Produced | Tiger Sniffing Young Group

Author | Suwon melon seeds

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This article was first published on Huxiuyoung content public account “That NG” (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the faces, stories and attitudes of young people today.

Every time, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, especially Beijing, the problem of excessive commuting time for office workers will be heatedly discussed. Coupled with the faces that are not awake or asleep, young or old, the subway cars framed by the car windows are almost a roll of live film of life in a large city today.

Lele disagrees. Even she once set foot on the long commuting road from Qilizhuang on Line 9 to the south of Baishiqiao, then transfer to Line 6 to Qingnian Road, not counting the bus.

For the people who travel through the film like her, the long time spent with the subway is not always the torment as described. I took more than 23,000 steps and said that it was a good time to make up for sleep, read books, and read dramas. “On the subway, I can fall asleep as long as I have a support. Sometimes the quality of sleep is better than Simmons.”

Not only that, for people like Lele, who are obsessed with strange stories, it’s good to catch up with the spirit. When the train goes into the tunnel and throws the light from the platform into the darkness behind him, the strong wind squeezes the door and makes a strange moan. It is a good time for them to dig out hearsay memories and use their imagination.

As years go by, countless kinds of loose memories, rumors, and imagination are superimposed, making the subway an open secret in the cement forest, one of the urban legends. People come and go here, but it seems that no one can really walk into its core secret.

All over the world, where there are subways and tunnels. Whether it’s modern urban legends or TV and movie works, the subway is a “high-incidence zone” of strange things. In the “List of Urban Legends” on Wikipedia, you can get more than 20 related results, from the mass disappearance of the Moscow Metro No. 2 half a century ago to the disappearance of several passengers on the MTR in the 1990s. , The subway is

Among the many true and false legends, the Beijing subway that stands in front of us can be regarded as unique.


“Beijing Subway Strange Story: The Bizarre Missing and Phantom in the Tunnel|Tiger Radio” (click here to listen to the full Program)

vol. 136

Guest: Inspector Ma

Anchor: Watermelon Yangtze River Apartment Zhazha County

Recording and editing: Seven Six Three

In this issue, as passengers on the first-line subway, we once again invited the first-line urban legend researcher Inspector Ma to share with us the legendary stories about Beijing subway that we have heard from everywhere over the years. We also tried to analyze folk customs. What are the common characteristics of the subway stories in the discourse?

Some excerpts of story time are as follows:

Beijing:

02: 26 hours (23 o’clock) no-load a circle of legends

06:23 The sedan chair in the tunnel

8: 33 The mystery of the abandoned Metro Line 3

12:04 Disappeared passengers

17:18 The Mystery of the Naming of the North “New” Bridge

20:08 The female student who jumped and disappeared

23:10 “The Case of Falling Horse and Leaping on Rails” Suspects

The “Pingguoyuan Station” closed at 30:00

Japan:

44:23 Enter the secret realm of Kisaragi Station

……

The curious seeds of the Beijing subway were planted by Lele. Starting from college, this girl who grew up in Fengtai, Beijing would take us around with great interest. In the era of the 2 yuan pass, we used all subway lines.

As soon as he got into the car, Lele squinted at the site map. Sometimes suddenly inspired by the name of a station, he turned his eyes to us and said.

Starting popular science from the most well-known story, it must be the “mystery of the last train of the Beijing subway”. It is a mystery, but the matter is simple, that is, after the Beijing subway is suspended, it will idle again at 23:00.

According to folk speculation, this is sending our invisible friends home one by one, because it is said that when the Beijing subway was built, many bones were excavated, and the souls were awakened and full of resentment. If they were homeless, they would make trouble. . In addition, 23 o’clock is the sub-time, the ancient time when the soul rests. This element makes the legend sound reasonable and well-founded, and for a long period of time, we are deeply impressed by it.

Later, there may be too many rumors. It is said that some subway related staff have responded to this matter: an empty lap is a normal inspection, or the vehicle is returned to the warehouse, and the Beijing subway is not closed at 23:00, everyone. Take a look at the train timetable!

But neither the legend itself nor the “official response” has a reliable source. The mystery is still a mystery.

Each inch of the Sifang Beijing City is stacked by history, which naturally makes the parallel underground world more mysterious. In everyone’s guess, the subway entrance is a door that opens up time and space between ancient and modern times. If we are not careful here, we will encounter the past of the capital in an unexpected way.

So,In the same line as the “Mystery of the Last Train”, the contemporary elements are combined with the historical background, with the meaning of crossing, which is the common feature of most urban legends in Beijing, including the legend of Beijing subway.

“The sedan chair in the tunnel” and the strange events of some historical sites are also typical stories in this mode.

“The sedan chair in the tunnel” means that a passenger once saw through the rear window of the car. There were four people in the tunnel carrying the sedan chair, swaying and following the subway… (but this sounds a bit scary at first The story was broken by Inspector Ma on Hucha radio)

Princess tomb, Lama Temple, Beixinqiao, these historical sites are not to mention, when you ask, children who grew up in Beijing like Lele and Zhazhajun can immediately tell a basket of ancient allusions and Strange things today. Is there any relationship between the longan under the Beixin Bridge, the stolen princess grave, and the subway passengers who passed by these places and disappeared out of thin air after many years, or entered the parallel space?

Lele is willing to believe that there is, she said, this legend is also part of the culture.

What’s interesting is that not only the urban legends about Beijing have subtle similarities, but also the stories about subways have similar elements when looking at the world.

Some cities may not have a long history like Beijing, but the complicated engineering system still makes the subway mysterious and echoes in different storylines.

For example, the incident of the disappearance of the MTR girl shared by Inspector Ma in Hucha is similar to the time when the Beijing Wukesong newspaper seller disappeared.

The MTR girl disappeared in November 1981. At that time, a subway train entered the Yau Ma Tei platform (the specific site varies). The conductor and several passengers witnessed a girl in white (also in school uniform) falling into the track. The conductor braked suddenly, but the train was still sliding After a while, according to the captain, he felt something was caught under the car while sliding, guessing it was a girl. MTR staff and the police then launched rescue operations.

But something strange happened, there was nothing unusual in the tracks, let alone the girl’s bodyBody, not even blood. The girl just disappeared.

The Wukesong newspaper seller disappeared in December 2007. The reports circulating on the Internet are written like this:

“Yesterday afternoon, a man suspected of being a newspaper seller jumped off the platform at Wukesong Subway Station and disappeared after entering the tunnel. Nearly 5 hours later, Line 1 was suspended for 20 minutes to search for the man. Today, the search for the man failed. Today At two o’clock in the morning, 12 hours after the incident, the search and rescue police evacuated.”

The story of falling into track and disappearing, after 30 years, has almost the same key elements. They all seem to have heads and tails, and they can’t stand scrutiny, but unexpectedly, Inspector Ma found the follow-up of the disappearance of the MTR girl…

Another type of plot that enters parallel time and space, there are also intertextualities between the mystery of the lost girl who transfers to Beijing’s Line 1 and the incident at Kisaragi Station in Japan. For the specific plot, allow me to sell it. Please listen to it on Hucha Radio.

After sorting out these stories, we can’t help but wonder why the subway has become the main scene for ghost talk lovers at home and abroad to create urban legends?

Inspector Ma analyzed, because the subway is a “familiar but unfamiliar scene”.

Familiarity is because many people cannot do without the subway and commute to work every day.

Unfamiliar because:

1. The subway has to guarantee the transportation of passengers, and the internal operation situation is unknown to ordinary people. Some behaviors are not fully understood by everyone, so there may be urban legends and folk interpretations of these behaviors.

2. The subway has a certain particularity, because it is underground, which may give people more associations. For example, there are bones buried in the ground, and the underground is heavy.

Inspector Ma also mentioned a similar history. In the 1930s, the United States widely spread an urban legend, the disappearing hitchhiker.

The background at the time was that in the first few years of the twentieth century, Ford had just manufactured a car that could be mass-produced, and by 1937, The car has become very popular. On the one hand, cars are being used more and more, on the other hand, it is also a new thing. Because one of the characteristics of the car is a confined space, the driver in front cannot see the back, so some people think that behind this legend may represent the person’s unfamiliarity and distrust of new things.

We still have a speculation whether these terrifying legends are actually a way to spread experience and warnings. For example, so many stories about falling into the track are actually reminding us to keep a safe distance from the subway track.

The same question, I also asked Lele. She said that for her, in addition to the above, these stories are also plot needs. In such a monotonous two-point round trip, between the closing and opening of the car door, there must be clues to enrich the literary imagination of the commuters. In an era when we have given up our fantasy of “My Savage Girlfriend” and “Go Left, Go Right”.

You have heard those strange stories about the subway, please tell us in the comment section. If you have followed the Huxiuyou content public account “that NG” (ID: huxiu4youth), you are welcome to leave a message in the comment area of ​​the “that NG” public account.

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