Be more careful when taking on the train, my China

After dinner in summer the subway stations in Shanghai, like Dong Chang Lu, fill up with families and friends who come here to sit and chat, most of them wearing pyjamas. These are the real dandy jarmies, with red and blue stripes; the dads look like walking rock candy sticks. Many grandfathers prefer old green shorts, green sneakers and white vests, perhaps a relic of the Maoist green uniform. They stare at me, the lawai, the foreigner, as if I am the source of amusement, not them. Very few foreigners pass through this metro.

Freshly washed, sons and fathers sit and play card games while mothers supervise homework or cluck with friends. The summers are a hot, wet blanket; using air conditioners is expensive, beyond the average citizen’s means. So squat on the marbled steps and floors of the cool subways with little to do except watch the human traffic mill through the turnstiles. Sometimes families even bring down their bedding and scrubbed Moms and Dads will be sitting comfortably on a blanket and pillows with their scrubbed child sitting between them or playing on the blanket in front of them. Dad reads the paper and Mom knits or sews.

Slapping my subway card on the turnstile scanner to enter the metro, I am reminded of my childhood when a whole pack of us, two or three families and friends, would pile into two cars (cheaper than three) and go to the drive-in. “Agh please daddy won’t you take us to the drive-in, all six seven of us eight nine ten…” The pyjama-clad, soap-smelling children would tumble around with water pistols in front of the headlights of the cars, while the adults opened tins of beer and padkos. Perhaps it was a foreshadowing that one of those much-loved movies was Bruce Lee’s Game of Death. They still love him in China. “You know, he could catch a fly with two chopsticks,” some of my Chinese friends will say. “Wow, you sure it wasn’t with one? Don’t believe everything you read,” I would mutter back.

“Agh please daddy”… Memories of being far out in the bush at night under a thaw of stars and dad under his hat strumming the drive-in tune and others like it on his guitar while mom and the rest of the gang clapped and chorused. The subway train hurtles to my next destination. I look at one of the badly translated signs warning against petty crime that can take place on the trains: Be more careful when taking on the train. Oh sure. Like I’m Superman.