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Three bits of subway news updates for the faithful readership… this, of course, CN Reviews’s faithful readership. The scary thing is that yours truly doesn’t appear on the outside to be a journalist — he’s no press credentials and has one of those “civilian” (as opposed to “pro”) cameras.

But even the slightest move of the Beijing Subway system can’t escape eyes of David Feng… A trip to Shaoyaoju station on Line 13 reveals that the folks behind the Subway system are making the best just a bit better (although from a personal viewpoint, better albeit slower)…

• Installing: New AFC Systems

There is a rumor going around that David Feng will get a new MacBook Air and an iPhone by the time Line 10 opens in June 2008. There is also a rumor going around that the new Subway gates will get thinner, making the once-productive David Feng bag (with a 17-inch PowerBook G4 and a MacBook) a perfect candidate for The Computer Bag Combo That Will Always Be Stuck In The Subway Access Gates. Today, I got to see the new, thinner and less productive AFC access gates being installed.

At first sight, it seems like those AFC access gates on Line 13 will be just a bit wider than their devilishly thin Line 5 counterparts. Even so, they’ll be a lot thinner than the current “wide access” gates, which are merely POS machines without any physical access barriers. (There is a “human” access barrier nearby (I know this sounds “bad”) in the form of the ticket checker — he or she will stop just about anyone from entering the subway system without paying for a ticket.)

AFC access gates aren’t new to Beijing — if you were there on the very last day of 2003, you saw Line 13 start using them. An all-AFC subway network, though, is new to the capital. The Underground Powers That Be have apparently let David Feng be more productive: a March 2008 intro was rolled back to May 2008, which has since then been unproductively (or in the eyes of yours truly, productively) rolled back to June 2008.

• Testing: New Automated Ticketing Systems

Meanwhile, to make the subway stations even less humane (ah — I long for the days of buying your ticket from the ticket lady, and getting the lady next to the steps to rip your ticket into shreds as you enter the subway system), The Underground Powers That Be are thinking of installing all-automatic ticketing system, which — by the way — will support English (although we’re not sure if Chinglish will be used as a stepping stone, language-wise).

Presently, the auto ticketing systems seem less than spectacular — displays on the top of the machine plus tacky moving pics of the Temple of Heaven. Come June 2008, however, these machines should be ready for the masses.

• Building: The New Subway Line 10 Link

As I headed outside Exit B, I was a tad disappointed that the subway station didn’t have a connection handy with the soon-to-be-reality Subway Line 10. Then I saw this:

If my eyes and brains aren’t tricking me, this will probably be the new link to Line 10. They’ll probably add a covered extension so that people won’t get to change trains in freezing snow or merciless rainstorms.

Nearby the existing Shaoyaoju Line 13 station (in what can only be best-described as “flesh pink” in color) are four glass cubes, which are supposed to be Line 10 stations. Some even have the station signage done; this, though, is less than perfect, with white-on-yellow text.

Even so, I left the station feeling — well, if I may, feeling the change. This Shaoyaoju station, ever so close to my former university (UIBE, or the University of International Business and Economics), is no longer going to be an isolated station in the middle of nowhere.

Things are changing.

And the funniest thing is — I’m no longer going to school — chez UIBE.