Trending in Beijing: Passenger Shaming, UFOs, and Drinking Urine
Trending in Beijing wraps up the top stories and hashtags Beijingers have been discussing on Chinese social media this week, exclusively for the Beijinger by What’s on Weibo editor-in-chief Manya Koetse.
1) Beijingers Who Commute for More Than an Hour Are 33 Percent More Likely to Be Depressed
In the week following the National Day holiday, many Beijingers returned to work and complained on social media about traffic jams, crowded subways, and full buses. Chinese state media outlet CCTV reported last week that these commutes to work can seriously affect one’s happiness.
According to the “China 2018 City Commuting Report” (2018年中国城市通勤研究报告), the average commuting distance for Beijingers is 13.2 kilometers (8.2 miles), with the average commuting time being 56 minutes. The city’s relatively long commuting distance and time is a cause for concern, since previous research by the University of Cambridge has indicated that a travel time to work of approximately one hour heightens the chances for people to suffer from depression by 33 percent.
The people who are struggling to get around in Beijing or other cities are true warriors.
On Weibo, posts and articles dedicated to this topic have triggered hundreds of reactions, with many people sharing their commuting distances, some living 30 kilometers (18 miles) away from their work, others as far as 80 kilometers (50 miles). “The people who are struggling to get around in Beijing or other cities are true warriors,” one person commented.
2) Public Transport Passenger Shaming is Everywhere on Weibo Last Week
Maybe it is the stress of the public transport after the holidays, maybe it is the idea that people actually do get unhappier from long commutes, but it surely seems like tons of people are very annoyed with the behavior of their fellow public transport passengers in Beijing last week. Rather than speaking out about it, posting images on social media as a way to punish bad behavior and shame the perpetrators has become quite common.
“Look at this kid laying there, his parents don’t even mind,” one typical poster said:
“They’re taking up all this space on the Fangshan line,” another Weibo user said with this photo:
But amidst the dozens of photos posted of people sleeping or eating in public transport, by far the most extreme case was posted on Friday, Oct 12, when one netizen exposed how a woman was letting a little boy pee in the middle of a crowded aisle on a Beijing bus route 464. “They just have no inner quality,” many people commented. Watch a video of the bizarre moment below.
3) Another Marketing Disaster: Didi Passenger Accidentally Drinks Driver’s Urine
This is a terrible year for car-hailing service Didi in terms of PR. Last week’s PR crisis, luckily, does not involve violence against female passengers, but it involved a bottle of urine. A man surnamed Sun was a passenger in a Shanghai Didi on Tuesday, when he wanted a sip of water and mistook a bottle of urine for a complimentary bottle of water. He noticed the cap was loose, but the driver reportedly told him it was okay to drink. The passenger drank it, soon noticed it was not water, and later angrily confronted the driver in a video (see below) that has since gone viral on social media.
Didi responded to the incident on Wednesday, stating that the driver had used the bottle because he could not get to a bathroom, and then had forgotten about it. They also expressed their sincere apologies for the matter, and said they had taken Sun to the hospital for a physical check-up. The driver has since been dismissed for “violating Didi’s service guidelines,” Beijing News reports.
4) Fake News Alert: Elephant on the Loose in Haidian
Earlier last week, news that a two-ton adult elephant was missing from the local zoo and on the loose in Beijing’s Haidian district made its way around social media. The news was spread through a valid-looking police announcement, that said the Beijing Zoo discovered that the African elephant was missing from its habitat on the morning of Oct 10.
That same day, police reported on Weibo that the news was fake and that the person spreading these rumors should immediately report themselves to the police. Circulating rumors or fake news on Chinese social media is a crime and, under the Supreme People’s Court interpretation, could lead up to five years in jail if the false information leads to social unrest. Although many people discussed the news about the elephant, it did not cause much of a consternation. “I immediately knew this was fake news,” one commenter said: “The Beijing Zoo is in Xicheng, not in Haidian!”
5) Spotting UFO’s in Beijing’s Skies
One of the very popular Beijing social media topics last week was the sighting of an alleged ‘UFO’ in the skies of Beijing. On Oct 11, many people spotted a peculiar white light in the sky in the capital, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, and other places, and started posting them online (see below).
Although many believed the sighting was some alien object, experts say they believe the light is actually the exhaust gas released by an aircraft that was flying at a high enough altitude to be illuminated by sunbeams. This is not the first time this year that people claim they have seen a UFO in Beijing. In May of this year, the Beijinger also reported about an unidentified flying object spotted in the skies.
To see more topics that have been trending in the capital recently, go here.
By Manya Koetse @manyapan
What’s on Weibo editor-in-chief
Manya Koetse is the editor-in-chief of whatsonweibo.com.
She is a writer and consultant (Sinologist, MPhil) on social trends in
China, with a focus on social media and digital developments, popular
culture, and gender issues.
Images: SCMP.com, Weibo
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