Subway trains ideal place to study culture

It was a cold night as I made my way back home from a satellite branch of Tongren Hospital in Daxing district. Rongchang Dongjie station on the Yizhuang subway line was mostly deserted and an LED screen showed the next train was 10 minutes away, so I paced up and down the platform. Everything looked and smelled so new.

I stopped at a map of Beijing's sprawling subway and noticed how it resembles a mutated octopus, with Line 2 and Line 13 forming the body and the other lines the tentacles that reach out in every direction.

The train finally arrived and I took a seat directly across from a television screen. The seats were heated and after a few stops my behind began to sweat. It was really uncomfortable, but luckily a program on the television soon distracted my attention.