Beijing bustle

BEIJING—It was 6:15 when I awoke to the smell of steamed sweet potato and rice porridge on an overcast Beijing morning.

In the partial darkness, my middle-aged host had started cooking breakfast for me ahead of my planned 10 a.m. meeting at an orphanage on the south side of the city.

Her small, two-bedroom apartment, shared with a teenage daughter, sat in a complex in Changping District on the northern outskirts of Beijing. My destination that morning was about 35 miles away.

My host recommended I take public transportation, as the roads would be jammed on a Monday morning, and that I leave her house at 7 a.m. in order to make my meeting on time. I acquiesced, but thought to myself: There is no way the journey will take three hours.

Then again, this was Beijing.

New York City holds the dubious honor of hosting the longest commute time in the United States, at 39.2 minutes, according to a 2013 Bloomberg study. In Beijing, where the smoggy capital of China continues its explosive growth from 7.8 million residents in 1970 to 21 million in 2013, the average commute clocks in at 52 minutes.

With migrant workers moving into the cheaper outskirts of Beijing and commuting to work in the city, local roads are constantly congested and subways tightly packed. Chinese officials are planning to make Beijing the center of a supercity called “Jing-Jin-Ji,” a megalopolis that will have a population of 130 million and swallow Hebei province and the nearby city of Tianjin. Officials hope to integrate these economic hubs, spread jobs to less populated areas, and ease congestion—but with many of the railways and roads not yet constructed, Beijing workers still make commutes of up to three or four hours.

I experienced this myself last summer when I traveled by bus, subway, and illegal taxicab from one end of Beijing to the other during Monday rush hour. What follows is a glimpse into the maddening, hourslong journey thousands take each day to make a living.

7:00

Setting off on my commute, I left my friend’s third-story apartment and skipped over puddles on the road left by an overnight rainstorm. The storm had left the air refreshingly clean and breathable, an anomaly in Beijing, and I strolled past neon signs advertising dog food, past an overflowing trash bin, and onto a narrow dirt road shared by impatient drivers. At a main intersection, trucks and pedicabs took traffic lights as mere suggestions, and pedestrians moved in packs across the street to reach the bus stop.

7:15

At the bus stop, entrepreneurial car owners had double-parked their vehicles, yelling out the number of seats they had available to take commuters to the subway station. I walked past them into a throng of commuters congregated at the bus stop, craning their necks to spot the next bus. When bus 906 arrived, a surge of people pushed themselves aboard, although the vehicle was already packed. Thankfully, a second bus soon followed, and I bolted on, standing near the front by an elderly man with mud-stained cloth shoes.

We started our journey, but the traffic jam caused by tens of thousands of workers trying to get into the city stretched a typically 15-minute trip into 45 minutes. Even as I studiously examined bus stop signs and Apple Maps (Google Maps is banned in China, along with all Google products), I found that the bus hadn’t stopped at the closest subway stop, so I hurriedly got off at the next one, Tiantongyuan.

8:00

Walking quickly past fragrant meat pancake stalls, I headed toward the station entrance—only to find the entrance blocked off by a railing. “Hmm, that’s strange,” I thought, until I realized that on the other side of the barricade was a sea of people waiting in line just to enter the station. I walked down the entire length of the building before I could join the mass of humanity. A lone subway worker yelled at people to keep moving and not to push, while most commuters craned their heads over their smartphones. At all times in line, at least five people were pressed up against me. The Japanese fast-food chain Yoshinoya set up a table to sell beef bowls to those waiting in line, but most ignored the server in fear of losing their place.

When I finally made it inside, I proceeded to the routine subway security check, placing my purse through a scanner as an officer waved a wand over my body. Once I swiped my metro card at the turnstile, I realized I was out of money, and turned to wait in yet another line to recharge my card. Finally I got to the subway platform, waited for the next train, and jumped aboard.

8:30

The train was packed, and I squeezed in next to a girl munching on packets of pungent rice crackers. I was tired, frustrated, and now worried that I wouldn’t make my meeting.

To stay sane, I reminded myself I only had to make this journey once: For others this was an everyday occurrence—often on humid, sticky, smog-filled mornings. I began to understand how an entire population could tolerate the thinking behind China’s one-child policy. There are just too many people in the city, it seems, and in the moment what matters most is not the thousands of people around you, but the person with whom you’ve made an appointment. I realized there is a thin line between being pro-life and being pro-“lives that are convenient and not complicating your daily commute.” The theoretical pro-life position is much easier to handle than the practical, day-in, day-out pro-life position. And that is the need for the gospel: to see life in a completely topsy-turvy way and to do the impossible, such as loving the man whose armpit your head is lodged under for the duration of a subway ride.

9:20

By now I’d made it down the entire length of subway Line 5. I stepped off the train, following a complicated series of signs leading me to the YZ line. When the next train arrived, the doors opened and everyone raced to grab a seat, like an extremely aggressive game of musical chairs. I was finally able to sit down, and the train zipped farther south.

9:50

With 10 minutes remaining until my scheduled meeting, I arrived at the subway stop nearest my destination. Cabs are ubiquitous in downtown Beijing, but here in the outskirts only “black cabs” lined the curb outside the station. The drivers are ordinary citizens who have the benefit of owning a car and charge a flat fee (open to haggling) for each ride. I showed one middle-aged driver the address the orphanage had texted to me and he nodded. “How much?” I asked. He wrote down the amount on a notebook scrawled with street names and math equations: 70 RMB ($10.60).

It was a quiet ride, and I silently prayed that I’d arrive safely at my destination. At one point the driver kindly offered me the last cigarette in his pack. I declined. He shrugged, opened the window, and lit his cigarette.

10:15

Finally, we arrived at the orphanage. I asked the driver if he could write a receipt. He looked at me confusedly, shook his head, pointed to his ears, and waved his hands. I assumed he couldn’t understand my Chinese, so I tried again before realizing my driver was deaf. Once I was out of the car, I turned around to see a large truck honking at the black-cab driver to move out of the way. But the deaf driver remained stalling in front of the orphanage.

I arrived at the door and met the orphanage founder at 10:20 a.m. She was gracious about my tardiness. Altogether, it had taken me 3 hours and 20 minutes to travel across Beijing.

My return trip hit the evening rush hour and lasted nearly as long. When I finally returned to my friend’s home, I was weary from the 6.5 hours I had spent traveling and getting so close to so many different people.

That night, I crawled into bed with a new appreciation for the migrant workers living in Changping. And I had a deeper recognition of how countercultural Christ’s charge is to “love your neighbor as yourself” when push literally comes to shove.