Cheap Thrill Subway

Biking into a strong headwind, I pulled over, huddling for warmth inside my hoodie, locked the bike on the side of the road, and walked into a box of a building with 100’s of other people, while 100’s others came out. It seemed completely impossible for that many people to be coming from a building that small. But I walked in, knowing full well that this was the subway station. I ran down the seemingly endless flights of stairs and hit the bottom eventually. Going left with the flow of Chinese, I cut in line, like the rest of the Chinese, bought my ticket for only 2 kuai, (that’s about 20 American cents,) swiped my ticket, and the metal gate that has replaced the turnstile in Beijing, opened up, like something from Star Trek, and I entered the “real” subway station. A place bustling with a wide array of people, where you look at every single one of them and wonder how they could possibly be in such a hurry. A place where the sounds of voices echo in the parabolic shaped roof and the screeches of stopping cars and an omnipresent voice saying, “Zhuyi Anquan,” among other phrases, all meld into one sound. A place where I’ve spent many hours, but still somehow manage to get on the wrong train. I wait for barely a minute before I push my way into a crowded car and wait for the doors to close. They do, and a distressed face looks through the window at me, who just barely made this train, and all I do is look back, completely apathetic, like the rest of the Chinese. The sudden lurch of the car makes me brace my legs and everyone leans against it and then back into a normal standing position. I strike up small talk with the person whose face is crushed against my shoulder blade, “Jintian zenmeyang,” and every time I do this, they all respond with the same thing, “Good. You’re Chinese is very good!” To which I respond, “Ni shuo cuo le.” Or, “You spoke wrong.” And every time I say this, they feel like I, too, am Chinese and start talking openly with me. Denying a compliment is seen as polite in China, it is part of a ritual, and rituals are something that Chinese do very well. Some of them might seem completely ridiculous, like how they are super neat about everything in their house, or how they follow rules laid down by the government to a “T” or simple conversation habits like this. There’s a reason though, a pretty damn good one in my mind. 乱, (Luan,) is chaos. The Chinese want to get rid of any possibility for a reason for luan to erupt. If you’re a Chinese person in your 60’s or 70’s, you’ve seen a lot. A country turned around, split, divided, controlled, famine, war, cold. If you’re in your 90’s then you would’ve seen an entire system of ruling that lasted 5000 years come to a close and the uncertainty of what the future will hold, as well as everything previously mentioned. They just want something that is predictable, something that won’t result in chaos, like so many things that happened in China’s recent past. And if I lived through all that, I would be pretty meticulous about all that too. But I digress. I finished up my conversation and looked out into the darkness surrounding the tunnel. A green light would flash by. And then a moving ad would show up through the window and I knew the station was near. I looked at the map and sighed. This wasn’t a line change station. The cars slowed, the people lurched in the opposite direction, and then righted themselves. The doors opened, and the sound of another subway station entered the car with 16 more people. I was really glad I’m not claustrophobic, and bided my time for the next 5 stops, waiting for my stop. My stop came and every single person got out. It was a bottleneck effect. I pushed my way through, and was finally out of the car, my destination waiting about 100 feet above. Walking up the stairs, (the escalator is slow,) I saw the rays of sunlight shine down through a window and lit up the top of the stairs. I jogged out and was on my way, huddling for warmth in my hoodie once again.