Lesson 19

e are very polite; there are just too many of them.

    The worst time to be in the street is at 11.30 at night. That is when the night-clubs are closing and everybody wants to go home. There are 35, 000 night-clubs in Tokyo, and you do not often see one that is empty. Between ll and 12 everybcdy is looking for a taxi. Usually the taxis are shared by four or five people who live in the same part of the city.

    During the day, people use the trains. Perhaps the first thing you notice in Tokyo is the number of trains. Most people travel to and from work by train, and there is a station at almost every street corner. Tokyo people buy six mi1lion train tickets every day. One station--Shinjuku-has two million passengers each day. At most stations, trains arrive every two or three minutes, but at certain hours there do not seem eo he enough trains. At 8 o,clock in the morning you can see students pushing passeng.ers into the trains. Usually the trains are nearly full when they arrive at the station, so the students have to push very hard. Sometimes the pushers are also pushed in by mistake, and they have to get out at the next station. Some people who are pushed into the train lose their shoes. They, too, get out at the next station, and go back to look for them.

    Although they are usually crowded, Japanese trains are very good. They always leave and arrive on time. On a I.ondon train you would see everybody reading a newspaper. In Tokyo trains everybody in a seat seems to be asleep. Some Japanese make a irain journey of two hours to go to work, so they do their sleeping on the train. But if a train journey lasis only five minutes, and if they have a seat, thcy will also go to sleep. They always wake when they arrive at their station.

    The last time I went to Tokyo, I went there from Osaka in great comfort. The blue-and-white trains which run evcrv?half-hour between the two cities are not only very fast but very comfortable. There are no pushers; only those who have reserved seats can travel on the train. It was not possible to run more trains on the old lines, so the Japanese built a special linc for the new fast trains. It is a very good line indeed. You can eat and drink without difficulty at 220 kilometres an hour-you know the speed because there is a speedometer inside the carriage.

    In Tokyo, I stood outside the station for five minutes. Three fireengines-the
very latest kind with every moclern fitting -raced past on the way to one of the many fires that Tokyo has every day. The peopie who passed on foot included some of the loveliest girls in the world in the latest European dresses or the finest Japanese kimonos. Businessmen passed in big new cars, and. among them, in a small Honda, there was a geisha in the clothes and hair arrangement of hundreds of years ago. Tokyo has so many surprises that none of them can really surprise me now. Instead, I am surprised at myself: I must go there next week on business, and I know that I shall hate the city and its twelve million people. But I feel like a man who is returning to his long-lost love.

                   2. What Kind of City Should Beijing Be?

    The C. P. C. Central Committee Secretariat has proposed that Beijing
should become:
    (1) a model in public security, social order and moral standards for the whole country and one of the best in the world;
    (2) a first-rate modern city with a fine environment, high standards of cleanliness and good sanitation;
    (3) the nation's most developed city in culture, science and technology, with the highest educational standard in the country; and
    (4) a city with a thriving economy, providing its residents wit.h stability
in life and all kinds of conveniences.

                        3. Duo Duo Bar, Where Many Meet

    A small coffee shop on Xidan Street, barely wider than a hallway, has become a haunt for many young people in downtown Beijing.
    The Duo Duo Coffee Bar has a charm of its own. Its red walls adorned with reed and bamboo hats and a spider web hanging from its dark ceiling remind one of the sunsets, perhaps at lakeside in a light drizzle. This is the atmosphere in which people sip a cup of coffee, tea or wine while chatting with their friends.
    Duo Duo (Chinese for many) is owned by two yotrng men, Zhang Keyu, a technician, and Lu Wei, an artist.

    "We started this coffee bar not only for making money," said Zhang, 27, in a soft voice. "We wan

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