Thursday, June 25, 2015

Countdown to 回国: 6 days

Took my last out of town trip today, a return visit to nearby Nanjing (mostly the Nanjing Museum). I was going to use the occasion to reflect on the wonders of high speed rail - 300 km in an hour and a bit - but it's only part of the rapid building out of transportation infrastructure. Here
are the Nanjing Metro vending machine maps from October and today (date upper right). The number of lines and stops open (or at least connected to the network) has increased dramatically! Only the planned light purple line has yet to. (The map design has changed slightly, too.) Just eight months! What can I say, besides sobbing about the non-existence of high speed rail in the US or the saga of the "Second Avenue Subway"? Perhaps ten months is long enough to start to get a sense of people's momentum/whiplash at China's staggering high-speed change.