No. 5 trains meet at the Lishuiquio South station, just outside the media village.

Subways are a great thing when you're traveling.
Not only can you get where you're going with a far higher degree of certainty than with a bus -- railroad tracks are fixed; bus routes can change -- but they provide a great window into the everyday slice of life, whether in New York or Milan or Athens or Sydney.
I'm not sure that ever felt more true than it did this afternoon and evening, during my final chance to get out and about in Beijing.
Today's destination was the fabulously photogenic Temple of Heaven (a post on that shortly), but when it comes to getting genuine impressions of the city, the subway rides, both today and earlier in the week, may have been the most fruitful part of the entire trip.
I picked up a number of cultural tips from a book before coming to China, and two have really been proven true on the subway: The Chinese have a different concept of personal space than we do (which is to say none at all, really, probably because in a city of 17 million, crowding is a given) and staring is not considered impolite.
Boy, have I been stared at on the subway. Sometimes they're staring at my ever-present OIAC (the credential hanging from my neck), trying to figure out if I might be somebody important. Sometimes they're just staring at me, because as I've mentioned before, there aren't that many Caucasians on Beijing subways, even during the Olympics. (It's kind of an interesting experience to be the tallest guy around for long periods of time; I don't think I've been on a subway yet, no matter how crowded, where I couldn't see over everyone else in the car).
Beyond that, I've seen all these sights that remind me how much people are people the world over. There was a boy and his dad playing an animated game of rock-paper-scissors on the car next to me. There was a woman trying to get her baby girl to talk ("Sub-a-way," she kept saying, in that exaggerated way all parents use when trying to teach words. "Schhwa," the girl would answer.) There were the cluelessly self-centered. (I remember reading an article a few years ago about how one of the unintended side effects of China's one-child policy was a generation of pampered only-child males. The textbook case was this slightly chubby 30-ish man who was playing a Gameboy as he walked onto the train stopped just inside the door, intent on his game, and made it extremely difficult for anyone else to get in and out.
Most fascinating of all, there was a beggar. Any hint of a flaw in the social order has been carefully papered over while we're here -- heck, they even broke an entire nation of the habit of spitting -- but there he was, on the train tonight: A kid of about 14, I'd guess, moving in a slightly odd, jerky fashion, in a ripped shirt and pair of shorts, constantly chattering -- whether at himself or to anyone who would listen. He stood by me for a long time, chattering away, and I noticed that everyone on the car averting their gaze or suddenly finding the subway map really interesting or needing to clean their fingernails. For a minute, it felt just like the No. 9 in Manhattan.
There's a Chinese proverb I've kept in mind the entire time I've been here -- and you'll probably see me quote it again in the next day or two. It goes "We can always fool a foreigner."
I don't begin to think I'm an exception. But I do think riding on the subway has been a good way to be a little less fooled.