An American in Beijing

Ren shan ren hai

The Chinese have an expression that attempts to convey the inconceivable vastness of their population: “Ren shan ren hai,” which literally means something like “mountains and seas of people” – the entire landscape is either obscured by or literally composed of millions upon billions of busy little bodies, walking and coughing and pushing and calling out to one another, spitting and grinning and crying and chatting animatedly, all discrete entities whose collective massiveness is simply incomprehensible even when presented before your very eyes. The full force of this expression is perhaps best seen in Beijing’s subways, which is simply teeming and overflowing at all hours of the day with people, people, people.

The Beijing subway system is remarkably clean and efficient compared with a lot of other aspects of Beijing’s infra- (and outer, for that matter) structure. The stations are as clean (or cleaner) as those in Boston, and while the clusters of squat, dirty shacks, piles of burning garbage, clogged city arteries and soaring skyscrapers that rush past outside the windows betray the great inequity of Beijing’s society more than is ever revealed by Boston’s scenery, the interior of the subway cars is clean and bright, the stops clearly labeled, and a pleasant female voice makes almost continual announcements, informing the crammed masses of people inside the subway car of which direction they are heading, telling them what station they have stopped at, and urging them to prepare themselves to get off if the next station (also announced) is their final destination.

There are, of course, similar announcements on the subway in Boston and (I think, although it’s been a while) in New York, but these generally have the meaning “make sure you’re not asleep, and make sure you have all your bags and stuff together, because your stop is coming up in a few minutes.” In Beijing, the request that you ready yourself to disembark the train is not so much a gentle reminder to mentally prepare yourself but a straightforward suggestion that if you do not begin cramming yourself into the nonexistent spaces between the people pressing in on you from every side in a vain attempt to reach the area near the door, there is simply no way you will make it off the train in time.

posted by Kelly @ 10:27 下午