 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Hey, we're back. We're in China now. We're in Beijing. This is Think Tech Asia, Think Tech Global. And we're talking today about moving 21.7 million people a day across Beijing, a city larger than the size of the state of Connecticut. And to have this discussion, our regular contributing guest host was Russell Liu. He's in Beijing. Russell, it's so nice to see you. Where are you in Beijing? Well, Jay, it's nice to see you. I'm actually at a coffee house in the second largest publishing company in China, next to the University of the Beijing Foreign Studies University. And I'm having a real cappuccino, real cappuccino. 15 years ago, you couldn't get this. You do get around, Russell. So why don't you introduce the subject to us? I mean, I remember when 9 million bicycles in Beijing was a lot of bicycles, but we've changed that now. We have more people in Beijing. We have more development. We have a huge, big economy in Beijing. And that means transportation issues. Can you talk about it? Well, Jay, Beijing has 21.7 million. And now that two years ago, it was awarded the bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Well, actually, this city is going to get huge. It's going to be a mega city. It's going to be now 82,000 square miles in a few years. And it's going to be bigger than the size of Connecticut. It's going to be bigger than the size of Kansas. And it's going to hold a population larger than a third of the United States. Imagine this is quarter. So the transportation is critical. And the city is wrapping up its transportation in these days. Well, Rob, but I remember you used to walk around with an attaché case that had a gas mask in there. And I know that there's an inversion issue around Beijing with the perimeter roads and all that. And the mountains outside of Beijing, it tends to fold in on itself. And you get a lot of problems with the air and breathing. 21.7 million people are going to be comfortable. And if you make it a third of the population of the United States, that could be less comfortable, what do you expect is going to happen with the air in Beijing? Well, Jay, it's interesting because the motor transportation had been bicycled. I mean, bicycles are making a comeback as part of the green movement in Beijing. But I think the roads and cars are a big thing to try to. And the infrastructure is really very good. And I think I've got a video just to show our viewers out there what the road looks like on a clear day in Beijing, sunny skies, no pollution, but cars. OK, let's take a look at it. OK, that looks like an American city except that row of huge residential condos or apartment buildings on the left-hand side, that's a lot of units. And I remember when I visited you some years ago, you took me through a neighborhood like that. And there was an awful lot of big buildings just like that. And it was impressive. You could find that in an American city, but exactly in Beijing, it's bigger than an American city. Yes, Jay. In fact, that's a shot of high-dead, which is where a lot of the technology companies are. This is where the technology workers live. This is where all the major universities of China are located, the high-dead district. But this is kind of like on the outskirts, not in the main government area. But you can see how modern Beijing is. You can see how good the infrastructure cars are. But it's really worse than that. Let me add one thing, Russell. Let me add one thing. No potholes. I looked at that video. I look at that clip. I didn't see any potholes at all. So the Chinese have really got it over us now on potholes. No, you're exactly right, Jay. You had a great observation. That's what I wanted to show. No potholes. They do a meticulous job of having roads that are well-maintained. It's so clean. You won't even see any rubbish on the roads. So it's credible. We go back to this major problem. It's the China dream. Everybody wants to own a car. And so transportation now for the last 10 years, maybe seven years, we have 300 million cars registered in China. That's more than US. In 2013, China had 20 million cars versus 15.6 million in the US. Now it's up to 300 million. Beijing alone has 5.6 million cars in Beijing. And a population of 21.7 million in a city that's larger than Connecticut, 6,000 square miles, and a population density twice as that in New York City. So as you can see, transportation is so important, Jay. Yes. Yes, I mean, if you get locked up in a city that size, the city stops functioning. The economy stops functioning. And people can't really live. So for a quality of life in a city that size, you really must have transportation. So let's talk about it. What have you got available to get around? What facilitates your ability to get from one side, the city, to another? You know, Jay, let's take a look at, I've got a video here just to give our audience a flavor, an introduction of what's it like on a Saturday afternoon. It was a little bit busy. Let's look and see what the street looks like with cars. And then we can then introduce our audience into some of the modes of transportation. Yeah, this is you. Just this past Saturday, 48 hours ago, right? That's right. As you can see, it's, I'm all dressed up out there. I'm out in the pollution. I'm out in the streets, right on round zero. I almost got hit by a car, but let's take a look. I'm Russell Liu, ThinkTipGlobal. And we're here today to look at China's transportation system. In 2014, there were 300 million registered drivers in China. And I think that number today has eclipsed the number of auto drivers in the US. As you can look around me, you can see what's it like on a typical Saturday afternoon. Although the show is on a Tuesday morning, I wanted to give you an idea. This is gridlock transportation. You have cars of all sorts, double-decker buses. So how do people move around here? With a population of 20 million people on any given day, Beijing still has to move around. Here are the sounds and sights. And we're going to take you to explore and examine the Beijing transportation system. It's like Midtown Manhattan with all that traffic beeping whatnot. I mean, you've got to appreciate Hawaii. We don't hunk our horns that way. But New York does. And I guess Beijing does too, eh? Yes, I love to be in Hawaii when I consider the streets here in Beijing on a crowded day like this. Lots of pollution, but you can see how people live. They love their cars. But the government is getting cracking down on this. So what's happening, Jay, is that now you have to win a lottery. You have to actually win a lottery to be able to get a permit to register and to get a car. And you can wait two to three years. I have friends that have waited two to three years. And God knows when they're going to get a car. Allow them to be registered. Well, that's actually great. As far as I'm concerned, I think you've got to limit cars. Otherwise, you get everybody congested all day long. And frankly, in Hawaii, we should have limited cars in Honolulu a long time ago. We'd have a better quality of life here. And I think the Chinese are very smart to put that kind of limitation on things. Yes, Jay. And so then the question is, if they're going to limit the cars, we've got the bikes that's the green movement. But we talked about that in the previous segment. But a couple of years ago, Jay, you may recall. I believe that you came with me. I think we jumped on a bus. And I kind of want to show the audience what the Chinese bus looks like. Now, this is a double-decker bus. I had to do this in a day when the bus was not crowded. Otherwise, I could not walk through crowds of people. But we're going to take a look at the bus. And like you say, people, Americans are afraid to get on the bus. They don't get on the bus here. They're afraid. But it's dirt cheap. It's about too quiet to rent and be for about 30 cents. And the bus can literally take you right around the city, right around this huge, Macaulay City. And in fact, it's sort of like riding the bus. But let's take a look at what a bus looks like. Yeah, great. I'm on Beijing due to catch the bus. As you can see, the buses are all sorts, double-decker buses. There are buses that come on time every few minutes. So you never will miss your ride. And it's very easy because all it takes is one of these cards. This card will get you the bus. And it'll get you also the subway. And a bus ride, typically, it's about too rent indeed, too quiet. So it's a very affordable means of transportation. 21.7 million people. Many ride the bus. I noticed a lot of people on that bus had their cell phones. And we're tweeting or doing social media, one kind or another. I suppose that's universal these days. But it wasn't crowded. And it was clean. And the whole thing looked like a pretty good experience. And I say to myself, gee, why can't Honolulu have double-decker buses? Isn't it easier to have a double-decker bus than one of those long connected two bus in a row things? Again, they really have their hand on how to do this. And I really like the notion that you can always get a bus. You don't have to wait very long. So that could be a favorite way to get around the city. Jay, it's interesting that you point out these buses are very efficient. They actually are very, very efficient. If you miss a bus, you want to catch a certain bus. It's like two minutes later, another bus comes in and you can catch it. And what you didn't see on this bus was something that's standard in all the Beijing buses, especially the long committees. There's a TV. There's ongoing commercials and TV running. And so it's really interesting how they work this in. And it's usually one person who's a conductor. One thing they must be missing though, and I'm sad for them, is that on the TV they have on the bus where you sit and you ride on the bus and you watch the TV, they don't have Think Tech away. They don't have Russell Liu talking about transportation in Beijing. You've got to speak to those people, Russell, and we can give you all kinds of footage they can include on their buses, don't you think? I think that'd be great. And they don't have Jay Fidel on the bus. We need to get a Jay Fidel, a big smiling Jay Fidel who says have a nice day, have a Think Tech day. Anyway, that's really nice. And so is that your favorite way of getting around on the bus? When you and I were together in Beijing, when I visited you, you took me on the bus and it was an easy way to get around. It wasn't the only way though. But Jay, what I want to get to the main meat of this today's topic is the really efficient way what they've done is the subways. Now, the subway is very critical because moving people off the cars, getting the subways and literally a huge city. Just a business district is like one end of LA to the next. And I want to give readers a glimpse of what the subway looks like before, but let me give you a background. Now, do you know what city is the largest subway in the world in terms of miles? London. No, not even London. That can guess. New York. Okay, fair, all right. So a few years ago, it was purported that Shanghai had the largest number of miles for tracks in the city, 240 miles, but today Beijing has 357, it might have, I'm sorry, it has 430 miles in the city. And now it is, I believe the largest subway system in the world. London has only 250 miles, New York has only 232 miles versus 430 miles of subway line miles. And there's 19 lines, 19 lines, 345 stations. Can you imagine that? I think there's a map, you can take a quick look what the Beijing subway looks like. Just looking at the map. You want to show the map? Yeah, I'm showing the map now. It looks like a New York subway map as a matter of fact, with the color coded lines and the 19 lines and all that, going out into the suburbs. And it sure looks like a lot of options and a lot of crisscrosses where you can transfer and move from one line to another. It looks complex. Russell, do you get lost with so much subway? Well, Jay, it's actually, once you get the subway, it's seamless. I jump in a subway, I can get clear across city. Never popping out to smell the pollution or see the pollution. And I just transfer, I use a card, which allows me swipe it in to go in. And actually now, if you have an Android phone, you can actually use your phone to swipe in at the subway toll gate. Not only that, currently there's about 12 million people who ride the subway daily, 12 million people. By 2020, the city ridership will be about 19 million people, but it's really big. So let's take a look at, and let's go down the tube. Let's see what it looks like. I got a video on that. Before we go down the tube, Russell, before we go down the tube, we're gonna have a short break. That's why people can appreciate going down the tube all the more when we come back from this break. That's Russell Liu. And we're talking about the Beijing Transportation Blues. He joins us by Skype from Beijing, and we're moving 21.7 million people in the city larger than the state of Connecticut here on ThinkTech. When we take a short break, we'll come back, and we're gonna find out what it's like to go down the tube. This is ThinkTech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm a firefighter. A teacher. I'm a farmer. I'm a barber. A waitress. A mom. We're all part of your community. Every day we move in and out of each other's busy lives. It's easy to take for granted all the little moments that make up our everyday. Some are good, others not so much. But that's life. It's when you experience a moment of uncertainty, something or someone's behavior that doesn't seem quite right. These are the moments to take a pause. Because if something doesn't feel right, it's probably not. It's not about paranoia or being afraid. It's about standing up and protecting our communities. One detail at a time. Because a lot of little details can become a pattern. We. We. We. We trust our instincts. Just like you should. Because only you know what's not supposed to be in your everyday. So protect your everyday. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. Okay, we're back. We're live with Russell Yu, who joins us from Beijing live by Skype. And he's been giving us these videos from over the weekend showing us all his adventures and taking various transportation modes around Beijing. It's really impressive. You know, I mean, we have a background behind me from the Forbidden City, which suggests, you know, that Beijing is an ancient city and it is an ancient city. But if you look at Russell's videos, it's modern. It's one of the most modern cities you can find in the world right now. So Russell, can you take us down the tube and show what it's like in the underground of Beijing? Yes, Jake. Let's go down into the Beijing Tube, the largest subway system in the world. We're gonna catch the Beijing Rail subway, one of the most efficient, largest subway systems in the world. And see and experience what it is to ride the subway and to see how fast the subway will take and how comfortable it is where we're gonna travel clear across the city many, many miles. Think of Beijing like Los Angeles. If you went from the top of Los Angeles to the bottom of Los Angeles, it's a very far distance, but we're gonna show you how efficient travel is in China. Time to get off the station. This is the Beijing South River Station. This is the Saturday afternoon in China. The gate's out here. And as you can see, people lining up. Simply, they will go to the gate with their tickets. They will catch the escalator down right to the platform. And it's very easy to catch a train in Beijing. Again, Russell, from the Beijing South Railway Station. That's really impressive, Russell. It looks like a convention center. It's brand new. All those signs and colors and animation. And it's a very pleasant place to be. It's obvious that Beijing, the city of Beijing, the country of China, has put plenty of bucks into that to design it and make it so spacious and comfortable. I'm really impressed. I mean, a very few subway systems look as good as that one. And frankly, New York subway doesn't look anywhere near as good as that one, sorry. So I guess they're really invested in it. And I guess for a good reason. So how do you avoid getting lost? How do you avoid getting lost in the subway system that size? You know, Jay, you don't get lost. Everything is done intuitively. Every subway car, there's a map and it shows you the connection points. And every subway station, you can find maps all around. And better yet, Tim Cook at Apple are happy. Because you know why? Everybody downloads. I've got like four different apps for the subway. And it shows me the map of every place. And I can plug in with my iPhone and I can say, I'm gonna go from this station to this station, what's the best route? And it will pull up and tell me what's the best route? It will actually pull it up on my Apple phone app. And not only that is foreigners like to ride the subway. Why? Because of WTO, everything's in Chinese and English. So all the announces are not only in Chinese, but in English. So if you go to some of the other Asian cities, I don't think you have bilingual aspect. And it's amazing. Everybody can speak English to young people. So if you get lost, you just ask people, where is this place? And it's great because when I go out, say, across the city for dinner to meet somebody, I ask the restaurant, what's a subway exit? My standard lie, they tell me exactly which exit A, B, C, or D, and how far from the subway. So it's incredible. It's amazing how transportation is done here in Beijing, China. Yeah, smart, good planning, investment of a lot of money, I'm sure, but it's a worthy cause with a city that's size which requires this kind of transportation. Do these apps work on GPS? I mean, will they tell you where you are at a given moment in the system? I'm sorry, Jay, I must have missed my line here. Okay, will the apps tell you where you are at a given moment in the system? Well, yes, I have my smartphone. And it will tell me exactly where I am in the city and I never get lost. And I can find out how to get to the subway lines very easy from there. In fact, I have a Garmin watch and I actually downloaded the Chinese map in here so I can get on my phone and figure it for my Garmin where to get, it'll show me the actual walking route or the route that I drive on. So we talk about modern day world. It's a global world with technology and it's amazing what technology does and how the Chinese have leveraged it to make life easier, make life better. But as I say, Jay, not only for the Chinese, not only for you, who lives there, but for visitors and Americans and tourists from all over the world, it sounds like it's really easy to get around. This is a great advance, not only for the local people but for everyone who visits Beijing, yeah. Yes, Jay, and it's amazing. I've been here now 15 years. When I first got here, Jay, I actually rode those mini buses. You had one subway line, two subway line, buses, not as many, but I rode the mini bus. And if you go into Time Magazine, you'll go back 1520. You'll see people in little mini bus all hollering wearing green jackets and a cold winter day, trying to make it from one end to another in a city, a short route. And today it's amazing what has happened. Modern infrastructure, modern roads, no potholes, as you notice, and the subways are great. But the big news is 2022 with the Winter Olympics in China, Beijing's gonna expand and it's gonna grow six times greater. And the new thing it's gonna be is the train lines, not subway train lines, to connect this vast region. And one of the next shows, we're gonna take a look on China's high-speed rail. China has now the fastest high-speed rail in the world and the ride is fantastic. And we would like to take a look and see that. What is it like to ride the rail? I have friends that last night took the high-speed rail from Beijing to Shenzhen and they're gonna cross over to Hong Kong today. And it's gonna be six hours. Wow. Okay, let's take a look at that. Okay, we don't have a video on that. But I'm really impressed with that because otherwise it would take all days to get down to Hong Kong. And now you can go from Beijing, which is in the northeast quadrant of the country all the way down there in six hours. That's really remarkable. That's gotta be one of the fastest trains in the world, President. Yes, Jay. And so the rail, which is another motor transmission which we'd like to have feature is incredible because now the One Belt, One Road project, China is gonna connect all the way up through the Middle East, up through Turkey, up to all these places, all the way to Europe. About a few months ago, the first train, France, Canada, went from Yiwu, China, which is near Shanghai, all the way up to London, all the way into 12 days. So we're seeing how the Chinese are making transportation work for them economically as well as making it convenient for people to live. So what's happening is that in Beijing itself, people are starting to move away from the city to being able to afford housing because the transportation system works here. And it's a miracle. So it's part of China's central planning. They've done a great job, as I've seen over the past 15 years and things are gonna get even just way out of scale. We'll see in the next few years. Well, I have to visit you again, Russell. Maybe I'll take the Chinese train from Europe all the way across Russia or the soft underbelly there and arrive and find you in Beijing on a fantastic train ride using the Chinese train, One Road, fabulous. And it's gotta be a huge leverage for the Chinese economy, for the Chinese image in the world, for the Chinese connectivity with so many other places. So smart. Gee whiz. I can't wait to do it, Russell. So what would you say to summarize all of this? What would you say it means to you and to us? Well, I think for our audience in the US we just need to become more global. We need to use the technology. We need to dream a little bit, you know, and we cannot be afraid of it because this is what's happening. And this is an example of how the Chinese is technology, how it makes them more global and how it makes life much more easier to live in. It's much more convenient. And hopefully we'll get the rail or the mass transit line and how to little working and we'll hopefully at least experience something like that. Yeah, well, we can learn a lot. So are you gonna see Donald Trump when he comes around on Friday? Well, we hope to see Donald Trump. I understand that he's coming on Friday, but the traffic's gonna be a mess. I may not be able to get out of the subway after US Embassy. Thank you, Russell. It's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for those video clips and I look forward to talking with you again soon. That's Russell Liu, an American lawyer living and working in Beijing on Think Tech Global. And he's talking about the Beijing transportation blues and successes. Aloha, Sijin, Sheshe, Russell. For the audience. They do. You're getting better at figuring them out and being in the right place and all that. So all in all, I think that was a great show. So what are some more interesting things? I think the big...