A new lunar year; time to go to work
To the editor:
Lantern Festival marks the end of the 15-day Spring Festival period. It is marked with lots of red lanterns hung over doorways and in hallways. Beneath the lantern is a riddle. Answer that riddle and get a coin is the tradition.
This time of the year, a flood of red can be seen through out the streets, parks and buildings. In my own building, the management team spent most of the past week hanging lanterns and puzzle notes from every overhead area they could reach. Kind of odd to see the security guards in their suits atop ladders with some tape and a pile of red paper.
Fifteen days into the new lunar year and it is rapidly becoming spring-like in the neighborhood around the apartment. The birds have moved in and in the early hours of the morning just as dawn is breaking, the sounds and sights of birds mapping out their territories, is entertaining.
For many of the past fifteen days, this city of millions has been empty. True, there are people around. But, in spaces where you would see hundreds of people, only 10 or so people make them appear empty. The sign that the world is leaving behind the time of vacation and getting back into routine is the sudden crowding of the subway system.
China has mastered much of subway design. Most major cities with over one million people have some sort of subway system. If you have only ridden on the rickety, cramped Boston or New York lines these are an improvement. Still crowded. Expect to be squished between 15 people with luggage, someone with a computer headed in for repairs, three rambunctious youngsters, five grandparents, and 10 young men on their way out for a night on the town, then close the door.
Many of the stations here in Guangzhou are designed for a far smaller population of people. Often the aisles between the train and the escalator are wide enough for one person and three are trying to use it at the same time. It gets crowded.
This is also the time when you see the cattle guards go up. Cattle guards work for people just as well as they do for oxen. Portable metal walls are wheeled into place before the peak hours. Using zip ties, a fence structure is set up and the flow of people going to the next train is controllable.
At one intersecting station, where two principal subway lines converge and disperse, the fencing is set up so that a 200-step journey between the two trains is turned into a concrete and steel version of the intestine.
Two hundred paces become close to five hundred. Movement at the peak can be only a few steps because of the volume of people wanting to get onto and off the rains.
For the most part people manage though you do see the security officers wearing hard helmets in case a fight breaks out. Rush hour is back. Classes have started up and now people can get back to the routine bits of life. Time to go to work.
Orpheus Allison
Guangzhou, China
orpheusallison@mac.com
