Happy Halloween, everybody. For those of you wondering, the some-years-strong Beijing tradition of dressing up and riding Subway Line 2 on the weekend before Halloween will come to a close this year. Authorities are worried about the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, so they don't want their public transportation clogged with beer-guzzling foreigners doing weird shit and attracting crowds.
If you find yourself needing transportation around Bajiao Amusement Park on Subway Line 1, Tiantong Yuan North Station on Line 5, or Longze Station on Line 13, perhaps it's best to take the bus or a cab. (This is the first and only time I'll recommend taking a taxi over the subway, considering this city's traffic). If you need a reason, check out the video above.
On Wednesday, Tunghai University student Cheng Chieh (Zheng Jie), 21, got on a subway from downtown Taipei and began indiscriminately stabbing people. Four were dead and 24 injured when the horrific attack ended, a portion of which was captured on video, above.
The Wall Street Journal's China blog made the cool map above, which shows Beijing's subway stations translated literally into English. They enlisted that indispensable tool, Baidu translate, to help with the task. Sadly, it's like a quarter-complete, but whatever, we all know WSJ employees aren't paid to do fun things.
"Unexplained disturbances" caused a glass door to shatter on Line 1 of the subway system in Shenyang, Liaoning province this morning, though the likely cause, per chatter on microblogs, is a fight that occurred inside the train.
We at Beijing Cream do not actively condone buffoonery, excessive alcohol intake, or buffoonery as the result of excessive alcohol intake, but understand we are surrounded by all of the above anyway -- and that it can be fun. And so it's with no small amount of ambivalence that we announce: this Friday, November 1, revelers in Halloween costumes will be gathering around 9 pm (+30 minutes or so) at Dongzhimen Subway Station and riding south on Line 2 for this year's official Halloween Subway Party. BYOB.
Youku user chenkai0104 uploaded this video of two men in a flat-out melee on Line 2 of the Shanghai Metro on Tuesday. These chaps show some real form! Check out the passengers laughing from the sideline, delighted to have front-row tickets for this bout. The two men pause for a rest at the 34-second mark as a referee steps in. And then, for all our benefit, the sparring resumes.
Oh Boris. He of this hilarious Sina Weibo account is in Beijing this week for trade talks, and isn't it just so like him to bring an entourage of reporters onto already-congested Subway Line 1 to do... what is the point of this video, exactly?
Just skip ahead to the final three seconds of it, beginning at 0:50. Trust me, just do that, and you'll be fine.
What you are looking at is Beijing Subway's Line 13 on the morning of Thursday, July 18, around 7:30. It's likely the Xierqi station -- a picture of which, tweeted out by Joe Xu, we linked to on Friday -- which is a transfer station and one of the cleaner, better-looking ones in the system. It has, like other stations in Beijing's vast underground transportation network, built-in artificial bottlenecks intended to relieve congestion in the form of gates and narrow staircases. On some occasions, however, those fail. For you see, in China, sometimes there are simply too many goddamn people.
A young woman got into a fight with subway security last Friday at Beijing Subway’s Changping Line. According to the video description, the scuffle began when she refused to put her bag through the X-ray machine, reportedly saying, “My bag costs twenty-fucking-thousand bucks, can you afford to touch it?” She then began cursing the poor security guards, with her male companion joining in.
Two spicy women came to blows on the Chengdu subway after reportedly bumping into one another, or something. Check out the woman in green who takes a seat next to one of the lassies at the 40-second mark, and immediately regret it. Her spot is vacated 15 seconds later.
A woman jumped in front of a train at Guomao Subway Station on Line 1 in Beijing yesterday and lived to tell about it. When she emerged from between carriages, pulling herself onto the platform from the tracks, she cried over and over, "Impossible..."
At 1:46 pm today in Beijing, a man fell onto the subway track at Chaoyangmen Station on Line 2 and was hit by an oncoming train -- though one that had activated its emergency brakes. Police and subway authorities pulled the man -- alive -- onto the platform; the extent of his injury is unknown.
Yes, we too are beginning to suffer from scat fatigue, but... meh. We sort of have a theme going, and it'd be a shame to neglect it.
This one comes via The Nanfang:
A picture of a woman pooping on a platform in a station along Shenzhen’s Luobao Line has already been forwarded by three respected, Shenzhen-based microblogs: Shenzhen’s Big and Small Issues, Shenzhen Metropolitan Round-up, and Baoan Life.
What is a public space? Who belongs? And what are the things that one can do in this place?
Poop?
In this video, a middle-aged woman, on an elevator in Shenzhen's Subway Line 3, suddenly feels the call of nature, so she drops trou and takes a dump.
Her companion, a middle-aged male, stands beside her and holds a button to keep the elevator doors closed. Neither clean up the mess, because, you know, who cleans up their own poop, right?
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