By Huma Sheikh
BEIJING, March 23 (Xinhuanet) -- It's always like feeling panicky the first few times in a foreign country when your working place is not within the walking range. In China amid huge crowds of people, traveling, especially for a non-Chinese-speaking
foreigner, seems intimidating, but not for me! I have
enjoyed traveling in Beijing.
Getting around in busy Chinese cities, people
mostly take the subway and buses, which is one way to save money than taking a
cab. Both the subway and buses are extremely crowded throughout the day. People
prefer to take the subway to avoid traffic jams even though they have to
transfer lines between the stations to get to the destinations.
I also take the subway to and from workplace,
covering about 13 km each day. Initially, I feared traveling as a non-Chinese
speaking foreigner may do me trouble as I had to change the line in the middle
of my journey and go out of the station to enter another line to get to office.
Nevertheless, I preferred the subway.
The subway is very well equipped with electronic
signboards almost everywhere, consistently popping out destinations both in
Chinese and English as each train arrives. The announcement also follows the
arrival of the next train, again both in English and Chinese and there is hardly
any chance of getting lost, even for a first-timer who has just arrived in
China. Every station has moving walkways for easier movement, escalators and a
host of other relevant facilities amid huge crowds -- which is no wonder to find
in Beijing, the capital of the world's most populous
country.
As I started getting used to my route gradually, I would
think how easily we overlook observing things around in our native country;
maybe the comfort zone of being in one's own country and speaking native
language is too much a reason to think about it. I have many a times traveled by
the subway -- it's metro in India; nonetheless I had hardly paid any attention
to the bilingual announcements made in Hindi and English. Nor did I know how it
would be like to a foreigner if there were no English announcement, other than
the native language.
Subway in Beijing, whose ridership averages 3.4
million per day and set a daily record of 4.92 million on Aug. 22 last year,
looks like a different world where traveling and getting to the destination seem
the only thing on the travellers' mind.
As a train rolls out, transporting thousands of
people in one go, another large group of people shows up within seconds and with
it continues their "unending" struggle to get to "behind the Yellow line" to
make sure they embark on the next jammed-packed train. This process of jostling,
embarking and disembarking repeats itself throughout the day until the last
train at 2300 hrs. The service starts again at 0500 hrs in the morning. The
time-line between the arrivals of each train is two
minutes.
The Beijing Subway is growing rapidly with eight
lines in service currently, covering a total length of 199.31 km. The extensive
underground rail system is contemplating having a mileage of up to 561 km, much
ahead of the well-established systems in Paris Metro and London underground, by
2015.
While I was satisfied with the way subway ride was
going, I began to be soaking in an ususual feeling. A lady on a train sat
beside me the other day and inadvertently put a volley of questions to me. She
wanted to know about a specific station. Because of my inability to speak
Chinese, I was unable to answer her queries. The moment was dreary to me and I
felt that everyone was looking at me and waiting for me to answer. However, I
also felt elated because the moment encouraged me to think I am part of the
country, part of its people and that I must learn to speak Chinese as quickly as
possible.
Previous story by Huma
Sheikh
A Kashmiri in
Beijing
BEIJING, March 11 (Xinhuanet) -- In less over
three months, Beijing never looked the same; perhaps it was the excitement about
being in China for the first time. The "unusual feeling" kept me from exploring
Beijing and extensive travel across China and living in five-star hotels also
played its part. The sudden November cool in Beijing was another reason not to
venture out, especially after coming from warmer Honolulu, Hawaii. Full Story
