able to reach every corner of the country. Now, the platforms are even offering to deliver takeout to the Great Wall — dropped off not by a worker on an electric bike, but by a drone descending from the sky.

The Chinese tech giant Meituan recently rolled out a drone delivery service to the popular Badaling section of the Great Wall, which will allow tourists to receive packages of food and medication while strolling the ramparts, the company announced on Friday.

The new service — which is the first drone delivery route ever opened in Beijing — will not offer direct airdrops from merchants to customers, the company said. Instead, drones will fly along a fixed route from a depot to a landing site on the wall, with delivery workers hauling the packages from the merchants to the depot and then from the landing site to the customers.

But the drones will speed up the process significantly. While it would take a worker 50 minutes to hike up from the depot to the watchtower, the drones will be able to make the trip in just five, Mao Yinian, director of drone delivery services at Meituan, told local media.

The delivery drones will be able to haul up to 2.3 kilograms of goods per trip and can remain operative during “mildly windy and rainy weather,” according to Meituan. The company will initially offer free delivery while it trials the service, and claims that fees will stay similar to those of regular deliveries afterward.

The drop site is located on top of a watchtower along the Badaling section of the Great Wall, an area previously free of commercial facilities as it is protected by planning restrictions.

Though drone delivery is new to Beijing, the technology has existed in other parts of China for several years. The e-commerce firm JD.com began trialing the country’s first aerial delivery vehicles in 2016, and several companies now use them. Meituan already operates 30 drone delivery routes, which have handled more than 300,000 orders.

But the technology is now being rolled out at a much faster pace amid a government push to develop the “low-altitude economy.” In March, China’s central government designated the low-altitude economy as a “new growth engine” for the first time, and set a target of scaling up the use of aerial delivery in the logistics sector by 2027.

That has led a string of cities to open up new drone delivery routes. Shanghai has set up two routes in the central Yangpu District within the past eight months, serving a busy commercial zone and a public park, respectively. Smaller cities including Wuhu, Zhuzhou, and Nantong have also introduced drone delivery services this year.

(Header image: A delivery drone flies toward the Great Wall in Beijing, Aug. 16, 2024. Xinhua)