Taking the Public Transit in Beijing
When one thinks about rush hour, the image that comes to mind is usually a crowded metropolitan street at 8am or 5:30pm on a weekday. On my way to a client meeting on my second day in Beijing, I thought I’d be clever and beat the rush hour by leaving the house at 7am. No such luck. After sitting at a circular intersection (which is supposedly more efficient than a regular one as cars circle around a giant disk) for 10 minutes on the 374 bus, I was told that rush hour actually started at 5am and will probably end at 9pm. Welcome to Beijing.
An observation I have about Beijing in general and the Narita Airport in Tokyo in particular, is that EVERYTHING, and I mean EVERYTHING, talks! The little fast track conveyor belt thing in the airport is telling me to “watch my steps, end is approaching” in three different languages. The buses seem to sprout artificial intelligence as they tell passengers to pay the fare, announce the next stop, warn pedestrians outside the bus that it’s turning, AND blast loud public service messages about Chinese culture. On top of that, there are 2-4 TVs on every single bus and subway car, which are either running advertisements, cute little blobs bouncing around, or CCTV clips on repeat, in full volume. Also, the subway just. never. shuts. up. And if you think getting off public transit and heading into a mall would help, you would be wrong. This one McDonald’s I went to blasted an over-the-top skit about McFlurries on its radio on repeat, so much so you can hear it half a block away. I felt really bad for the security guard who was on duty right across the speakers.
Another thing that the locals have accepted to be the norm which surprised me at first was the security checks at subways! We have to run our bags through a scanner every time we go into the subway. Once the security lady actually asked me to take out my water bottle and take a sip. Intense.
Despite all my complaints about Beijing, or Observed Eccentricities as I like to call them, I really love this city. I have fond, albeit blurry, childhood memories here and I love the fast pace with which it moves. People move fast to build careers and business empires, skylines change so fast that even locals sometimes don’t recognize some of the buildings around them, and taxis literally drive at breakneck speeds through the nooks and crannies of hutongs (alleys). You can NEVER get bored in Beijing.
