Tram and Subway in Shenyang, China

Cities in China are expanding in an alarming rate, encroaching valuable farmland to grow into monstrous metropolises.  My home city, Shenyang, in Manchurian China, is no exception. My parents have long been priced out of the central part of the city and now live in the area used to be quite remote countryside.

In order to connect various parts of the growing city, new mass transit systems were being built in Shenyang. Last year, I reported the new subway line - there were two operating subway lines and totally at least 10 lines have been planned.  This past September, the newest system of mass transit was a sleek tram system.  When I was there, the tram system was still being tested and only people had tickets dispensed by local department stores could take advantaged of the often empty trams.  Below are several photos I took in my parents' tram stop:















Several days before I returned to the US, seeing the empty cars and the frustrated people who couldn't acquire tickets, the tram allowed any passenger to get on and no tickets were required.  Therefore, tram stops were often packed with people who were eager to try it out, me included.  The wait was usually long because during the trial period, those tram trains ran less frequently than usual and the speed was below the designed speed too.  Though it was crowded, people behaved rather patiently, perhaps the presence of two handsome traffic policemen had something to do with it. After a long wait at the stop of Olympic Stadium, I gave it up.







Eventually, I did get chance to ride in the tram.  The trains were clean and ran smoothly though excruciatingly slow.  Hopefully it would speed up after the trial period.  Another peculiar feature was the presence of two uniformed conductors who would get up from their designated seats to stand by the door when the tram stopped and the doors opened.  Quite often, they had awkwardly asked people to vacate their designated seats after they finished their duties by door and found their seat taken by those who failed to notice the label above those seats:









In order to meet people and do some shopping in central Shenyang, I took subway again.  I needed to take bus/tram to go to the nearest subway station and the ride to downtown was smooth but rather long.  Below is the system map on the back of the subway ticket.  Line 1 is the red horizontal line while the vertical blue line was Line 2.



At subway stations, one could see the tunnel at the two ends, and the platform across the tracks, all behind sliding doors, so no one would fall or jump onto the tracks:





The station when the two existing lines met was often full of people but never too crowded; I did avoid the rush hours though.



The stations were often nicely decorated, matching the main attractions nearby, such as the Olympic Rings at the Olympic Stadium Station:





Below are a group photos taken inside the subway trains:









However sleep those fixtures were, one could always find some funny signage, such as "Take care of the gap", and "Please keep seep inside car", which really should have said "Mind the gap" and "Please keep the car clean". I'd noticed the same "Take care of the gap" sign last year and one year later, it remained unchanged.




Signage telling passengers to keep the car clean


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- New Subway System in Shenyang, China
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- Industrial Museum of China in Manchurian Shenyang
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- Shenyang, China ... continued

Label: Shenyang, Shenyang Trip 2013