Bomb Scare on Beijing Subway

No, it didn't happen to me, but it's still interesting.

A fellow traveler in China was on the #1 line today, and at a station, while the doors stood open, everyone started screaming and ran. Nobody knew why, or who started it, but it was panic and mayhem. The police apparently responded moderately well, yelling at people to all get upstairs and out of the station right away. Regardless of what's going on, if there is panic, you want to get people to fresh air and open spaces so they can feel distant from the source of the unknown panic, and so they can have time to relax.

Turns out there was an apparent bomb scare. The police did not explain it, but it might be a Xinjiang separatist, or something. We talked about how often this stuff happens--and it turns out, we have no idea. The Beijing government does _not_ publicize this stuff in the papers, so it could happen every few months, or have been happening daily (though we would likely be hearing more rumors to the effect if the latter were true). We also don't know how serious the threat was--people hung outside for about 20 minutes, but that could have just meant a very thorough check of the trains, which is the right response.

So all in all, I'm pretty glad I'm leaving Beijing soon. Bomb scares are just the last thing I want.