I was looking the the images and videos from blizzard-crippled China this morning and it made me remember my 2004 trip there. Especially the photos from Guangzhou, China’s major southern city… I remember that train station! It was packed with thousands of migrant workers then, so I can’t even imagine what it must look like now, after hundreds of thousands of people have been stranded. (See Aaron’s post from earlier today.)
This photo, by AFP, is from Guangzhou: a man pushing his friend inside an already packed train. While nothing quite that extreme happened while I was there, I will say that the Chinese people do have an amazing ability to squeeze a lot of people into packed trains and buses. Getting inside is half the fun. It is like graduating from University of Darwinism – only the strongest and those with the sharpest elbows get in. At first, you feel like you shouldn’t participate in this. After all, you are on vacation and have time…but then you realize you will never get in if you always allow everyone to get ahead of you. So you start pushing and showing with the rest of them. When in Guangzhou…