nine favorite subway/train stations
liuliqiaodong （六里桥东站）
one block away from where my cousin lives. it has three exits and the green line (line 9) runs through it. it is one stop away from the beijing west railway station. outside is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and a veritable heaven of bubble tea.
chaoyang park （朝阳公园站）
line 3 and 14 run through it. i like the ceiling patterns, they remind me of minecraft texturing. i was here with my mom when she took me to where she used to work in chaoyang district.
national library （国家图书馆站）
the end of the green line, although lines 4 and 16 also run through it. when i was in middle school, i thought the style of the pillars and the lamps was profoundly grand, and the maze-looking character made the ground feel hallowed, although i would probably consider the decoration tacky now.
beiyunhexi （北运河西站）
line 6 runs through it. i liked the high ceilings. i have a memory of getting out on this stop with my mom during rush hour and pretending like we were heading to work together.
pinganli （平安里站）
line 4, 6, and 19 run through it. i liked the blocky ceiling on the line 19 platform. there's another place where the blocks drip down. the randomness of it, in comparison to the orderly formation of the line 19 platform, is satisfying.
taipei main station
near zhengzhou road, the busiest station in taiwan. the signage is very good. it connects directly to the taipei city mall and possibly other underground malls. we stayed in a hotel near this to visit my grandma, next door to a food stall that sold magnificent pork and cabbage buns. every single morning by the mall entrance the stairs were swarmed with teen girls practicing kpop choreography, and we had to valiantly squeeze by.
downtown berkeley (shattuck ave)
the red and orange line run through it. emerging into the street in the evening is one of the best things you can do in berkeley. there is something zootopia-esque about it, you feel like a hamster leaving the tube.
van cortlandt park-242nd st
the terminal station of the 1 train. it's very charming: the platform is elevated, and the reddish roofed area that leads into the stairs has a kind of whimsical ghibli bay window. apparently it has the only scrolled station sign in the nyc subway. this is how eve, jen, sar, and i navigated to yonkers every day for a week. it was always windy. in the morning after it snowed, the roof of the stairs had never looked so bright.
embankment
there is a loop tunnel that supposedly, after being closed off, was flooded during the blitz when a bomb entered it. i like the front entrance. although the utter lack of structure of the wall art is dismaying. modernism has been a scourge upon the earth.