Nothing, perhaps, is farther from reality than the informational video that plays at the train station in Chengdu. In the video, a smiling family is greeted personally at the train station. The grinning security officer helps them put their bags through an x-ray machine. A female attendent gently pats the young child on the shoulder. A deaf woman receives instructions in sign language and two eldery people are assisted to open, clean seating. As the train pulls away, another beautiful attendent waves serenly.
In reality, the station probably moves somewhere around 75,000 people a day (my best guess). 75,000 grumpy, pushy members of a swarming, heaving society. People cover every inch of that station, every nook has somebody sleeping in it. I have never dared to look in the bathroom. Chinese train stations are not bastions of civilizations, even as the signs on the wall exert us to be.
I find that I have become less patient here recently, perhaps even hypocritical in some ways. As Chinese people swarm around me, surging onto buses to grab the few places to sit, or rush onto trains, I get angry. I want to smash them all for being so freaking agressive and pushy (literally). And as I mumble about them all being uncivilized serfs, I use my superior bulk to block them out of the way or push them back.
Is it a good thing? No. But that's how I feel sometimes.
