We love that term, wish we would’ve thought of it ourselves. Zombie commuters. Commuters because they’re trying to get somewhere. Zombies because you’d have to be brain-dead to drive into traffic in Beijing. As SCMP puts it: “It’s like a scene out of American television show The Walking Dead, said a microblogger on Sina Weibo, after photos of apocalyptic, zombie-infested Beijing began spreading online on Monday morning.”
Worse or better than this? It doesn’t matter. We now have a term, forevermore, for these soul-crushing gridlocks in which people decide, en masse, to abandon their vehicles and walk.
Unfortunately, we all have to become zombies when confronting with road conditions, the subway or the bus in Beijing, lest we become like the crazy guy on the plane who yelled, “My name is Daniel Morgan Perry, born March 12, 1978.” etc etc
There are certain times of day when the only ways to get anywhere in Beijing are by bike or on foot. This is one of them,