The first few weeks here I was adamantly against eating western food. It didn't take long for me to realize that what the school is feeding us isn't real Chinese food, seeking out reasonably priced Chinese food is difficult and ordering it generally requires people who speak Mandarin. There are some Chinese fast food places that are really good and in my opinion much better quality than McDonalds. They're 24 hours, easy to order at (just point at the picture) and will fill you up for 10 Yuan. Unfortunately they don't seem to exist in Tianjin. Moreover, beyond the logistics I've had some experiences with REAL Chinese food and even the tame dishes can be pretty intense. Very meat intensive and the cuts of meat are kind of strange. With chicken every piece in the dish will have some bone in it. The beef will have tendon in most pieces. And if you accidentally eat one of the chili peppers they throw in there ever liberally you'll be ordering three or so bottles of shuǐ immediately. The jiǎozi (dumplings) are seriously good and ridiculously cheap, but you don't want to get them for every meal. Consequently my rules have been relaxed and though I make sure to get at least one legit Chinese meal in per day (usually jiǎozi) we also end up at places that serve western food occasionally now.

McDonalds is easy and with my vegetarianism on hold for the time being a Big Mac is a welcome reminder of home and of the American cultural hegemony I take pride in. McDonalds is a different situation here though. It generally looks the same. Other people tell me the beef is better quality, but from my last experience with a Big Mac it tastes pretty much the same as well. However, the people working at McDonalds are different, the people eating at McDonalds are different and I get the distinct impression that it is viewed as a different type of establishment as well. In terms of decor one distinction is that they'll usually have at least one wall with a very large picture of something western on it. The second closest McDonald's to campus has a picture of four white people riding down the beach in a '57 Chevy, toothy grins from ear to ear, hands thrust into high above them into the freeing wind. At the one closest to campus there's a picture of a twenty something white woman eating a bright red tomato next to the word "health". Micky D's here advertise the good life, and the American good life at that.

McDonalds also symbolize China's new found love affair with a certain western economic system, the name of which may or may not cause my blog to hit the firewall. If you go up the back escalator at Century Mart, a Chinese WalMart type store, you are tempted by rows of Nabisco treats. Get to the top floor and women are instantly made to feel inferior by the same oversized pictures of supermodels in lingerie you would see in a US WalMart. Luckily if you buy the lingerie you won't be average anymore. Whew! There's a constant theme at McDonalds which the Chinese would probably never notice, but a savvy American consumer used to the concept of subliminal advertising might pick out: "up". One McDonalds has a TV monitor playing loops of their TV ads. The "up" theme was a constant, but it was particularly blatant in one commercial. An attractive looking woman is sitting at the table looking tired. A man in a sharp suit notices, goes over to the counter, takes out 5 yuan then comes over and taps her on the shoulder and gives her a piping hot cup of coffee. She smiles, he smiles back and then he gets in the elevator of a glistening skyscraper and shoots straight to the top. Even in the “health” picture, the woman's eyes are looking toward the ceiling. McDonalds here are a symbol of wealthy western countries. Eat there and you will be a part of the western way of life, of rising to the top just like China is doing (or so the standard line hgoes).

I have just ingested two giant balls of god knows what (that's what she said), hopefully I survive.

This afternoon a friend of mine on the trip gave me a hand with confusing the ever-loving hell out of the Chinese lady at the front desk so as to cover up my non-sanctioned trip to Beijing. In the process of he informed he that he was going to visit some Mosque. I was already pretty bushed from getting measured for my new tailored suit (pics on that to come), but what are you gonna do? So we went to the mosque. It was pretty cool, but definitely not historic. However, in the process of trying to get to the top of the minarette (didn't happen) a 20 something Chinese girl saw us. At first we thought maybe the tacit approval of some random dude had not been solid enough and we were about to be told to leave. Instead it was a very common interaction here. "Grace" was an English student and just wanted to practice with foreigners. After talking about the Mosque some, and my lack of knowledge of the ethnic composition of China leaving me unable to talk to her in depth about the life of minorities in the Han dominated culture she mentioned that she worked for a medical journal. Everyone thought she said "magical journal" at first, but after a few minutes I was able to get it through inference. So I asked if she had any medical training. She said she did and that her mother was a doctor. A quick look at the woman led one pretty quickly to assume that she practiced traditional Chinese medicine and not the western variety. One of my big things has been to find some sort of Chinese sleeping medication while here, but I've been scared to walk into a pharmacy and use hand signals and my translator that works only 90 percent of the time. This seemed like the perfect opportunity.

It turns out Western doctor visits and traditional Chinese doctor visits start out the same way: "stick out your tongue". I did and before I knew it an old Chinese lady was inspecting my tongue. She asked if I had any aches in a particular part of my spine, I responded once in a while. Then she said I must have heart problems too, which I do (and which Western medicine has been unable to pin down). Fast forward a few minutes and we're in a what appeared to be a Chinese pharmacy. It looked just like an American pharmacy and there advertisements for standard fare medications like Tylenol or western allergy medications. She handed a piece of paper to the pharmacist just like a prescription and they brought back two boxes of stuff packaged in the familiar plastic with thin metallic backing. When one thinks of traditional medicine they think of someone sitting in a backroom stirring a large cauldron, occasionally throwing in a frog's eye or two. That's not the deal. Traditional Chinese medicine is big enough business for medications to be marketed and packaged in slick little boxes which clearly had the touch of a highly paid graphic designer. Long story short, it came in a box and a lady looked at my tongue before giving it to me... so I ate it. It was pretty disgusting. But I only have to take it five more times and then I should be cured.

Pictures of the mosque. I'll post some of the medication tomorrow. My roommate (another blog on how lame that is to come) is sleeping and I don't want to wake the guy up.

Also, it turns out that Mosques in Tianjin, China are similar to Synagogues in West Palm Beach, Florida. The girl told us she didn't know much about the history of the particular building because her congregation had just merged into the congregation of this mosque. Temple politics! Maybe this is the commonality on which Judiasm and Islam can shake hands and make up. We did eventually ascertain that the building isn't particularly historic.

Large freshly built glass building next to the mosque... how surprising!

The place in Beijing where my new digs are getting made! I took a picture in case I forget where it was. Phone number + picture + receipt (on which is hopefully the address)... I think it will work out.

I am officially sick of China at the moment. In all likelihood it's the circumstances. I've never had to sleep in the same room as another dude for an extended period of time. I've lived out of my car, seedy motel rooms and people's couches for this long and it is faaaar more preferable IMO. If my car was in China, I would be sleeping in the backseat every other night... if not EVERY night. And of course they stick me with the messiest, least ambitious one of the bunch. People keep giving me "didn't you ever live in a dorm?" Actually, no. And frankly it sounds terrible. One night I got a hotel room so as to enjoy a little solitude and a decent shower. People thought I was insane. I just think they're scrubs.

Further, I've been sick of living in a college town for quite a while now, and this situation is basically Tallahassee in China. "Goin to Baba's tonight bra?". Nah bra. Except now I'm forced to be around these people constantly. Then I don't have the tools I usually rely on to excel in school. Never mind access to a printer... I don't even have a hi-liter. Why they haven't given us access to the library is beyond me. Ridiculous China garbage. Something lost in translation or someone sticking to the script too much or someone thinking they were looking out for someone's best interest and refusing to listen to their point of view. And the past few days have made all too clear that what the drunken Chinese girl said in Nanjing, that Tianjin is a "broken city" is true. My friend and I have come to the conclusion that this is essentially the Detroit of China. Nobody chooses to go to Tianjin. We took a day trip to Beijing and it was a lot of fun. We didn't even really do anything, but it was just a nice place. It was impossible to appreciate it before due to the fact that I wasn't acclimated, but after a few weeks here and going with a second person, it's a pretty nice city.

Another issue is that my friend has some family here who he went to visit. Apparently his Uncle, an American of Chinese decent who was born here, spent years here and lives in the most modern of Chinese cities has the same issues as we do. Everything is a hassle and the Chinese never do anything quite right. He also views it as unhealthy. Willy said he's never seen his Uncle so bitter in general. It wasn't my imagination.

My plan was to go to some different provinces and the like after this, but truth be told, I'm not even sure I want to. The only way to do it would be to convince a Chinese student to make the trip with me to be a translator and someone who could act as a guide. Unfortunately that still wouldn't be the same. Shanghai is to be experienced with other Americans. It will suck having left China without experiencing much of what I've been told to experience, but is it really rational to make myself miserable? I'm perfectly capable of doing that at home. The second leg of the trip will be an experience as well and I've already gotten a taste for China.

Everyone has their list of what they're doing when they get back home. Mine is to become exceedingly healthy. Back to vegetarianism, except I'm striving for organic this time around. As much as I love Publix, it's Whole Foods time. At least a 15 mile ride per day and go to the beach as often as possible. But first... Russo's.

When traveling one has, what I would term, “assets”. An asset is something that can help to get you out of a jam. For example: gas in your tank, a flashlight, maybe a blanket in your backseat. Another very important asset is battery life. Which is why writing this at the moment is so unwise. The battery on my computer is at 24% and claims another hour and a half. But it seemed important to actually write the blog about the Chinese slow train ON the Chinese slow train. So hopefully between myself and three sidekicks we'll be able to figure our way out of any jams sans computer.

The Chinese slow train has a distinct greyhound vibe. In the hard sleeper section each berth has six bunks, three on each wall. There are no doors to the berths, and on this train there are no walls between the berth and the aisle. There are maybe ten or fifteen berths per car. There's a lot of cars. The soft sleepers (ballin' class) are four to a berth, the berths have doors and it's a little classier inside of them from what I can tell. The toilet is Chinese squat style and empties directly onto the rails beneath. It stops a lot and sometimes you'll be sitting at a stop for thirty minutes or better. Either refueling or likely people not caring. Once you're going the ride is actually surprisingly smooth. Everyone on the train brings a bunch of food with them and the train smells strongly of traditional Chinese foods and stale cigarette smoke (there are smoking sections but nobody pays attention). The train is old and commie looking. There's a restaurant car but you don't have a choice of food, what they give you is pretty low quality and the drinks are warm. Once in a while a bullet train blazes past you going the other direction and you're like “damn, why can't I be on that train?”

Onto the interesting part. I haven't yet figured out who is lower, middle and upper class in China so this is what's getting me. The Greyhound is for the lowest segment of American society. People who are not only incredibly broke, but in some cases incredibly stupid too. A long distance bus fare is much more expensive than a plane ticket. But this might be different. There are some seriously broke people in China. Then there's the factory workers who I have been in the vicinity of but haven't been able to interact with. That's in the city. There are peasants as well, who I haven't even been able to see yet. The lion's share of the people on this train are in a higher tax bracket than any of them. But there are a good bit of dudes with their bellies hanging out, and at the moment I'm surrounded by people brazenly farting in a very close quarters situation. There were also some pretty serious jerks in the train station who had some sort of burlap sack situation in lieu of luggage.

There's a few different ways to look at this. It's possible that the people surrounding me are middle class, but the standards for middle class status are lower here. It's also possible that these people worked for quite a while to save up enough money for this trip. A better way to look at it is what do these people do for a living. I'm thinking hotel workers, McDonalds, maybe the low level managers are in the soft sleepers. Another thing to factor in is the concept of mobility. America is mobile in every sense of the term. Geographically as well as socially. Americans travel around America and move around America constantly. It's my understanding that the same is not true elsewhere. If trips from Nanjing to Tianjin are exceedingly rare, that means the people on this train likely have less money than if they were common.

What I'm really interested in though is that it seems possible that a Chinese slow train is a very egalitarian undertaking. The girl on the top bunk to my left is reasonably well dressed and polite. The dude two bunks beneath her gets up every so often to make weird sounds and scratches himself quite a bit. Well heeled people and people trying to act well heeled don't scratch themselves and fart when surrounded by five other people. If I go out to Kunming and Dali it will probably involve a bus. By the looks of this that should be reaaally interesting. Sadly, I end this entry no closer to grasping the nature of the Chinese slow train than when I began it. However, what I can say most authoritatively is that it is exactly like the Greyhound in that it's something I needed to experience, am glad I experienced, do not want to experience again yet get the distinct impression I will experience way more times that I care to.

Also, it's probably important to note that “slow train” is something I'm calling it solely because I remember hearing the term in either a Skynard or Allman Brothers song. Nobody else calls it that.

Our ride.

Nanjing has changed my impression of China in a big way. It feels like a place I could live. This could possibly be context. There was just four of us versus the eighty zillion brosefs I have to deal with on a daily basis. Austin, Brandon and John speak enough Mandarin to get by and we rarely went our separate ways. That made things a little easier. But I like to think there's more to it than that. The city has a certain charm. It's tiny by China standards (only like 8 million people). The purple mountain attraction made me feel like it's possible to get to some nature, maybe even find a skosh of solitude in (more likely around) Nanjing. Today was hot as hell but the skies were crystal clear, perfect for checking out the buildings. Nanjing, like all of China's cities, doesn't have a single cluster of skyscrapers, rather a few different ones. Any of those skylines were very elegant. The architecture is innovative for sure, but taken down a notch from Beijing. That place is just engineers trying to outdo each other. The subway is nicer than Tianjin, but not as nice as Beijing. Of course, to say a subway isn't as nice as Beijing is akin to saying someone isn't as proficient a swimmer as Michael Phelps. We ran into a lot of Meiggouren (Americans) which is always welcome because you get kind of sick of being surrounded by foreign people, sporting foreign customs and speaking a very foreign language. Sometimes when I'm zoning out I'll look up expecting to see white, black or latino people and am mildly surprised to find myself in a sea of asians, half of them with their bellies showing (it's a big thing with the men here to roll up your shirt and let your stomach hang out). It's similar to the feeling five or six years ago when I would wake up expecting to be in my room and find myself in a seedy motel in Arkansas or something.

Back to Nanjing. The bar/club scene was sick. Any place we walked into was straight up ridiculous. This one place apparently went back to the 70s and picked up some glowing floors. Another one had about 100 chandeliers hanging from the roof. Definitely my favorite of any bar street we've been to so far. Unfortunately it turns out that talking to Chinese girls in bars is generally futile. Traditionally they're very shy and if you can get a conversation going or dance with one the odds are she's a hooker. And despite this proclivity for literal whore-dom, regular Chinese women don't dress like whores when they go out. Also, the girls covered in glitter and wearing next to nothing who are paid to dance on bartops in south Florida is a no go here.

Another plus is that there are very few Toyotas are in Nanjing. Tianjin is littered with them. The cabs are either Toyota Corollas or a Chinese Corolla knock off. That whole mini-holocaust the Japanese pulled in Nanjing might have something to do with it. There are a lot of French cars, which I quite unfortunately have found that I really like. A couple of the cabs we took were Citroens Elysees. They have B pillars the size of Xi'an's city wall and consequently are very roomy. The ride is extremely smooth. We're talking Jaguar smooth. Any time we hailed a taxi I did my best to make sure it was of the Frog variety.

All in all it was a fruitful trip. We managed to pack a ton of tourist stuff into each day, and all of it was pretty cool. Found a Deli, ate some Turkish food and a bunch of street food. Chatted with an extremely plastered Chinese girl who studied English in Hong Kong and called Tianjin “broken” (Beijing was “amazing”, Shanghai was “perfect”). Bought some sweet gifts, and did well enough with the haggling to where the lady hit me with the poster. Unfortunately I have another 12 hours on this train listening to snoring/farting, which will entail another, more focused blog.

Sweet building in what seemed to be downtown Nanjing.

Sweet rock island in the middle of giant koi pond at the Taiping rebellion museum.

Part of Nanjing's main city gate. It's really four gates in one building. You're looking at the second to last one from the third one. Unfortunately it didn't keep the nips out.

Any time I've gone on a trip there has always been a very liberal smathering of nature-ish type outings. Camping, leisurely drives through state parks, hiking, etc. Probably me biggest issue with China so far has been that it's impossible to do that. We're herded around on this tour and nature retreats are simply not a part of the equation. Inside the cities there are a surprising amount of parks, which are actually very nice, but they are not in a natural state. Moreover they are absolutely slammed with people (as is any attraction in China). Currently the group is in Shanghai, but four of us have broken off from the group and are in Nanjing. Yesterday we went to something called Purple Mountain. It was overrun with people, but it was possible to get away from them a little bit and much of it is untouched. We took a cable car ride to the top and then wandered around. Honestly, this is what I've been missing. Chinese cities are littered with trash, choked with smog and, in my situation at least, there is no refuge. If it was possible to get away for a little bit and enjoy some solitude in green surroundings living here for a period would be feasible. Apparently it exists. In a country this big it only makes sense that everything has to be available, it's just a matter of finding it. So now one of my tasks is to find out about camping in China.

The view from the Sun Yat-Sen mausoleum. This is essentially my first glimpse of peaceful greenery since arriving in China.

The cable car ride up. It looks much lusher than it was in actuality, but it was still quite picturesque.

The Rockports got left behind for this outing.

Nothing to do with nature, but this was in between the nature pics and I had to include it. Chinese love to wear shirts with English phrases. But most Chinese do not speak English. So sometimes it's jibberish. And sometimes it's funny jibberish. You probably can't make it out, but the shirt on this girl dancing at the club says "My Under World", "Masturbating Remixers".

Also in regard to bars/clubs, strangely enough Nanjing nightlife is by far the best I've run into so far. Way better than Beijing

And they loooove Lady Gaga. She's everywhere. Like, even grocery stores.

This is either an exciting or terrifying point in one's life depending on your viewpoint. I've decided I'm not huge on China. My plan A required living here to learn Mandarin, my plan B was more school. Unfortunately my trip to DC made it apparent that before going on to more school I'll need to spend time abroad learning a langauge. So now I'm left back at square one. After coming to terms with this life quickly went from exhilarating to fairly terrifying... for a minute. Maybe a hot minute. At the moment I'm sitting in the middle bunk bed on the left wall of a sleeper cabin in a Chinese slow train surrounded be Chinese people eating strange foods. I ask myself, what is it I want to do with my life? Where do I want to go? Who do I want to be? All there is to go off of is a few ethical requisites and an image in my mind. A friend of mine summed up my goals quite succinctly not too long ago: “Nylon wants to be James Bond”. A fairly uncanny assessment.

Pop culture today is all about anti-heros. Tony Soprano, Don Draper, they're all just people. Go back a few decades though and your male lead was superhuman. For some it was over the top. James Bond though is nuanced enough to wherein he's a person, just the epitome of one. The quintessential man, he can assess and ameliorate any situation. James Bond is worldly, cultured, he's seen and done more cool things than you can shake a stick at. Nobody can seize the day like 007. Most importantly though, James Bond does not put ballin' before what's right. His actions are almost wholly dictated by what is best “for Queen and country”. So why not?

I hold no delusions of being a CIA operative, that's more than a bit silly. It's not silly, however, to try and find a field of work that encompasses both Bond's particular nature of ballin' and his brand of nationalistic altruism. Another component of my Bond analogy is that, while I've never read Ian Fleming's books, it seems that Bond didn't set out to become 007. You can tell that he worked hard, did the right thing and got a little lucky. So maybe I shouldn't set out to become something in particular, maybe it would wiser to set a general trajectory, focus on putting one foot in front of the other and let fate decide where my cards will fall. Exhilarating.

Here's a few pictures of the Chinese slow train.

No nuclear weapons allowed aboard the train

Hallway on the train. The peon section. Six bunks per berth.

14 hours later we arrive Nanjing from Tianjin. That's out train on the left. It's basically the Chinese greyhound. Someone else booked these tickets and I feeling like there was a CRH (bullet) train that does the journey and we didn't spring for it. I'm trying not to think about it though. Try and play Where's Waldo with the FSU student in the picture.

The economist is my Oprah, I pretty much think whatever it tells me. This is one of my standard jokes. It's not entirely true these days, but to some extent. A terrible thing, yes, but nowhere near as bad as doing the same thing with CNN or Fox. The Economist is run and written by seriously smart people and generally it's pretty sober analysis. They do interject opinions, but only after alluding to the fact that what you're about to read is opinion. More importantly though, the magazine (or as they call themselves, newspaper) is connected to some pretty serious stuff like the Economist Intelligence Unit. A subscription to the latter costs thousands per year. The publication is so highly respected that a somewhat whimsical concept they devised has turned into a well established and ubiquitous means for judging how fairly valued a currency is.

It's called the Bic Mac index. The idea is to find a value added good that encompasses multiple materials and services. You look at the price of that good in one place and juxtapose it with the good's price in another. If after adjusting the local currencies for the ostensible exchange rate the price of the good is cheaper in state A than it is in State B, then in theory the currency of State A is undervalued. The problem is finding a such a good that exists all over the world. What could possibly exist in almost any country one might travel to?

A: McDonalds.

A friend of mine asked me how much a Big Mac costs here, and it dawned on me that I had completely forgotten to check. That's the sort of thing that I get a kick out of and really should have been my first stop in Beijing. How it escaped me I have no idea.

So a Big Mac in Tianjin costs 13 Yuan, which in US dollars is roughly $1.90. It's probably cheaper in less bustling cities.

IMO, there are a couple problems with the Big Mac index though. One is that McDonalds are apparently branded as a different sort of experience in different places. I've been told that in France a Big Mac actually looks like the picture. Another is that I've noticed on various menus that prices are certified by the "Tianjin Pricing Bureau" (or something like that). It's more than plausible that there is a government mandated floor on the price of a Big Mac for the purpose of making the value of making the value of the currency seem more fair. 13 Yaun does seem a little high when compared with other Chinese food. You can get pretty full here with good food for about 7 Yuan if you know where to go. We eat a lot of "stick food" which is just what it sounds like: a bunch of stuff on a skewer grilled and slathered in delicious sauces and spices. Those are generally 1 yuan a piece and three will more than do the trick. If you want to get fancy you might pay up to 5 yuan for one with so much stuff on it you won't be able to finish it. A bottle of water is 1.5 - 3 yuan. Cigarettes are practically subsidized. That's 60 cents.

One interesting thing about China is the way that old and new are blended together. It isn't uncommon to have something that's 500, 700, 1500 years old right in the middle of a bustling city. In fact, it's extremely common. And things are pretty much either brand new or exceedingly old, rarely in between. You don't see much from say the 1920s or the Mao years.

This is a view from the Wild Goose pagoda in Xi'an. The traditional buildings you see down there are recreations, but the tower itself is original and built in the 600s. Each side of the pagoda has a view of city, it's not on the outskirts. The skyscrapers in the background (or most of them) have all been built within the past 15 or 20 years. The Chinese tend to knock down buildings when they get older than that. There's a demolition site in Tianjin and from the looks of the rubble the building has to be from the 90s. Unfortunately these are low resolution pictures, but you can see one construction crane in the bottom left corner... I counted 15 when we were there today.

This is shot from the Temple of Great Compassion in Tianjin. It dates back to the 1600s and is also surrounded by shiny new glass buildings. In the Xi'an pic it had rained the day before which equals blue skies, in this the view is obscured by the ever ubiquitous smog.

This is a piece of furniture from the (Song?) dynasty. It's in a room full of furniture valued at roughly $2 million US. The room is in a restaurant and entrees are about $15 US. They act like it ain't no thang. Take this one with a grain of salt though. The Chinese love to lie about little things. We were told a certain infamous square is 100 acres which is total BS.

On the city wall in Xi'an. A massive embattlement that once ringed the capital of China proper until the eastern Zhou dynasty moved it due to instability, the wall now rings the city center. If I were to pan to the left... you guessed it, glistening new skyscrapers and steel skeletons which will soon become glistening new skyscrapers.

This is the smog choked view (the skyline continues much further) from...

...this. The south gate of the Forbidden City which is actually part of a certain square. The centuries old Forbidden City is at the heart of Beijing. It should be noted though that the arrow gate (the one pictured) has been rebuilt multiple times, and is in no way original.

One sad fact of life related, or possibly due to this interesting juxtaposition is that people don't seem to care as much about these historical sites. At another temple we were at, upon looking over the side there was a sizable pile of trash carelessly thrown by tourists (most of the tourists at these places are actually Chinese).

Since facebook is illegal here this is the only way I can share pictures. When I get the ability to leap the great firewall I'll put all 500 up on facebook, but until then I'll just share a few. Unfortunately youtube is illegal too and weebly utilizes youtube for videos.

Train station in Beijing. The Tianjin-Beijing intercity rail gets up to 338kmh (roughly 200mph) and leaves every 15 minutes. It's slick

The Chinese think the concept of cheese on French fries is hilarious. They literally laugh. So whenever I end up at a western establishment I order it. This is what I got the last time

The buildings here are crazy and because there's a glut of unskilled labor they apparently go up at breakneck speed. I didn't keep track of the construction sites on my cab ride today, but it was definitely in the double digits.

Tianjin smog. Beijing is worse. For some reason it doesn't show up in most pictures.

These shoes have been everywhere.

Jingshan park in Beijing. Pretty sure I left the game up there. Seriously though, we're the biggest losers here. Everyone plays the game and it is lost at least every 30 minutes.

Beijing subway, totally not rush hour. Check out Yao Ming over there.

The worst case of Chinglish I've seen here thus far.