Unlike London, the underground trains in Beijing are very cheap; 2 RMB per trip (that equates to approximately 13p) and by trip I mean you can travel from anywhere on the underground to anywhere else on the underground, no matter how many different lines you need to use and how long your journey is. At present there are only 4 lines operating; Line 1, Line 2, Line 5 and Line 13. These serve Beijing pretty well but, again unlike London, they don't cover the entirety of the city. If you live in the east or west, you'll have to get a taxi everywhere (or at least to the closest station), since the subway only really covers central Beijing, the north and the south (and even then it doesn't stretch all the way north or south). What there is, though, is pretty good. There are no delays due to signal failures, a spot of water on the track or the wrong kind of snow. Everything is clearly sign-posted, even in English and because it's relatively new (in comparison to London anyway) everything is clean and air conditioned (which is especially handy now that it's freezing in Beijing and, I'm told, helps enormously in the summer, when it gets hot).

The other thing to note about the Beijing subway is how many people use it every day. Being that there are over 15 million people in Beijing and a load of tourists who come to see the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square and the rest, the trains are crowded to say the least. Combine this with the fact that the Chinese people don't queue or wait for people to get off the train before boarding and you'll find that using the underground can sometimes be a bit of a chore.

I was recently trying to get off at Dongzhimen station (near where Hannah and I live) during rush hour. Even though I was right in front of the doors when they opened, I struggled to get off. The surge of people trying to get on the train before the doors closed and it departed forced me backwards, almost into the train I was leaving. I was only stopped by the gap between the train and the platform edge. Because I was being dragged by the crowd, my feet suddenly had nowhere to go and into the gap I fell. Almost immediately a hundred pairs of hands grabbed me and hauled me onto the platform, as though they were sorry they had caused it (even though their faces were absent of emotion) but my ordeal wasn't over yet.

There were still hundreds of people clamouring to get onto the train, with scant regard for other passengers or where they were attempting to go. Deciding that the only way to actually get out of the train was to employ the same tactics as the locals, I began to windmill my arms. People flew in all directions, I didn't know my own strength. Old ladies were flung up and across the platform, small children were given short shrift and business people in my way got caught by my rampaging arms (including one unfortunate young man who was right in my line of fire as one of my arms flew up, dealing him a vicious uppercut and sending him sprawling out of my way). In my peripheral vision I could see old men using their walking sticks to beat a path through to the train doors and I swear that one mild mannered looking lady shed her everyday clothes to show off a full warriors uniform complete with a Japanese samurai style sword, with which she began hacking her way through the general public, leaving a bloody trail of bodies lying mercilessly in her wake.

All this took place in the space of about a minute and as I broke free I looked back at the carnage to see people pulling their bloodied friends and family onto the train, some were even so desperate to make it that they stuck their umbrellas into the closing doors so that the train would pull them along in its wake.

That's how I remember it anyway.