Yesterday, on November 15, 2025, our office moved from the area near Shanghai Railway Station to the West Bund in Xuhui. My commute shrank from one hour to thirty minutes, and my time on the metro dropped from half an hour to just five minutes. For the first time in years, my daily round-trip commute has returned to a comfortable under one hour.
The surroundings of the new office, as well as the building and the workplace itself, are all dramatically different. But what truly lifted a weight off my shoulders is that I no longer have to pass through the station square in front of Shanghai Railway Station every single workday.
I’m not sure what impression others have of the squares in front of Chinese railway stations. For me, they’ve always been an ever-present source of discomfort and unease.
When I was studying in Chengdu, I often needed to take trains home during winter and summer vacations. I once witnessed someone using an IC-card payphone, leaving their suitcase outside their line of sight, only for a thief behind them to crouch down and quietly drag it away.
I also experienced a scam with a classmate in one of the small shops near the station. Later, after observing carefully, I realized those shops had all built the same trap. They piled a bunch of rechargeable flashlights on a table outside. On the top layer, one flashlight’s wrist strap was tucked underneath another. When you picked up the upper one, the lower one would “accidentally” roll off the table. Next to the pile, they placed a sign that read “Clearance Sale – 10 RMB Each.” Once we started arguing about who should pay for the flashlight that fell, several burly men would emerge from nearby shops and surround us, staring menacingly until we emptied all the cash we had.
After I started working, train tickets during the Spring Festival travel season became hard to get, and I often had to wait at Xi’an Railway Station. The station square was always packed with people. Many small shops around it offered luggage storage, but the way they treated customers felt more like herding livestock—barking orders at you about exactly how to place your bags. Taxis by the square almost never used the meter; every trip was a flat price. Yet if you walked just a few hundred meters away from the area, taxis would use the meter, and the fare would usually end up far lower than the “flat rate.”
Later, while traveling for work, I hadn’t taken trains for a long time and briefly forgot the “rule” of staying away from station squares. At a small restaurant near the square of Yiwu Railway Station, I paid with a 100-yuan note. The cashier took it, glanced at it, and immediately handed it back, claiming it was fake. Whatever switch he made in that moment, I didn’t notice. But by the time the bill returned to my hand, it unmistakably looked like a counterfeit.
Back at Shanghai Railway Station, the area used to be equally chaotic and grimy. Walking across the square, you could always feel unfriendly eyes scanning you. Once, while chatting with a friend on the way out, we suddenly sensed someone sticking too close behind us. When we turned around, we saw a young Uyghur boy with his hand already on my friend’s backpack zipper. Once we spotted him, he bolted, shouting crude words in rough-sounding Mandarin. A quick look around revealed two or three adult Uyghur men standing not far away, glaring at us as if waiting for an opportunity.
Years of these experiences in railway station squares have shaped my travel habits. Whenever possible, I choose to drive for short-distance trips and fly for long-distance ones.
As cities have developed, the infrastructure around stations has improved significantly. But certain behaviors—and certain kinds of people—haven’t changed nearly as quickly. Theft seems less common now, but you can still find middle-aged women whispering “Need a room?” to passersby, and if you hesitate, they’ll add quietly to single men, “There are services.” And the restaurants catering to train travelers remain overpriced and terrible. If cleaning lags for even a moment, food packaging, cigarette butts, and all kinds of trash immediately cover the ground.
All things considered, moving away from the station area—and no longer having to cross that square twice every workday—feels like nothing but a relief.