the seedy underground of beijing

the beijing subway is surprisingly clean and organized. nevermind that it is packed at all hours, and especially during rush hour. they are just installing ticket machines (right now you have to buy tickets from tellers, if that's the right word). so all the stations are full of machines that read "out of order." of course i didn't know that this past weekend when i wanted to put money on my subway card. so i wandered about, thinking what a coincidence it was that all the ticket machines in three different stations throughout the city were out of order.

my first exposure to the subway during rush hour was not great. it was raining, which apparently drives lots of bus riders into the subway. so i hop on at the stop near durrell's swinging pad and it's crowded but what i expected during rush hour. for those who live in washington or san francisco think of the metro or bart when they have to offload a train during rush hour. two stops later i hop off to change trains, head downstairs and encounter a truly wild scene. you know those videos of tokyo trains during rush hour, where attendants are pushing people into the cars so the doors can close? the only difference here was that it was just other people on the platform pushing people into the train. the communal spirit is strong here.

but on a normal day, and i'm going to assume, and hope, that my last two days riding the subway are normal days, things are pretty bearable. the trains in the morning are either totally packed or mostly packed. the difference is really how hard you are pressed against the people around you. the way people ride trains here is they mostly wait for people to get off (this is definitely a new development in the last three years, by the way), then rush on while people on the train who want to get off soon push toward the door. a kind of equilibrium is achieved and then the doors close, hopefully with you on the train.

the trick, i found, is to stay close to the door. the best way to do this is to make sure that you get on the train last, then at each stop do the step off to let people off and hop back on (you probably will be the only person doing this). otherwise, you run the risk of getting pushed back into the center of the train, where you may as well resign yourself to the fate of not getting off until you get to the dusty, windswept plains past the fifth ring road.

the newer train cars, which i tend to be on in the evening on the way home, have tv screens that seem to constantly show some special olympic programming. my best guess, since there is no sound, is that these shows are teaching people about the lesser known olympic events, like trampoline, mountain biking and beach volleyball, which is ever so popular among the male riders. they will show clips of competition, often with chinese athletes winning, and then pause and highlight some aspect of the court/course. for example in volleyball they would give dimensions of the ball, the height of the net and draw diagrams of players' positions. is that all really necessary? i mean, how many hard core football fans know how heavy the regulation football is?

one final thing i'll mention is that riders are by and large very polite. if you're standing near the door and they're pushing forward to try to get off, they'll actually ask "are you getting off?" perhaps the response to some government pre-olympics politeness campaign. in the us, it's more like "out of my way, i'm getting off." oh and also, my new favorite thing is on the packed trains, when it starts up suddenly is hearing from way down the car 50 people at once going "woah!" as somebody forgot to grab on and started to fall over. that is the true communist domino effect.