I knew it. I knew that one day the New York City subway would drive me crazy. And it did. Around 7:30 am, Jan15th, a day that marked nothing but normality, I tucked away three slices of raisin nuts bread, knocked back a bowl of milk, making sure I’d been neatly groomed, carried my backpack, and hurried to the metro station. From the time I slid the metro card through the turnstile, the game of timing kicked off and I had little choice but to resign to a state of helplessness, leaving to chance my fate of being late or not.

Formidably massive, the New York City subway is the world’s largest transit system with 468 stations operating round the clock. But it is also the oldest, largely operated manually with two decades ahead to achieve complete automation. Its gigantism, materialized by a metastasizing web of interwoven lines steadily constructed over time and the confrontation of over four million daily riders against a handful of burnt-out MTA staff, entails immeasurable unpredictability. At the morning peak, it is everyone’s guess when the next train would approach. Restless riders troubled by fear of running late wait agitatedly and count their time to an accuracy of second. Somehow I believe there is a timetable, which turns out to be an idealized concept as reliable as a politician’s lip service and established only to be taken for granted.

Distant rumbling and grating noise of iron-wheels clattering on the track signal a train is thundering near. But you have no idea how packed the car that will stop in front you might be. There’s a promising chance that you would see one carrying so many people that may cause you to hallucinate the scandalous henhouse that is home to flocks of mutant chicken with three pairs of wings waiting to be supplied to the KFCs in China. The arrival of a train only marks the beginning of a new round of battle: highbrow or grassroots, people who looked haggard just before the door hisses open suddenly turn uneasy, ditching their civility, jostling and elbowing one another to fight into the car.

The opposite scenario, though highly impossible, is that a relatively empty cart slowed down before you and creaked to a halt. Flattered and surprised, you breathe deeply a sigh of relief, starting to feel lucky. But wait a second. You have to know this is exactly the time your feet would be likely to step in of their own accord and take you all the way into the car. Bur you need to hold them back and be wary. What is in front of you may be more treacherous than you thought. Look around and think about it. It’s the morning rush! Why is this compartment particularly and ostensibly unoccupied?  Are all others as empty as this one? My terrible and nasty experiences have taught me in an unbearably cruel way that there must be something or someone unpleasant that have grossed people out and driven them away. Once you incautiously step in, possibly an intense puff of urine or vomit or the repugnant odor given off from a homeless man together with his cart brimming with garbage may blow you away and temporarily put you in trance that even beats your instinctive reaction to step back. When you realize the door behind has closed tight and there’s no way out, everything’s been too late. Even in a normal train, cheese burgers, cheap fragrances, scents of shampoo, moisturizers and repulsive nail polish, body odor including stale hair and smelly feet, and clothes that have long been unwashed, all these smells mix and float invisibly in the air and squeeze forcefully in your nostrils along with the bumping and rocking of the train.

The E train, a Manhattan-bound Express train playing a vital role in my optimized commuting route that saves me probably 10 to15 minutes of sleep, but consists of two excruciating, triathlon-like transfers between three different lines, is dutifully crowded every day and never well ventilated. Every time I got on the train and found a place to properly position myself, other passengers would instantly flood in and surround me tightly. I felt I was cast a spell and turned into a sculpture, without a single part of my body being able to move. That was how much space, and only that much space, I deserved to take. My backpack, a lump on my back, holding my lunch box and other stuff for daily use, was a target often criticized by strangers, who demanded I remove the detestable protrusion elsewhere. But they were sculptures too and couldn’t move either. I never responded to their impositions because we all knew there was nowhere for me to do so. And all we could do was to wait until the next stop where someone would get off and free up some space.

Killing time on the train is another challenge. Roughly half of the passengers, mostly seated and a few holding handrails, opted to sleep despite the din of the crowd and the frequent railway announcements marked by ready excuses of train traffic ahead and repetitive apologies devoid of any sincerity to daily riders. I couldn’t force myself to sleep while standing awkwardly. I usually read books and in fact I finished most of my daily reading underground. But I’ve never held a real book in my hand while on the train because setting in a foothold was difficult enough, not to mention finding room for both arms to move around. Given that, I’ve employed Kindle and learned how to maneuver the device with a single hand, or a few flexible fingers.

Today has been especially painful and disastrous because I was caught by massive delays, midway breakdowns, and whimsical changes of route all at the same time. Routinely, I would take the local M or R train from my home to Roosevelt Ave, switch to the Manhattan-bound E Express train to dodge most local stops in Queens, and finally change to the 6 Line to Grand Central where I work. Everything went just as usual until the train stopped at Court Square, the last stop before arriving in Manhattan. The door opened and a few left. A while later, there slurred some ambiguous announcements and more people began to evacuate. At that moment I was captivated by the book I was reading, with my headphone playing music loudly. I never bothered myself to listen attentively to what was on air for I knew it happened every now and then and the train would eventually set out anyway. But this time my empiricism overreached itself. I had to admit that my noise-cancelling headphone contributed largely to my tragedy by filtering out the important crew announcements to change the E train that I was riding to an F train. It was a rather easy makeover simply completed by switching the electronic signs that read “E” to “F” on the body and the head of the train. When I realized the change, I still wasn’t worried that much. The F train, though requiring a bit of detour and more walk, would nevertheless take me to where I needed to go. So I decided to abide by the old Chinese wisdom to cope with changes by staying steadfast and fearlessly remained on the train despite the anomaly that most people had abandoned it. But things didn’t stop there and such a playful relabeling was apparently not convincing enough to justify the moodiness of MTA.

The E-turned-F train slowly rolled on, as I’d expected, but unknown to none, it willfully headed south and took the route of the G line, which in my limited memory had been decommissioned for a long time. The chameleon-liked train first stopped at a station whose decoration dominated by a green hue was completely unfamiliar to me. It suddenly struck me that it had betrayed the route of the F line. There must have been something wrong, but I hesitated to get off because it wasn’t a transfer station and most importantly, no one did. I hadn’t much time to deliberate and let rationality take over. I lost my decisiveness and instinctively begged to stick with the herd. The door closed promptly and then the train advanced. Other baffled riders and I gathered together and asked one another about what was going on. Someone suddenly pointed out to the itinerary indicator on the wall and recognized it was the route of the G Line. Frustration and curses burst out. Upon arriving at the next stop, nobody hesitated to get off and all Manhattan-bound passengers escaped the train rashly like it would take them to hell.

When I found myself at Greenpoint Ave, a place I had never been before, I was at the same time denied access to Google map thanks to the pathetic communication services underground. It was already 9:10 am and I was in another world (which I later found out was Brooklyn), feeling just like what had happened to Matthew McCaughey in Interstellar, being trapped in another dimension. Fortunately, an energetic Mexican auntie from whom I inquired directions on the train called out to me, “You going to Manhattan? Follow me!” She was my savior. When I finally made it to my desk at work, I was an hour late.

Facing the computer, my head was filled with frustration and anger about the subway service I had enjoyed. I wondered why it was so hard for the MTA to make improvements. Sustained deficit dragging for years of running the underground transportation is in stark contrast with the high fare price that has constantly been under public criticism. Now it seems, unless resorting to drastic reforms, the subway system would never be truly upgraded.

Historically, the New York subway has developed into today’s prosperity from a few scattered Coney Island-bound railways and a bunch of viaducts connecting lower Manhattan and Brooklyn more than a hundred years ago. It is clearly no rivalry to the modernity and tidiness presented by many Beijing subway stations. Its aesthetics and design are belittled by its counterparts in European cities like Stockholm. Its tracks are home to rats. Restrooms are nowhere to be found. And the ear-splitting noise when a train rattles by forces any conversation to suspension.

Despite all the overdue amenities and refurbishment and my complaints that account for most of this article, underneath the seemingly filthy appearance of New York subway, however, lie the history and the cultural diversity it represents, which epitomize the spirit of the whole New York City and are what make it unparalleled and one of a kind. When I first came to the Big Apple, out of a newcomer’s curiosity or boredom probably, I observed people on the train. I thought I would have seen more blond or bright-colored hair, which would fit in with my preconception about the America’s white dominated population. But contrary to my stereotype, the predominant hair color was black, which came not only from Asian, but from African American obviously, Mexican, Indian and people from Central Asia and Middle East. In addition to hair color, what drew my attention were the traditional clothes, head wears and hair styles that represent different nationalities, races and ethnicities: cascades of braids or huge braid buns of African American girls, colorful sari donned by Indian women, cute yarmulkes appearing on the heads of Jewish males, hijabs worn by Islamic women and big turbans marking a man’s status in certain countries. Isn’t it amazing that such a variety of vast cultural differences could be funneled and observed in a seemingly oppressive cart of a train?

Besides the cultural diversity, there are more interesting and sometimes bizarre things that regular riders may be lucky to observe.

“Everyone comes out of their mother’s wombs with a purpose,” shouted a black guy I assumed in his fifties or more, average height and build, with bristly white beard and wearing a worn-out light colored jacket.

I bumped into this guy one day when I was waiting for the 6 trains to get to work. The way he talked and behaved, vivid and excessively self-assured, promptly raised him from a normal Jesus follower to the level of a mentally unstable fanatic. But everyone around him kept their cool and nobody seemed to care.

“Look at you! Everyone is running around like a bunch of chicken with their heads chopped off,” he continued when the next train was approaching and people rushed to the platform edge.

Age carved on his face in form of deep ruts. I was quite afraid to analyze him closely lest he be a lunatic and suddenly do something dangerous. I was rather relieved when I managed to get on the train and finally left behind the cacophony he produced. I thought it an amusing interlude and promptly forgot him when work poured in.

Next day in the morning, funnily and fatefully, I stepped into the E train, though not confronted with disgusting smells, only to find the same eccentric old man sitting all but under my nose, with a book in his hand. The door closed before I recovered from the trance brought up by seeing his presence, noise was locked out and inside it became quiet. I felt doomed to hear his preach starting with his authoritative tone, rising high and low in cadence, cursing and warning. My headphone suddenly became powerless and his words was penetrating. I couldn’t fix my eyes on Kindle and resumed reading.

“People talk about one another but themselves, you talk about other people but yourself. Your worst enemy is but yourself.” Clichés indeed, I was thinking, feeling annoyed. He kept on illustrating the corruption of the administration and the world where there was “no damned justice.”

He was more logic than I thought and that was probably why I couldn’t help but follow his thread. “My mother was a prostitute. She went to jail. I’m the worst person in my community and you are the worst in yours.” His life story, though impossible for me verify, sounded intriguing but sad.

“Your damned degrees, your damned titles.” He cursed everyone in the train for being fake and hypocritical. “Nasty you look at nasty me!” he demanded. But few did. Only some middle-aged women tossed their shaming peeks. “He may be a qualified subject for an Oprah show,” I thought out loud, “as long as he could put himself together and agree with the producer’s orchestration to maximize a sensational result.”

I didn’t know where his story led to later on, since once the train stopped, I stormed out immediately. Though he was no less annoying, I didn’t feel uncomfortable about him anymore. The troubled feeling that kept me away from him the first time we met originated from my childhood emotional upset my mom weighed on me. Chinese parents unable to deal with mischievous children sometimes threaten to leave them with the lunatics wandering on the street, hoping this could frighten them into behaving themselves. The tactic was potent for the first few times, but was seen through not long.

Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Lewis once wrote, “ Secrecy and repression breed fear. Openness can make us confident.” I think the reason why nearby passengers and I could tolerate this cranky old guy who might have mental disorder and remain callous was more or less because he was being utterly open. He vented everything out without cultivating any pent-up grievances that may result in real harm to the public. Therefore, despite his verbal harassment that turned people around into collateral damage, the First Amendment ensures that he can speak out freely in public and lecture on anything from religion to politics, without fearing to be taken to a mental institution; something ugly that had happened in my home country, which has been so attuned to harmony that it gets scared at even a mad man’s quibble.

后记（disclaimer）：题目其实不知怎么拟好，感觉被骗的人请见谅。前半部分是数天前坐地铁被膈应到的一段经历，气头上写的，略夸张，实话说纽约地铁的拥挤程度同北京比自然是小巫见大巫，不过早高峰时也难分轩轾。后面慢慢说开了扯远了居然码了这么多字，很散碎，有些观点也比较片面，且囿于用英文写作，各种语病和不通的地方在所难免，很多或细腻或活泼的感情也没法很好呈现，只作练笔了。