Transit tales from China
GUEST BLOG
Yin-Yang
Everyone knows yin and yang. Light and dark, good and evil, happy and sad. Everything in the universe can be connected to one of the two, and they keep each other in check. Well, I’ve had both when it comes to Beijing transportation.
A few days ago: We want to go to Wangfujing (shopping area surrounding the Olympics Flagship store). So, we set out in a taxi. We’re on one of the ring roads, which are about five roads equivalent to highways that circle the city, and all of a sudden a van to our right is trying to merge onto the road. We don’t move over because there should be no need, but he’s honking and trying to get where we are. OK, first off, you can honk here at anything, and they do. But mainly a honk is because you want the adjacent lane to know you’re there and they shouldn’t come over. Makes sense, right? This guy won’t slow down! He merges in behind us finally, and we think all is OK. As soon as a lane to the right opens, he zips out (we think cursing at us, but we don’t know the language), pulls ahead of us, and cuts us off. Actually slams on his breaks on the highway! The four of us in the car are like what the…! Our driver, getting a little flustered, goes to pull around him. The guy cuts us off again. And again. Finally, he parks his van sideways, gets out pointing and yelling, and goes to get our driver out of the taxi. On the highway, remember. We’re freaked and looking for both an exit and, hopefully, not a gun in the pocket he’s reaching into. Eventually he lets our driver go, but we still don’t know what happened.
So that night, we’re not liking taxis. But we need to go home, so we get into one just past rush hour. This driver immediately knows where we’re going (unlike some) and tries to tell jokes to us even though we don’t understand him. So, he turns on the radio to an American pop station. Cool! Then he proceeds to dance to the music. We’re all laughing with him and in a good mood. Then he tries to sing (he doesn’t know English, but he has obviously heard the songs before), and motions for us to do the same. Why not, right? “There Can Be Miracles” (Prince of Egypt song) and Michael Buble’s “Home” never sounded worse, but he sure turned yin into yang.
-Laura Dotson
“We are so LIC”
“LIC” is a phrase one of my friends made up that stands for “Lost in China.” Today I was definitely “lic-ed” (pronounced “licked”). Lauren and I decided to go to the 798 Art District, which is located in northeast Beijing in the Dashanzi district. It is pretty far away from where we are staying, so in an attempt to save money (which we’d rather spend on food) we opted to take public transportation. We were very determined. So we hopped on the subway, transferred lines just once and, after an hour and a half, reached our destination. Only it wasn’t our final destination. We still had to take the 909 bus east.
We were a little confused, so we started looking for English speakers. We spotted some people from Holland, and mid-conversation we saw the 909 bus and said a quick goodbye to the kind but unhelpful foreigners and got on the bus. We did not know which direction the bus was going. After attempting to ask if we were heading in the right direction for nearly 10 minutes, we discovered that we were not going the right way. We hopped off the bus, and the other riders waved goodbye to us. We then encountered another problem: We knew which way to go, but we had no idea how far we needed to ride or where get off. We tried to make friends at the bus stop, and once we found an English speaker, we clung to her. Soon there were at least seven women surrounding us trying to figure out where the 798 Art District exit was. Suddenly our bus arrived, and a woman decided it was her duty to escort us onto the bus! Two people in the front seat got up so that Lauren and I had a place to sit. It was so cute, and we were happy to be heading in the right direction!
-Paige Hansen
Taxi!
Taxis in China are something special. The base price is 10 RMB (7 RMB = 1 USD), and then it costs 2 RMB for every kilometer. The most expensive ride cost almost 45 RMB ($7) to go across town. My favorite taxi experience in Beijing was actually the first. Molly, Erin and I were riding in a taxi heading to the closest subway station that was open. The driver’s phone went off. He answered it, chatted for a bit and then handed the phone to me. His friend wanted to practice his English, so we talked until I noticed the driver acting really funny and poking a bunch of buttons. I handed him the cell phone back, and within three minutes the cab coasted to a stop on an overpass bridge. It had died, and he pointed to us to walk back from where we came. We hailed another cab, and it got us there — kind of. We tried pronouncing our destination in Chinese, which was a no-no. It got us to a totally different location but still close to a subway station, so it wasn’t such a bad deal.
-Julia Shuck
Going underground
On Sunday, a friend of mine and I tried the subway. It is a little farther away from us than the bus stop, but we wanted to see what it would be like. I’ve been on a few subways around the world, and this ride was the smoothest I’ve had. You can barely tell if you’re accelerating or decelerating, and going around curves doesn’t make you look for the nearest thing to grab onto. I was impressed. I also liked the lit map in the subway cars: Dots were lit in red for the stations that had been passed and in blue for the stations still to come, so you knew where you were during the entire ride. I can imagine when line 8 opens our commute will only get faster.
-Beth Androuais
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Line 8 subway finally opened. But it actually makes commute more troublesome. You can’t just transfer from 10 to 8 like you do the other lines. Because they built it underneath the Olympic Green, we must exit the subway line 10 and go around the block, through two security tents, back down and around to where we started, so THEN we can ride the line. Efficiency anyone? At least going home is easy; only staff can ride it right now, so there’s no one on the trains. We used it to take nighttime pictures the other night. Someone should have told us it closes at 10 p.m., though, since we were stuck on the Green at 10:30 not knowing how to get back.
-Laura Dotson
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