As the notes on the video suggest, this is in Beijing, not Shanghai. (For those wondering...yes, I think I know what stop it is, despite having only spent about 8 days in Beijing in my life). And because Beijing's metro system is far less comprehensive than Shanghai's is, I assume that rush hour is even more crowded there than it is here. But we have this kind of chaos here too. I've missed a stop before because of this madness. It starts with the Chinese refusal to wait for people to get off the train before they push their way on. This happens regardless of how crowded a train is -- I've had people push past me on relatively empty trains as I try to disembark. (Incidentally, this behavior isn't relegated to the metro. It happens on elevators too. People swarm the elevators in my office building in droves, making it very annoying to get on and off). Combine impatience with an immense critical mass, and you're bound to have situations like what befalls the poor girl in the grey coat. It's prettys surprising to me that more people don't get hurt or, even worse, pushed inadvertently into the tracks amidst the jockeying that invariably takes place before the train arrives.
In other news, my darts team, Raging Bullseye**, had its first real match on Tuesday. We tied (the scoring system is complicated, and involves various matches, both team and individual), and I am not exaggerating when I say that I was the star of the match. I am also not exaggerating when I say that I am terrible at darts, a fact I don't lose too much sleep over because it's something I've done maybe twice in my life before joining this team. Still, I somehow managed to win all three matches I played, hitting the final dart in all three. See, the way darts works is this: you chuck the darts at the board, and score points according to the sum of your three darts. You get triple points for hitting the inner ring, double points for hitting the outer ring. The catch is, you can only win on a double (so, for example, if you have 9 points left to win, you need to hit a 1, say, and then a double-4. You can't just hit a single-9). My team consists primarily of British guys who are very good at darts in general, but very bad at hitting doubles. I am very bad at darts in general, but somehow have a knack for hitting the doubles. This probably has something to do with the fact that the doubles are farthest away from the center of the board.... In any event, it was an evening of projectile glory for lil ol' me.
**Our team captain chose this name after taking suggestions for clever darts team names. I think it's pretty weak, to be honest. I much prefer my suggestion: Projectile Dysfunction.
This is the first link when you google "funny dart team names". Needless to say, I've been more impressed with your creativity Jash.
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