The Guardian's Tania Branigan Makes Beijing's 88 Km Commute

UK newspaper The Guardian's longtime China correspondent Tania Branigan has written what might be the most comprehensive article ever about the Beijing Subway.

In "Riding Beijing's Subway End to End: 88 KM of Queues and Crushes on a 20p Ticket," Branigan sketches Beijing's underground in the waning days of the RMB 2 ticket.

"In the weekday morning rush, accountants, shop assistants and researchers stare wearily at phones and jostle for space. There are fidgeting children with weary parents, labourers on their first ever subway ride, and several large eels, curled into an empty oil bottle en route to their carrier’s dinner table. It is late summer and the carriages are crammed, but air conditioning keeps it cool, blowing wafts of recently applied deodorant across the crowd," she writes.

"Each day 9.75 million passengers ride the lines across Beijing: nearly three times as many as take the London Tube and twice as many as use the New York system. The subway’s phenomenal expansion reflects that of the city it serves. Over the last decade or so, Beijing has grown by roughly half a million inhabitants each year – the equivalent of adding the entire populations of Sheffield or Tucson annually. The city is already home to 21 million; by 2020, a report warned last year, it is likely to have added another four million, on a conservative estimate," Branigan says.

Read it now by clicking here. Even better, go take a subway ride and read it on the train.

Photo: Tania Branigan/The Guardian