Trending in Beijing: Day Tickets for Subway, Good Samaritans, and Lama Temple Queues
The fun, the strange, and the what-on-earth-is-this: a wrap-up of top stories in Beijing as told by the trending hashtags, local press, and general power of the internet.
1) 24-hour tickets for Beijing subway
Rejoice! Beijing Subway has announced that day tickets will soon be introduced, allowing passengers to use public transportation for a 24-hour period, which will come in particularly useful for tourists. The proposed ticket will be in a form of a QR code and will be valid on both trains and buses.
With the introduction of the new system, Beijing will bid farewell to single-use plastic tickets, but it's not clear yet whether it will still be possible to buy single-use tickets in some other format, such as via your phone. Faced with the possibility of having to choose either a subway card or the new 24-hour QR code, some users were not too happy. "We still like to ride for our 2 kuai," grumbled one user, mourning the approaching change. However, posts by CCTV, Beijing Evening Newspaper, and others, all expressed a similar message of excitement about the new system, a sentiment shared by most netizens. "How can I not support the efficiency?" stated one reader.
2) A young woman takes a car-crash victim to the hospital
A heartwarming video posted on Weibo on Jan 14 has attracted the attention of netizens. The video shows a young woman helping an elderly man to the hospital after she witnessed a traffic accident between a car and a motorbike by the west Fourth Ring Road. The woman, who is a nurse, was said to first administer first-aid and then call the ambulance.
When interviewed, the woman admitted her father had passed away under similar circumstances, explaining that an ambulance did not reach him in time after he was involved in a traffic accident. She added that that was one of the reasons she chose to study to become a nurse. Netizens praised the lady in the comments and wishing her a "peaceful life." "Only when you lose a loved one you can understand the importance of saving others," said one netizen.
3) Lama Temple encounters long queues during Laba Festival
Last Sunday, Jan 13, marked the lunar holiday of Laba Festival. The festival is closely tied with 粥 (zhōu), particularly porridge made of rice, beans, dried nuts, and fruits. Laba Festival was originally a celebration of good harvest but with the arrival of Buddhism later morphed into a day to celebrate Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha's enlightenment.
As is tradition, Lama Temple invited people to attend their celebrations and indulge into a bowl of porridge. A monk from the temple said it took them a week to prepare around 100 buckets of porridge to be consumed during the festival.
"It takes about 40 seconds to eat the porridge, but about 3 minutes to take pictures," laughed one porridge-eater. Despite the giant queues and crowds that the temple encountered, everyone seemed to be in good spirits. One elderly man claimed to have been coming to the temple for his Laba porridge fix for the last 30 years. Netizens are shared their experiences under the hashtag #雍和宫腊八节施粥排长队# (long queues at Yonghegong).
4) Four Generation Challenge
Has your Facebook feed recently been flooded with "10 years ago" comparison pictures of your friends? Well, it seems if you want to make a similar statement in China, you'll need to recruit your family for it, specifically four generations of them.
Ahead of Chinese New Year, netizens have taken to Weibo to post videos of their four-generation-deep families under the hashtag #四世同堂# (four generations in the same hall). They begin with the youngest member of the family entering the room and calling for their elder, who in turn enters and calls to their elder, and so on until all four are together. One of the most popular videos stars an incredibly charming grandma who is later told "you are hot on the internet now!" only to reply "Hot? What's hot? What are you saying?"
Speaking of grandmas, remember that girl who sent her grammy fresh fruit and vegetables every day? She was a hero.
More by this author here.
Email: tautviledaugelaite@thebeijinger.com
Images: Weibo, China Daily
