Patience: A never-ending lesson
To the editor
Subways are a growing phenomenon in China. Every city of a million or more people wants to boast a subway system.
When I worked in Shanghai in 2005 there were only three lines. A fourth was to have been opened at the beginning of 2006 but suffered a tunnel collapse that delayed its opening until 2008. By 2010, there were 11 lines with more under construction.
Here in Guangzhou we have a great subway system. Stations are huge with a variety of entrances. The smallest stations have only two or three entrances. The largest stations have seven to eight entrances. Still a work in progress, these entrances are cavernous mouths with thousands of people entering and exiting them during their hours of operation. During peak hours you can expect to be pushed, poked, prodded, and squeezed into the carriages for the train.
And like so many planned programs under the benevolent malevolency of the central planning office, there never seems to be enough cars to haul all the people and their baggage when they want to go. To their credit, the staff in Guangzhou’s stations are professionally dressed out in nice uniforms and are very professional in working through the crowds and keeping out the larger parcels that add to the chaos. If you can carry the parcel or drag the cart through the entrance gate, you can bring it on the train. Anything larger and the officials will tell you to find another way to get it home.
Gradually the citizens here are learning to be patient and wait if they can not get onto a train. This is when one admires the kindergarten, and early grade teachers back home. We demand of our teachers that they teach the proper norms of behavior in the classroom and in public. This begins with learning how to line up, how to pass through the hallways on the way to the lunchroom, and how to allow other people to leave and enter in a polite manner. As these teachers will tell you, it is a never-ending lesson.
Amazingly, our primary school teachers are masters of control and take pride in having students able to be respectful citizens by the end of the year. If only they could teach the cell phone users about when and where to use their phones. Nothing like running into the back of an idiot who has to stop and read a message.
One learns quickly how to move through the city using the various trains and buses. And if your timing is right, you can dash around faster than you can take a car. Plus nothing to park. The trains on most lines run at three to four minutes from six in the morning until 11 at night. So there always seems to be another train coming along. Still not enough. But getting there.
Off to catch a train now.
Orpheus Allison, MLA
Guangzhou, China
orpheusallison@mla.com
