Metro Line #11 from Jiading 嘉定 to Shanghai opened for a while. Now, one month to Shanghai Expo 2010, the extension of the line opened.

To give you some sense about where the extension is, look at the current full map (I attached larger picture at the end of this blog to give you more detailed view (meanwhile not blocking the screen in case you have smaller screen or read it in other software than a browser).

Map credit: Google Maps

The Metro Line #11 is the purple line from the top-left corner to the middle of the city. Thanks to Google Maps. They provide a “transit” option under More… button to allow you see the current Metro Lines.

The new extension is the left side of the Y shaped line. In the map, the two lines are not connected (which is inaccurate). Now the Y shaped Metro Line #11 is a full Y now. The south extension is under construction now.

Below is the full screen bigger map of all the Shanghai metro lines that is current running.

Stay Tuned for More News

The month before May 1, the opening date for Shanghai Expo, is determined to be a Shanghai-news intensive month. Stay tuned of many future events. Here are some (including those just happened).

• Hongqiao Airport T2 Opens
• Metro Line #2 extends to Hongqiao Airport
• Metro Line #2 will extend to Pudong Airport
• Metro Line #10 will open
• The new Bund opens to public.
• The new Bund Tunnels opens to traffic
• 42 Expo bus lines will start to operate
• New Expo taxi started to serve passengers

I will report here live from Shanghai about the Expo and its impact to Shanghai.

The big news today is the crash of two metro carts at Shanghai Railway Station of Metro Line #1. The accident around 7:00 AM stopped that segment of Metro Line #1. Massive people were impacted. My observation:

• one of my colleague got to work at 11:40 – after trying very hard to find a way to get here.
• The metro has problem and all the ground transportation becomes a mess.
• There is no way for buses and taxi to take the volume of metro.
• Shanghai is vulnerable in its transportation system, like many other big cities. If anything happens with one metro line, that will has city wide huge influence.

Had a cup of coffee with @David Feng about Civitology and Shanghaiology. David did wonderful job in taking pictures and record every metro station in Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin.

What I learn from David during our conversation is the western popular idea of “dummy proof”. “There are many be mistakes of giving too much information, and there are mistakes of giving too little information. If we can choose, we the first mistake” David explained, and he also talked about a sample equation: “Instead of giving 3+7 to your user, give 10”.

Pursue of preciousness is reflected in the whole website of civitology, and I admire the work he and his local team did.

Civitology and Shanghaiology

After Starbucks in a Day in Shanghai, and Starbucks in a Day in Beijing, I am thinking and talking about Shanghai Metro in a Day for a long time. The idea first emerges when the Metro Line #6 opened (my visit), but I was not able to really prepare for it. I talked with Wendy for many times, and asked her to be with me.

This morning, I saw Matt’s attempt to explorer Every Metro Station in a Day. Wow. We had exactly the same idea. So I twittered Matt that I will congratulate him for maybe the first person do that, and I will do it again to see whether I can be faster to get there.

Now Shanghai has 147 metro stations – not easy to explore in one day. On average, it takes 2 minutes per station, which means at least 300 minutes (or 5 hours), but most of the journey is round trip, and considering the transition time, it is really hard to do.

Good luck, Matt!

Travel to Shanghai and really want to experience something special? Have you tried to transit from Shanghai Metro Line #1 to Shanghai Metro Line #2 during rush hour, say from 8:00 – 9:00 AM?

Take a look at what I caputured yesterday.

In the next few minute, I am going to go back home via Metro Line #4. There are two stations of the line, and both are "near" to where I work.

In the map below: The one on the left top corner is the Metro Line #4 Hongqiao Rd. Station, and the one on the lower left is Metro Line #4 Yishan Rd. Station. The red point on the top right is where I work. (BTW, the other dot in the middle of the right is the Xujiahui Station of Metro Line #1).

Which station I should go? It seems to Yishan Rd. Station, it is 1.36 km, and to Hongqiao Rd. Station, it is 1.44 km. This is the sad life of "living near BOTH stations", and this description is for my first rented apartment in Shanghai – near both stations of Metro Line #1, but not near enough to any of them.

OK. I am going home.

Yesterday, at rush hours (6:30 PM), I waited at the Shanghai Metro #1 People’s Square Station. On the rear doors of the Metro, I noticed that people started to line up – there are two lines of people for the gate, and each line has more than 15 people, that makes the lines cross the platform and even near the other side of the platform.

No one was there to help maintain the order. The lines just formed by themselves. When the metro train came, people get off board from the middle – also formed a line, and the two lines of people entered one by one.

I was amazed by what I saw, because:

First, people started to respect orders,

Second, I didn’t see it in the last few years in Shanghai Metro. At least not to this extend that 15+ people forming a straight line.

I even wondered whether I am in Shanghai Metro. Lining up for Metro is the basic practices in many cities but not in Shanghai yet.

I am happy to see that started to happen. Although it is the only time, and they are just at several doors (other doors in the middle part were still at a mess), but it is progress.

Transition in China

When I was asked about the keyword for current China, I choose the word Transition.

Current China is about the old and the new co-exist. When the old system collapse, and the new system is not well established, it is the period of transition. People say bad things about China (poor, no rules, low moral), and people say good things about China also (prosperity, development, huge market), they are all partly true, but not complete. China is just in the transition period. The old and the new conflict with each other, compromise with each other, and finally mixed with each other, until a new order is established.

That is what I felt from small things like lining up. It takes time for this “rare” occasion to appear, but based on my experience, if the first “rare” occasion appears, after 5 to 7 years, it will be the standard.

I am looking forward to a better Shanghai Metro in 2011 or later.

Winter arrives in Shanghai.

In the last week, a T-shirt is still OK; today, I wear a sweater, but still feel cold. The air started to show the character of air of winter of Shanghai – as cold as water. I don’t know whether it is the right word – the air in Shanghai always remind me of the word – crystal. People say something is crystal clear, and I want to say the winter of Shanghai is crystal cold.

However, the Sun shine today is wonderful – just like in San Francisco. In the morning, I waited outside the data center of China Telecom in Huamu. It was cold to stand in the shadow of the building, so I moved into Sunshine – it was much better. The heat of the Sun warmed me up. The only problem was, I have to rotate myself a little bit every minute to put the other side of my body into the Sun. I felt I was a pie in a pan, and you can only heat on side at a time… So you have some idea about how cold the air was and how warm the Sun was.

Metro Stations

On my way from home (Jinxiu Road and Chengshan Road) to Xujiahui, I past by many metro stations. They were on my way all the time in the last year.

The first one is Jin Xiu Road Station 锦绣路站 of Metro Line #7. It will be completed by 2010. I am waiting for that station to open, so I have a metro station within walking distance to my home. At the station, all traffic was detoured, and the roads formed interesting curves. The other station of the same line at Yanggao South Road 杨高南路站 is also under construction. It is a big block of area in the middle of the 4-lane road.

The construction site is much better than before. They have white walls (movable walls) to wrap the construction site up, so it still looks nice, and does not expose the ugly ground and construction materials to the public.

Along the Zhaojiabang Road 肇家浜路, there are three more stations, and cars wind left or right to give way to the construction site. These stations are to be completed by 2008, some even by the end of 2007.

Metro stations are no longer rare resources in Shanghai by then.

Nanjing West Road

At about 6:00 PM, after chatting with business partners, I stepped out of the Plaza 66. The West Nanjing Road 南京西路 has become another fashion center after Huaihai Road 淮海路. In my opinion, Shanghai looks the best at around 6:00 PM, when the Sun just set, and the sky is still a little bit light. The color is dark blue, and the lights of office buildings were already lit up. If you happen to be on a taxi and wind your way along the office buildings, you can see people working in their office – crystal clear. The saxophone music “Going Home” is the best music for this moment. On the West Nanjing Road, the night life started with fashionable ladies and gentleman hanging around – perfect image for me.

When I waited for taxi, for the first time in that area, I felt the ground is shaking. I could feel a metro train running just below my feet. It is metro line #2. I could even visualize a picture that many metro trains running in the tube deep under the road with thousands of people on board. There are hundreds of miles of such tube under the ground of the city, connecting stations, and business centers. Sometimes, I appeared deep under the ground level, to be one of the passengers, and sometimes, like today, I stand still on the ground with crowd passing by my shoulder and other people passing by under my foot – it is an amazing picture of a metropolitan city like Shanghai.

Shanghai is hot recently (good news is, it will cool down very soon). Thanks to the good air-con in both metro stations and metro carts, it is very good experience as long as you stay inside the Metro System, but not several carts.

The air-con systems on several train carts don’t work very well. They just produce very weak cold air, so the cart is very hot. I got onto such a train today.

Before they are able to fix the air-con problem, the Metro company put a big blue box in the middle of the cart and put big block of ICE in it. The ice really worked. The cart is not hotter than other places.

The blue ice box

The note says: ICE! Don’t Litter

Ice and water

I Appreciate It

After running a company for a while, I understand even the richest company has limited resources. To workaround the constraints and get a reasonable result is the responsibility of the management team. I know in ideal world, air-con does not break, and if it does breaks, people can fix it immediately. Even if it cannot be fixed, there are spare carts to put into operation. However, the real world may not be that way.

So they found innovative way (although people may think it stupid ) to solve the problem with the resource they have. I believe this is a much better approach than the approach of the City Terminal Station. I love programs with small money but made big impact.

Shanghai metro keeps improving itself. Recently, automatically glass doors are installed at Xujiahui Metro Station. Here is the latest report by Jian Shuo, from Shanghai. (The typical tone of a journalist, right?)

The door in Xujiahui is completely put into production. It opens a little bit before the train doors open, and closes, when the doors of train carts are completely closed. This may cause the train to stop a little bit longer than before.

The platform was cut by about 30 cm to allow the installation of the door. The platform edge was cut in People’s Square, and other stations. Xujiahui is the first to complete the project, with all the stations in Metro Line #1 following.

Typo

Along with the automatic door, I found some improvement in the Long Yang Road station also. They have many typos, as if Shanghai Metro is as casual and unprofessional as Wangjianshuo’s blog.

Recently, they used white tape to cover the wrong translations. It takes time to correctly, but it is the first step to show improvement since I found the error in 2004.

The covered sentence are:

After first under on. Do riding with civility

It is nice to meet Haichao again, after we briefly met half year ago. The Starbucks at Xujiahui is more crowded, and noisy. My reading before he arrives was frequently interrupted by some words or sentences from far away seats.

After many times, I still cannot distinguish Mocha and Coffee Latte. I know they are different, but cannot match the name and their tastes. So every time I order, I just randomly pick one name from the two. It is the same today. Anyone has ideas about what is the difference?

Haichao’s 51auto.com seems running great, and I continue to enjoy chatting with him, as the last time. The confidence of sending a company (LTON) to NASDAQ as a founder is much higher than normal startups.

After coffee, I stepped into the Xujiahui Metro Station. In the next 3 years, this place will become another construction site since Metro line #9, and line #11 will transit here to Metro Line #1. The transition station plan was announced. It leverages the underground parking area B2 and B3 of the Grant Gateway as the transition hall, and then arranges metro stations around the building is a fantastic idea. I was very excited to see this kind of innovation.

     |L11
     |
L9-+——- /
     |[    ]  /
     |[    ] /
            / L1

The yellow block is the Grant-Gate Way Building.

Here are some piece of Shanghai Metro news.

Folded Bicycles

According to the regulations, folded bicycles (not sure how I can put it. It is a bicycle that you can fold to make it smaller) are allowed on Metro. Some people ride bicycles to Metro Station, fold it, carry it onto the metro cart and unfold it at the destination station and ride to work.

Practically speaking, it is not so easy to carry it in rush hours, but many people do. The problem is, on some very crowded stations, say, from Cao Bao Road to Xujiahui, or Shanxi South Road to People’s Square on Metro Line #1, or from Dong Chang Road station to People’s Square on Metro Line #2, if someone carries a folded bicycle, it may reduce the capacity of the cart and someone may not able to get to that train. I believe I will feel bad or at least a little bit embarrased at that time, although it is accepted by the regulation.

Ticket Discount

I saw a poster recently. It was posted at the end of Sept, I believe. It said that after Oct 1, if you can spent more than 75 RMB, you will be given 10% off discount. This is the first time in the Metro history in Shanghai that gives discount. Previously, the only benifit you get to use Shanghai Transportation Card is, you can still use the card if the money in the card is less than the money required for the trip at your last time swip. However, you still need to pay the -1 or -2 RMB balance at the next time you deposit money.

Ticket Price Increased

Recently, the price of Shanghai Metro increased. Metro is fast, reliable and convinient, but people feel it becomes a more and more like a burnden. Previous, I only need 3 RMB from Long Yang Station to People’s Square, now, it is 5 RMB. From People’s Square to Xujiahui, I pay 4 RMB, which was 3 RMB previously.

Tricks to Save (or Steal) Ticket

Many “smart” people start to think of “solutions”. One method I discovered so far is, some people will find “pairs” with others that exchange tickets to decrease both cost.

Passenger A starts from Long Yang Road Station to Xin Zhuang. He needs to pay 6 RMB. Passenger B starts from Xin Zhuang to Dong Chang Road, he needs to pay 5 RMB. But if Passenger A and B both buy 3 RMB ticket, and they arranged their trip and meet at some station in the middle, say, People’s Square, and exchange their ticket, and they can exit at the gate because it seems the person enters and exits at the same station for the ticket passenger B bought, and seems just several stations in between for the ticket Passenger A bought. Obviously it is not “politically right”. I just see people doing this.

Use the Same Ticket?

The newspaper said this morning that at the end of this year, one ticket can be used on all the metro lines: #1, 2, 3, and 5. Now, only line #1 and #2 can use the same ticket. Passengers need to buy new ticket if there is a transition between #1/#2 to other lines.

Share with you some pictures I took with Nokia 6670 mobile phone. How exciting that in China, 45 million mobile phones with camera capacity will be shipped this year.

It is HEARD that the price of Shanghai Metro will continue to increase due to the high pressure from the passenger volume at rush hours. The lowest price will be adjusted to 3 RMB from 2, and it takes 5 RMB from Long Yang Road in Pudong to Xujiahui in Puxi. Now, it is only 3 RMB.

Meanwhile, since the Dong Fang Metro Station is the conjunction station of three metro lines, it will be closed for 1 years for construction. The transition square of the People’s Square seems will be completed soon, and I guess at that time, the transition between Metro Line 1 and Line 2 will be shortened…

Just some random news about Shanghai Metro…

More typos found:

Picture taken by Jian Shuo Wang at Xujiahui Metro Station, Shanghai

“The Map of Shanghai Traffic – Design for Metro Line”

Did they really think that the map is about the traffic instead of the roads and areas? Design should be Designed. Metro Line should be Metro or Shanghai Metro. Actually, I don’t think they should put Designed for Metro Line in so big font.

Rail Transit Line 1 Full Diagram

Picture taken by Jian Shuo Wang at Xujiahui Metro Station, Shanghai

This title is insteading.

Shanghai Rail Transit Line No 1

Picture taken by Jian Shuo Wang at Xujiahui Metro Station, Shanghai

I would prefer to call it Metro Line #1 instead of “Rail Transit Line No 1”. Is there a problem here? I am not sure.

Transfer Line 3

Picture taken by Jian Shuo Wang at Xujiahui Metro Station, Shanghai

The transit station was marked as “Transfer Line 3” and “Transfer Line 5”.

Chinese also has Problems

Picture taken by Jian Shuo Wang at Xujiahui Metro Station, Shanghai

There is error not only in English. Here is an exmaple of Chinese mistakes. They ignored Xin 信 in the sentence of Xinxi (Information or 信息).

More and More People Got Involved

Photo submitted by Ou Yuxian

Mr. Ou sent me email to report another suggestion to Shanghai Metro. At every station, there are many boards like this. Mr. Ou said in the mail:

… Here I am attaching a photo they took in a metro stattion. On one board, it says “Danger! Jumping into the tunnel is forbidden”. According to the experience I have, it would be a more proper way to say “Danger! No jumping into the tunnel.”

Thanks Mr. Ou. I have put the picture onto the ShanghaiWiki.MetroTypos page and will hand over the printed version of the page to Metro Corp.

Actually, this version has been much better than the previous one. I remember the older version was:

跳下站台进入隧道。危险！

There was no English in the old version. The translation will be

Jump Off the Platform and Enter the Tunnel. Danger ！

That sign was really confusing.

Follow Ups

As Miss Wu, the nice lady from Metro Xujiahui said, she had reported the problem to the management and they will order to correct it. However, I do worry about the quality of the next version without a good sense of English.

I didn’t expect so many comments after I posted the article: ShanghaiWiki.MetroTypos Created. There are 24 comments already when I created this page. This is rare on my recent entries (the last one with so many comments is about the birthday) I feel I have to do something to correct it as so many people are so concerned about it.

Find Out a Person to Talk to

Yesterday night, when I passed by the Xujiahui Metro Station again (as you may know, I rediculously pack my car at Xujiahui and ride the Metro to work), I visited the main control room of the Metro Station. It was a big room with huge glasses, through which I could see three persons operating the monitoring system and watching the dashboard. It was also the center of the in-station broadcasting system.

The Lady

I gave one of the lady inside the room a sign that I wanted to talk with her and entered the working area. At the door of the glass control center, the lady gave me a warm receiption.

I told her that I have some suggestions to the guide boards they just installed. She seemed happy that she finally gathered some feedback regarding the system. She turned to a serious look when I told her that there were many typos (or better called misspellings as some readers suggested) on the boards. She said: “Really? We didn’t know that.”

The Tour

In the next ten minutes, I led her a tour of the whole Metro Station, visiting some of the boards with serious mistakes. We even entered into the platform level to see the errors in the waiting area. I thought how nice it will be if I can enter this area without a metro ticket everyday!

After the tour, the lady agreed “Yes. It is a shame that we have these hang up in our stations.” I learnt the signs were created by a advertisement company, which is not controlled by the Metro. “We are going to deploy the same boards to all Metro Stations in Shanghai very soon, but now it seems we have to stop it ASAP.”

We can Help

Finally, when I left my contact information with her, I learnt she was the person in charge of the Whole Xujiahui Station. I talked to the right person. She said she would report it to the company to find a solution. I told her that if she needs any help, I have a list of the errors and suggested correction. “I have some friends who are either native English speakers or have very good sense of Engliish. Let me know if you need to reach them and get proof reading help!” I added.

The Wiki

Returning to home, I quickly setup the ShanghaiWiki.ShanghaiMetro to enable people to add comments and select the best translations for Shanghai Metro. Now everyone, including you, can edit the page to provide suggestions. Up to now, Gary, Qingsi Zhu, Angela and I parcipated and revised the page for some time already.

I was the Second Person to Report

BTW, it is interesting to note, according to the lady, that one passenger has every reported one typo to them during the one month of trail run of the signs. The rest of the passengers were either too busy to notice the problem or didn’t take actions to correct it.

The Devil’s in the Details

This morning, before I get on board of a Metro to Huangpi South Road Station, I started to see problems of Chinese sentences on the boards. I completely agree with what JL and JH said, it is not lack of expertise, it is lack of attention to details.

I’d like to thank Miss Hu for her professional handling of my report and I will keep track of the progress of the story. I believe there will be a Part III for this story. If you would like to get involved, start to contribute your suggestions to the board at ShanghaiWiki.MetroTypos now.

Qingsi Zhu suggested to create an Wiki site.

“What about setting up a wiki-style website and let us supply and choose our translations”

It is a fantastic idea. I am a quick hand and I created a Wiki site tonight and it is online now.

ShanghaiWiki site

If you are still not sure of what Wiki is, check Wikipedia, or PmWiki’s FAQ.

The idea behind is Wiki is what Qingsi suggested: to supply and choose a better translation to the misspelled words or grammer mistakes.

The Wiki site also serves as a place for you to report other significant typos in this city. I am not very sure what we can do with the result yet, but I guess the media or the government will notice it one day and push for the correction.

MetroTypos is only one page specially created for Typos in Metro. You can feel free to create new pages as easy as create write an WikiWord and you can edit it by following the link.

Before you get started, do follow all the rules of the Wiki world. Thanks.

Remember the English Instructions in Yantai? I saw some worse case, in Shanghai. If the Yantai is not a very big city so the mistakes of the English translation is just funny, the same thing happens in the bigger city Shanghai is sad. It is even worse if it is in the Metro Station where more than 1 million passengers every day!

I posted the exciting news of the new look of the guidance board at Xujiahui Station. It looks much brighter and the directions are clearer. See the pictures below:

© Jian Shuo Wang

Typos

However, when I read the direction board closely, I found there are so many typos in the English spelling. I guess there are more than 50 boards in Xujiahui Station alone, but I didn’t find any board which is completely free of typos. This news is astonishing, isn’t it?

© Jian Shuo Wang

Errors

I took pictures of some of the boards, and pointed out the problems.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Above is the first sign of the Metro that is attached to the ground to guide people to Metro. Do they really think the direction is METOR? Also, if we take grammar into consideration, it is not right to use “Ride Metro” as a direction guide.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Above: Have you noticed how they spelled Institute? They used Instiute.

© Jian Shuo Wang

How about spell Shanghai as Shnaghai from now on, since they spelled Shangshi as Shnagshi. I saw lots of Shangshi was spelled that way. There is another board that capitalized MAN and spelled it as MANsion. Why? This is not a big problem compared to others.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Look at the spelling of pacific. Pacticific appeared everywhere in the Metro.

© Jian Shuo Wang

Note the Digitalr. R is not close to L on keyboard but why this R is so happy to stand with L?

© Jian Shuo Wang. The boards on the platform.

If these signs are newly added, I found there is typo on the overhead map of all Metro train cart. Educate me if somebody has invented the abbr. Hi-tec instead of Hi-Tech.

Worried about the big project

I am very worried about the quality of the big project to replace all the signs of Metro Stations (should be more than 30 already) in the next few months. If the quality of translation remains the same, it will be one of the most embarrassing things in Shanghai’s history. I called the Metro service line, and the operator told me it is impossible to have any typo in the Metor station, because “all the design and wording have been thoroughly reviewed by experts”. She suggested me check whether my English spelling has problem because “experts’ review won’t be wrong”.

I finally convinced her there was no problem with me after I gave her the example of the spelling of Shnaghai. She seems to agree that it should not spelled that way even she does not seems to know English. She promised to ask someone to check and get back to me. BTW, if I didn’t insist to leave my phone number and my name, she may forget to collect it while promising to call me back. I checked and found they didn’t have caller ID display functions on their telephones.

I get my finger crossed to see how this can be improved. I found a good citizen inside myself this time again and will try to fix the problem on my personal effort. Does any body want to join the campaign to remove highly visible typos like this? If you want to do that, what is your suggestion besides calling them? BTW, I have called news reporter from OTV Wide Watch Program from Oriental TV already and he promised to look into it. The last time I contacted him was to report the always-red traffic light near Nandan Road.

Updated ShanghaiWiki.MetroTypos Created October 20, 2004

As Qingsi Zhu suggested, I have created a ShanghaiWiki site to allow people to collaborate and work out a better plan for Metro. Every reader can contribute to that page. Read more…

Updated Progresses October 20, 2004

I have talked with the person in charge of the Xujiahui Station and brought her to all the board and pointed the typos to her. She said “OMG!”. I guess this is a very positive move to correct these typos. The next step is to help build a corrected version of the sentences so they can use it as a reference. I will talk about this in details tomorrow.

© Jian Shuo Wang. Taken in Shangai Metro #1

Public transportation? Avoid rush hours – see so many people there.

© Jian Shuo Wang. Taken in Shangai Metro #1