Subway Update

Well, I've been taking the subway a lot lately because let's face it, even in China where we sip martinis and toast to what recession!, taxis are kinda expensive and getting stuck in traffic is a big time bummer--not to mention the good feelings you get when you're doing your part to cut down on air pollution.

(not to be a jerk about the recession, but seriously. you wouldn't know it here. even in Hong Kong, a more economically developed place, people were living it up. when i get homesick and dream of coming home and moving to sf, i remember my country is pinching pennies and employees--not a good time for post grad yoga teachers to return from the land of expat playgrounds, asia, and look for a job.)

But back to the subways. It's like, two RMB a pop to take the subway, and it's pretty easy, really. I complain a lot, and sure, it's crowded and sometimes the man next to you has such bad breath the whole car smells like baiju or eggplant, but mostly its efficient and fast. However, there are such caveats like the ones above, and more annoying things like people staring and people shoving. But here's the subway dealmaker: IPODS!

I wrote in my other blog about dancing around to the Talking Heads on the train and it was a lifesaver. For some reason, I haven't been using my ipod lately. What's my deal? I recharged and deleted all those quiet, thought-provoking podcasts, because what I really need on a crowded Beijing train is the screechy, post punk hipster wailing of Karen O. And I need it LOUD.

Alyssa so eloquently writes about riding public transportation to connect to the heart of a city, staying tuned in to the heartbeat. But I think at this point in my Beijing life, the heartbeat of the city is too loud, too strong. I gotta stay tuned into my iPod for the time being.

Skip bus driver

For this post, I want to focus solely on my regular bus driver. As I don't know his name, I will refer to him as Joe. Because let's face it, the likelihood that his name is Joe is very high.
Joe is a fairly new RTD employee and he takes his job extremely seriously.
I am going to describe a typical bus ride with Joe from beginning to end:

I wait at the bus stop a few feet away from the curb, as to not get run over or splashed by the pools of water by the sidewalk. Joe pulls up in the Skip and opens the doors. I look up and he is waving me in. "Come on, come on". This makes me feel like I'm wasting his time and I get flustered and run up the stairs into the bus. I sit down and he announces over the bus' PA system "Heeeere we goooo!" And we pull away. This makes me feel like we're on a ride or a fun tour bus, so this makes up for the earlier incident.
Before every single stop, Joe pulls down his microphone and says either "For this stop, exit out the back door folks, back door at this stop thank you" or "Either door works for this stop folks, either door at this stop thank you". I appreciate this because I don't like when people exit out the front door when there are people waiting at the stop to get on. So when the driver sees that there are people waiting or no people waiting, he can direct his passengers accordingly.
As you may have noticed, Joe is a little bipolar. You may like him at first, but then he gets mean. For example, I was on the bus yesterday and someone had accidentally pulled the "stop request" cable a stop too early. Joe stopped and there were other passengers getting on anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. He opened the back door because the "stop request" light was on, and the person who had accidentally pulled it yelled "Sorry, I'm getting off at the next stop" and Joe looked in the rear view mirror, gave him a dirty look and yelled back "Good for you!" and continued to glare at the poor sap. When the bus arrived at the next stop, our hapless friend mumbled "thanks" and rushed off the bus to escape Joe's burning stare.
I've noticed that Joe is like an old abused dog. The more he becomes familiar with you, the friendlier he gets. He still hurries me onto the bus, but he always smiles at me in the rear view mirror when I get off the bus and yells "Have a great day!"

Rush Hour

I've taken on the unholy task of teaching a 6:45 am yoga class across town. In Boulder, no problem-- lemme just hop on my super awesome bicycle and I'll be there in a flash. (or the bus!) But in Beijing, it's more like--oh God, there are just so many potential problems. It is my great luck, however, to live near both a subway stop and a bus station, and only a minutes walk to a busy street with many a taxi. So I've been taking a taxi at 6:15 to arrive just before class begins, over on the East Third Ring Road.

(I live off the West Second Ring Road. Beijing is built like this: (((((*))))) The Forbidden City and Tianamen Square are the center, "downtown" areas, and then there's a circle road around it-the First Ring Road. Then follows the Second Ring Road, Third Ring Road, Fourth Ring Road, and lastly, the bane of my existence and where I spend most days teaching yoga, the Fifth Ring Road, out near the airport.)

By subway however, it's a difficult and annoying trek. My stop, Jishuitan, is on line 2, which is a circle line. If I want to go anywhere outside the circle, I have to transfer, usually more than once. And the problem with finishing a yoga class on the south side of the East Ring Road is rush hour traffic headed west. Twice now I've stood out on the corner flailing my arms at 8am at any taxi that passes. No takers. This morning, I sought other means. Walking to Shuangjing, the station, proved difficult. Weird traffic flows, two false taxi alarms (actually got into one as the cabbie was trying to tell me not to) and a biting wind.

So. That was an entry I began way back in Feb sometime. I still have the unholy task of teaching yoga at 6:45am, but luckily for me, my amazing manfriend Benjamin just moved into a new office/apartment right above a subway station in the center of town! Not only do I get to sleep on the 22nd floor of a beautiful new apartment, I also don't have to leave until 6:30 to get to class fifteen minutes later! It's perfect. Way better location for all the things I need to do in Beijing, and cuts down on my cab fare. Excellent!

But. This doesn't change the fact that rush hour is a horrible beast. I still get a little worked up crossing the street, or hailing taxis. Getting on the subway at 8am makes me panicky, and it's usually just way too early for me to be getting touched that much. (Forming lines in China is a relatively new concept--it's really more of a shove and get shoved business. I guess before the Olympics they had certain days of the week where subway employees would force the riders to "practice getting in line". Occasionally they still do, which typically means a teenager with a megaphone yells things and points frantically as people push forward onto the car and more people push back getting off the car.)

It is this kind of thing that splits my personality. I started swearing a lot. I mean, a lot. And not just the regular words, like your shit, your fuck, your damn. I'm talking like, foul, filthy words. And to be totally honest, I already have a pretty foul mouth. I get on the subway and feel such fury at the crowds, an old man openly staring at me, or a woman digging her hands into my back to get past me. I just could not deal with it. Am I normally a patient person? I don't even remember. I've never been faced with an animal like Beijing before. It's the biggest city I've lived in, and it positively overwhelms me at times.

I recently went to Hong Kong for a weekend. The weather was balmier, the streets were less chaotic, English was spoken everywhere. I felt myself relax. Even though Hong Kong Island is smaller, and the skyscrapers and office buildings pour onto the sidewalks and roads, it felt manageable. If I got stuck in a traffic jam in a taxi, I could just say to the driver, Hey, take me to a train station, or, Hey, is there a better way to get around this? No split personality, no scary-road-rage-marie. It forced me to address the way I approached my Beijing life.

So I can't just hop on my super awesome bicycle and get to the place I want to go. I can't get in a taxi and chat with the driver about the fastest way to get from A to B. Taking the subway is at times pretty bad and panic inducing, but I'm a girl from Iowa where there is no public transportation so it's probably pretty natural that crowds scare me. I just have to remember to be patient. And to wash my mouth out with soap.

Ogden and Colfax. To the East.

Yes, I am once again writing about the 15. The bus. The Vomit Comet, as Wendy once called it. Today was quite a day to leave my iPod at home. The man with the generic Dallas jersey and faded blue hair speaking to his toothless friend about prison sentences, where to meet after work, prison sentences. They're smoking their cigarettes with a sense of urgency--the life of a bus rider is one of constant expectation. The bus will arrive, the bus will arrive, the bus will arrive.

I board the bus with my small pile of lunch from work. The box with the salad, the foil-wrapped wheat bread, the small Styrofoam ramequin filled with balsamic vinaigrette. They were all precariously balanced, and the dressing, predictably, nose-dove to the floor of the incredibly crowded rush hour bus. It bled. I awkwardly recovered it and held it for the rest of the ride. The puddle of brown spread and shifted with the ride.

I finally settled in, and noticed a brown skinned man with a Broncos bandanna covering the majority of his long black hair, sitting five or so passengers away from me. A five year old boy sat restlessly on the bench next to the man, fidgeting, playing with his plastic preying mantis. The boy's mother asked questions, and the man with the bandanna spoke. Difficult to tell if the mother and the man were friends, or bus acquaintances. I can't tell if it matters, for the purposes of this blog, that the two were already friends. The mother hugged the man when she deboarded.

Bandanna spoke about his ankle monitor. His sentence, his parole, his remaining time: 28 days. He said to the woman, "It doesn't matter where you're going, just matters where you are." He spoke about his impending move, his new apartment, his new place. He showed the boy his face mask and construction hat.

It doesn't matter where you're going, just matters where you are. I try to think a bit about the sentence. Cliche, of course, but pertinent in some way. My life is rushing lately. Bending and expanding and shifting. I'm rushing. How Buddhist it is! It matters where we are. It matters where I am. On this bus, sitting next to the only other white women. The one to my left has a City Books tote bag, and the one to my right is reading a food magazine.

Where I am: Denver, City Park Neighborhood, winter, age 24. Where I am: The strange interlude between childhood and adulthood. The interlude that lasts the longest minutes of your life. Minutes that take years and decades. I'm shifting, rushing, going.

The man with the ankle monitor is moving on--28 days he has left, and his new apartment is waiting for him. The young boy reminds his mother of his presence by throwing his small plastic bug across the aisle, and for a moment we are all on the bus. Together. It's where we are. Together.

Spring Festival Photos

above is a photo snapped on the subway of a family returning from the Ditan Temple Spring Festival Fair, looking how most people in the crowd below must have felt: crushed, defeated, overcrowded. The traffic was unbelievable that day on the roads and on the buss and subway; it was hard to believe there could still be even more people actually at the fair.

Colfax Westward: Downing

It's almost eight at night when I board the 15. It's relatively empty. I find a seat next to a heavy white woman with a skater hoodie and an off-brand mp3 player.

The Ethiopian man sitting across the aisle has a hole the size of a matchbox in the top of his loafer, and a brand new black and shiny HP laptop on his lap. He's not looking at anyone, but carefully pressing in the keys as if unlocking a safe.

The man and woman in the seat behind me speak loudly. I've caught them in the middle of their conversation, and can't quite get the full of extent of their words. She says incredulously, "People say, 'So you're Spanish then, ey?' and I say, 'I speak Spanish. I also speak German. What languages do you speak?'" When she says "Spanish," the whole weight of the word rests on the 'a', and comes out with a distinct, deeply felt and sufficiently strong accent. 'Spawn-eesh.' I don't once turn around to see their faces.

I'm headed West, which means the bus just gets more and more crowded as we near downtown. The two behind me exit the bus, and are replaced by a mother and her two young daughters. One is five at the most, and the other looks to be three. The older sits by herself next to the window, watching things happen outside, and the younger is distracted by everything on the bus. She can't stand sitting still, wants to walk all over, and her mother becomes more and more irritated by her constant need to move around. She wants her young daughter to behave and shut-up and stay put. She wants her daughter to listen to her mother. Wants her daughter to do it because she said it should be so. She threatens with more spanking, and the daughter instantly becomes demure and quiet. The girl answers her mother that, No, she doesn't want another slap on her butt.

The mother says, "Did you see that man get off the bus and scream at it? He got off just now, and screamed 'Shut up!' at the bus. It was too loud for him on here because of people like you. He's crazy. That's why you be quiet on the bus. You don't want to upset a crazy person."

I decide not to turn around when she spanks the three year old again. Decide not to take over completely raising them. I decide to behave and shut-up and stay put. I decide not to upset a crazy person.

Bus Rising: The Boulder Express Part I

Even the bus feels expensive these days. Four fifty to ride to Boulder, and I think they recently raised the local fee to two dollars even. That's what it costs in New York City, too. A fourteen percent increase from last year.

The bus to Boulder is different than the local Denver buses. The boarding terminal at 16th Street and Market in Downtown Denver is underground, warm, contained, the seats on the buses are comfortable and large, and between four and six in the afternoons, you pay as you exit the bus. It's incredibly trusting. Inviting a hundred strangers to the vehicle, and assuming they'll all dig into their pockets for the four and a half dollars at the end of the road.

I often imagine not paying. Arriving in Boulder, positioning at the top of the rubber bus stairs, and leaping full force to the street. I imagine myself running down the sidewalk like some scrappy city kid. I remember that I actually love the public transport system, it's not trying to swindle me, and I have a duty to support it. Also, stealing is wrong.

Truth be told, I'm a total wimp and would never attempt anything so bold and publicly confrontational.

But the thought is there. This bus is here for me, a vessel for my own personal transport. I take pride in the Boulder bus, and much comfort. This great metal whale trusts me to put in my four fifty, and against my better financial judgment, I will not let it down.