At 9 pm, the locked doors of the Agape Church opened and a crowd of twenty-something Chongqing residents with backpacks and guitars streamed out to chat on the dimly-lit pavement.

From the outside, the church looks like an office building. The newcomer in the group is a student member of the Communist Party of China. The medical student introduced himself by his English name, Forever. We were in Chongqing, the southwest sprawl on the Yangtze, with a population as big as Mumbai plus Kolkata. It is the largest municipality on the planet, a cluster of districts including 40 counties under central administration.

“In the future, you will see Shanghai in the east and Chongqing in the west,” said Zhou Bo, a propaganda official. For now, the metropolis is still laidback. In the sweltering afternoon when temperatures hit 39 degrees, the city goes to sleep. Chongqing is better-known for the iron fisted rule of its top official Bo Xilai, who has sent over 4,000 criminals into jail and ordered the singing of Mao-era red songs in public places, than for its new Chongqing-Antwerp freight train transporting thousands of laptops.

I opted out of the Yangtze cruise to see the Chongqing nightlife and decided to wander on foot, subway, a taxi reeking of tobacco and by bus to glimpse a slice of student life in this nationalist wartime capital of China. During the entire evening, I never spotted another Indian. Forever met me at the Hilton, which was last year downgraded after a raid on ‘prostitution and gang activities’, making it perhaps the world’s lowest priced Hilton.

We walked to the Lianglukou entrance of the new Chongqing subway. The maps were entirely in Chinese so I needed an attendant’s help to buy a ticket to the station closest to the church. “Careful. Risk of hand pinching,’’ warned a signboard.

The subway, one of the latest transport projects in 20 cities across China, was surprisingly empty considering the population of Chongqing. As we poured out of the station into the basement of a high-rise mall, Forever said just one thing. “Wow.” I wondered where were all the people in the most populous city, because the mall like the subway station, was near empty.

We waited on the pavement for the church doors to open. I was told this is where more and more children of atheist Chinese parents are coming in search of spiritual solace, often against their parents’ wishes. They sing hymns, discuss the Bible and practise English with foreigners. Personal challenges typical to modern Chinese life including job pressures and rising property prices that delay marriage prospects come up in the discussions.

Paul, who spent a year working as an interpreter in India, said he was baptised this summer, much to his parents’ consternation. “Jesus found me,” he said.

Jacky, an English schoolteacher, learnt to read the Bible while studying English in university. “I feel inner peace when I am inside the church,” he said. This group says it believes in state authority. Chongqing has a separate set of believers who congregate in underground house churches.

We strolled past the church to the liberation monument, first built to commemorate Sun Yat Sen. The wooden tower is circled by luxury storefronts, pedestrians out for evening walks and ‘bang bang’ men, who earn a living carrying shopping bags on bamboo poles, sleeping on the pavements.

I asked the students about the nightspots I Googled — a singles bar called True Love and Pirates Pub — and heard that both were shutdown.

So I hopped aboard Bus number 405. A stock broker returning home from an ‘English corner’ where locals gather to hone their conversation skills, began chatting about how his city changes by the month and taxi drivers who return from annual holidays get lost in the maze of new landmarks.

I wanted to ask him more questions about Chongqing. But the man became insistent to talk about India. “Aren’t you going to ask me about India?’’ he demanded.

As my bus stop neared and the lights were switched on, the man had his say in a rush. “I don’t want to put a hammer on your heart,’’ he said in English. “But we want India to be prosperous and developed. So that Indians will stop thinking about war.’’

For more comments on India in Chongqing, see this.

“Dowry, the payment by the bride’s family to the bridegroom’s family, has been a social practice in India for a long time. The groom often demands a dowry consisting of a large sum of money, farm animals, furniture, and electronics, which results in the fact that many women in India have difficulties to get married,” the caption declared.

And last month, a separate Chinese posting has uploaded pictures of Indian women on the popular website ifeng with the title ‘men like to rent a wife’ and an introductory paragraph bizarrely stating that Indian women, whether rich or superstars, cannot escape a feudal marriage. The website claims, among other things, that poor Indian men rent out their wives, and all Indian women have a low status in society. On Sunday, the post had attracted 1,392 comments that sparked strong comparisons with Chinese society where 24 million men will be forced bachelors by 2020 because of a sex ratio skewed by over three decades of the one-child policy and a traditional preference for sons.

The Chinese investigative magazine Caixin recently exposed the story of missing children in Hunan province, who were snatched from the arms of parents by overbearing local family planning officials who then allegedly put the children up for adoption.

India, with 940 women per 1,000 men — compared to about 840 women per 1,000 men in China — is also grappling with the predominant preference for male heirs. The trend is changing in the modern layers of contemporary Indian society, but you may not read about it in the state media in China which routinely reports India as a chaotic, backward exotica.

A translation of the latest comments on ifeng:

Indian women come to China. Many Chinese men can’t find wives. If you come to China you will give birth to a beautiful superstar _ Wan Mei Zhu Zi from Guangdong

Indian girls are so beautiful! It’s good to find an Indian wife _ Yzxd

A netizen compares the tradition of arranged marriage with foot binding in ancient China. “Girls had very big feet. They would feel ashamed when they came out, and people on the streets would laugh at them. So they were not forced (to bind feet) it’s just a custom. Even today girls feel awkward if they have big feet. If you don’t believe, ask your mother if she wants to have big feet _ ibf8799

These things happen in China too. They don’t want girls in villages. Girls can’t get any guarantee in society. Women university students find it hard to get jobs. Many companies don’t want to hire girls. Is it better than India? I don’t think so _ Mmmzzz

India is rubbish _ Xie84643839

Is China better than India? Women in India even have the right to vote. Many websites just say that there are many uncivilised things about India. But actually in the past in China, many family members shared one pair of trousers and brothers shared one wife. I hope you can just look inside yourself before you look down on others _ Yiexing xizang

The social status of women in China has not improved. Women in China are just like commodities _ Shitouwan.

If the dark side of India is true, it is really a shame on mankind – Yooyeh

I’ve been to India for a couple of days. The country is very rich. The people are very poor. The women are so cheap you can buy girls. In China we have marriage laws but in India men can have three or four wives _ Zhexue Jiang

Don’t talk about India. The situation in China is not better – Hanguo

I want to rent a wife – Baizhan Yigong

Days after his piece was published, the former railway minister Liu Zhijun, sacked for corruption this year and nicknamed Great Leap Liu for his orders to design trains topping 350 kmph, summoned Zhao’s boss at the Beijing Jiaotong (transportation) University. He defended his colleague’s right to express his views, but some days later he reportedly told Zhao “if you write things like this, it will affect the ability of the university to get [research] topic [grants from the government].”

A translation of this slice of the inside story of the world’s fastest, longest and most secretive expansion of high-speed rail is available here.

The writers, however, asked more questions than investigating the answers. “As a major strategic national infrastructure project whose budget surpassed that of even the Three Gorges Dam project, how was it that there was no need to put it to a vote within the National People’s Congress? Even further, why was it that information about this project, with direct concern for the national welfare and the people’s livelihood, and expending massive resources drawn from taxpayer monies, could not be made public during the decision-making process and we subjected to public discussion? Why is it that even such basic figures as seat occupancy rates for the high-speed rail have remained a secret, so that even researchers in this area cannot access this information?”

An HT interview with Zhao Jian, published in my Friday column, is available here. Zhao told me that even research scholars advising the railway ministry have no information of what is going on inside it. We met six days after a high-speed train smashed into another train that was stalled by lightning and blackout in east China, killing 40 and injuring 190.

The propaganda machinery ordered the Chinese media to focus on “stories that are extremely moving, like people donating blood and taxi drivers refusing to accept fares” and “great love in the face of great tragedy.”

The state-run Chinese media and millions of micro-blogging netizens hit back against the propaganda – for a week – tweeting faster than the censors could delete. They raised many angry questions – why did lightning stall a high-speed train, why did the signal systems fail to warn the approaching train, why did staff in the control room fail to stop the collision, why were trains on the route resumed so soon, why were lawyers reportedly told not to accept compensation cases, why were carriages buried on the spot and later retrieved, why is the railway ministry gunning for bullet trains despite low occupancy and high ticket prices?

A Chinese media specialist, whose own posts were censored and deleted this week, said the media’s outspokenness may be temporary. The state controls on the media will get ‘tighter and tighter,’ he said.

China’s urban miracle is planned behind a great impenetrable wall by a leadership guarded from public scrutiny. During the last week the media and netizens tried to break free from the state grip and brought sustained pressure on railway authorities to correct some of the bungled investigations and double compensation for the victims’ families.

While the Chinese chase speed, India is painfully slow and insensitive in modernising a creaking, over-crowded network that transports a Mumbai-sized population per day. The muzzle is now back on the Chinese media with fresh orders to report only positive and official versions on the accident. But the media’s temporary burst of free speech and public sensitivity to the accident is worth noting. In India, we need to keep the railway ministry under the microscope and demand answers to some of the same questions clamouring across China, without waiting for the next tragedy on the tracks.

The Foreign Policy blog quotes journalist Lloyd Lofthouse’s comparison of the death toll on the railway tracks in the US, India and China in 2007. Out of the 177 rail accidents during that period, 20% occurred in the United States, 15% occurred in India, and only 4% occurred in China. “But the death toll in India was far greater.”

Then he answered his cell phone during the presentation. “Sorry, it’s my mother,’’ grinned Dong-wook Moon, a member of the Pyeongchang bid committee for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Everybody laughed, including his bosses watching from the edge of the room.

I clapped while watching the live announcement last week that little-known Pyeongchang in the Taebaek slopes of South Korea had beaten Munich and Annecy to host the 2018 Winter Olympics and be the second Asian country after Japan to host the winter games. The town which still gets confused with the North Korean capital, lost its bid twice before, but not its sense of fun in preparing for a project of enormous national prestige.

The presentation in Seoul reminded me of my time spent in rehearsed official briefings in Beijing ahead of the Olympics in 2008. I don’t remember chuckling. The overworked organisers were reeling under so much pressure to host the perfect coming-out party that there was no time to laugh or be spontaneous.

I came back from my first-ever stopover in Seoul last month with a lasting impression of the sense of humour in Korean work culture, even if it involves executing challenges like linking several mountainous Olympics sites within a half-hour commute of each other.

We stayed in a hotel facing Seoul’s favourite venue for protestors, some of who broadcast speeches through the night but did not litter or block traffic. Elsewhere, tourist sites came across as all lovey-dovey and youthful. The Seoul Tower atop the hilly geographical centre of the city has a prominent teddy bear shop. The gift shop hardsells romantic trinkets and souvenir magnets proclaiming lots of love. One of the most crowded restaurants in the Tower markets its pasta and wine on a couples menu and proposal menu.

I had assumed that K-pop bands are a teenage sensation, until an official cheerfully told us that he was joining his daughter to watch a live show the next day.

The restaurant staff, where the group had a final barbecue dinner, didn’t make a fuss when the only vegetarian arrived at the table with her triumphant take-away of roti and palak paneer from next-door Ganga, which happened to be full of South Korean diners. On the streets, I caught a glimpse of only a couple of the estimated 7,000 Indians in the country.

We were shadowed by a crew that worked hard to get camera-shy foreign policy writers to replace cheese with khimchi and smile as much as the officials and chatty residents. On the last evening, we gathered for a group photo session. The organisers instructed us to say I love Korea in Korean, with our arms on top of our heads, forming something like a heart shape. The culture officials in the photo line-up promptly struck the pose.

The 313 attendants on the 1,318-km Beijing-Shanghai bullet train launched last week have earned the online nickname ‘high-speed sisters’ for their charm offensive. The glimpses of smile training sessions reported in the media served to divert some of the public attention away from the high ticket prices and corruption and safety scandals in China’s railroad expansion.

The pretty army carries forward the Chinese economy’s official obsession with hostesses between 19-22 years who can smile showing only six to eight front teeth. They are now an anticipated fixture in every national project starting from the Beijing Olympics to the Harmony trains launched ahead of the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party.

“Crew members must be female, younger than 28 years, be of fair complexion and have a shapely figure that conforms to selection standards,” according to the China Daily. “The crew must be able to converse in English and know all about the train. They must weigh less than 60 kg and be 165-170 cm tall.”

For pictures of the chopstick smiles, see this.

I was aboard the train, traveling ticket-less on a government-organised test run last Monday, read article.

The second-class compartment (555 yuan or Rs 3,885) had narrow blue seats ideal only for weight-conscious passengers. There was a charging point for my laptop and soon there will be wi-fi. The restroom had full-length mirrors and more space than an airline loo. Ahead in the first-class compartment, seats were wider and fitted with reading lamps. The red leather reclining business class seats cost more than an airline ticket with prices fixed at 1,750 yuan (Rs 12,250).

Perhaps frazzled by the railway officials and foreign camera crews roaming the length of the train last Monday, the high-speed sisters began to look nervous and tired after pushing heavy trolleys laden with KFC breakfast bags and later, chicken curry and shrimp lunch boxes. The attendants I spoke to couldn’t converse in English and kept forgetting to bring anything I requested.

The bullet train has world-class technology and Chinese-style service. When I needed a glass of water, I got a choice of green tea or boiling water. The food selection was meaty except for little plastic bowls containing cherries, tomatoes and grapes. I had remembered to put a bread roll in my hand bag when I dashed out of my apartment at 6.30 am, but I was still hungry by lunch time. I requested an attendant to provide one of the packets of nuts that was distributed when I was away from my seat, interviewing an engineer. She forgot to smile or bring it, but she was kind enough to clear the shells left strewn all over my table by a passenger who enjoyed my window seat in my absence.

A few Chinese netizens in the world’s largest online community have started sitting up and taking notice of the Indian civil society movement against corruption.

A man named Chen was inspired by an Indian anti-corruption website to start a counterpart this month to encourage netizens to post their experiences of paying bribes. It’s one of two anti-corruption websites and seven online forums recently launched in China to report bribes, said Xinhua on Sunday. The Hong Kong media first reported this trend last week.

“I haven’t come across any cases that have been especially impressive. Most of the posts are just used to vent personal anger,” Chen told Xinhua.

The Chinese Internet is usually sprinkled with disparaging notes on Indian poverty and infrastructure. But this online corner seems to be changing its mood on learning lessons from India. A Chinese contact sent me a few translated comments on India this week:

Shanmu: These Indian websites are now famous in China…it’s a beginning to listen to the ordinary peoples’ hearts.

Wei Yingjie: In India, there are more than 10,000 corruption cases on this website in less than a year. But in China, many sensitive blogs are sometimes suspended or delayed. I wonder how long these websites can last.

Sunberry: I believe many years later, whether I can see it or not, democracy will eventually be the mainstream…

1171: In the past, I thought India was poor, but now I think China is poorer. We can’t even get medical care.