By Chen Feng

2 Jan, 2009, Sydney

After living in Sydney for almost one and a half years, I feel very lucky that there are no huge crowds in the city. I can always remember that every working morning back in Beijing, I was crushed like sardine on subway line one from my home to my CRI office. It was almost unbearable in the summer, but I managed to stand it. Thank god for Sydney.

Every day you only see a few people but many cars flying by on the roads in my suburban area. There are no long queues in the banks, shops and medical centres and the best thing is you can always get a seat on the train. No, sometimes you can get a whole carriage to yourself.

But, on this New Year's Eve (I stayed home last New Year's Eve), I was wondering "am I back in Beijing?" My wife and I tried to get on the train to go to the centre of the city, for the world-renowned fireworks. The train was delayed due to "crowds" at the preceding station, according to a station announcement.

At last, it arrived and we found that we had to stand along the aisle with other people, the first time I have had to STAND on a train in Sydney, and it seemed that the train itself could not bear the heavy load and ran much slower than usual, with an uncomfortable noise rubbing the rail.

When we finally reached the Harbour area, I came to realize the situation: one and half million people out of four million Sydney residents were there! For the first time in my life, I became scared of seeing so many strangers around us, which I had been quite used to in China.

I was left to wonder, why are there so many people in Sydney?