I remember during the days I worked at JP Morgan Chase while living in Princeton NJ, where the commute was literally hell. To start with, it’s completely inhuman to get up at 4:30AM in the morning just so one can have enough time to brush their teeth and shower. Forget about having breakfast at home, I had to race to the train station as soon as I was ready, risking a speeding ticket every day. After catching the NJ Transit train to NYC, I almost always had to nap on the ride, occasionally being woken up by the conductor after we arrived in Penn Station. Then there is another part of the lengthy commute: getting to the Madison Avenue office from the Penn Station via subway. The arrival time of the subway is not always unpredictable, but it’s guaranteed to be extremely crowded. While waiting there, worried about being pushed off the platform by the mob of commuters, I often wondered why after each train arrived, the door opened at a different location relative to the platform, especially where I was standing. It’s beyond my comprehension why there were always plenty of commuters to pack the entire platform, even as trains kept coming. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of commuters.
The return trip back was even worse: the drive home from the train station was almost 2 times longer due to rush hour traffic, which I was able to avoid on the way to work by getting up much earlier than normal souls.
Now imagine you have to do all of that 5 days a week. Of course, by the time Friday morning rolled around I was practically a headless zombie. And that in itself is a recipe for something silly to happen—one morning, I forgot to change into the business attire required by the dress code of the company. When I finally pushed myself out of the subway, crowded by rat-racing commuters like myself, I couldn’t help but notice the weird looks people were shooting at me. Just when I was about to push open the revolving front door of the office building, I realized what was wrong: I had forgotten to change out of my nightshirt that morning! How embarrassing.
Luckily, I was able to find a Men’s Warehouse Store across the street, and never had I ever been so happy to be ripped off by such an expensive business shirt in my entire life. With it, I could actually show up to work that day without going back to my home in NJ. No living soul can survive such a commute twice a day.
Now, I have to tell you, one of the benefits of reading history is that you can find much bigger losers that yourself, if that makes you feel any better. Today, I’m going to take you to the Qing Dynasty and show you how the top government officials commuted back then. To make it shorter here, not only did they have to get up at 3AM in the morning (a time where certain people in our modern world just start to have fun in their night life), but the officials also had to experience the same long, painful, and sometimes deadly commute.
Qing Dynasty is the last imperial dynasty. By learning from the past, Qing emperors were the grand masters of keeping their officials humble and also prevent any assassination attempt or terror attack from happening.
The first rule of the commute was, that the government officials are required to wait outside of the Forbidden City at 3 AM. Depends on where you live in the capital of the country, and whether you were able to own the auto-pilot Tesla of the time — an eight-men-carried-sedan chair, the commute experience from your house to the front door of the Forbidden Palace can vary wildly. Some lower ranked officials had to commute 3 hours. In a snowy cold winter day, it’s not unusual to get ill — the sedan chairs were surely not equipped with AC or heaters. If the emperor was staying at the Summer Palace for the night, most officials had to wake up at 1 AM to commute. You may as well just stay up for the night without any sleep since there was no alarm clock at all at that time.
Upon the arrival to the front gate of Forbidden Palace, pretty much all men were created equal — not to be a sexist here, there were NO women in the high court. It’s equal in that everyone had to get off their sedan Chair, whether eight men carried or 2 men carried. They all had to walk into the inner Forbidden City, without any flashlight of course. You might ask if they could carry lanterns — the answer is it’s a taboo to carry an lantern. Evidently the emperor’s palace was occasionally catching fires for unknown reason, these poor servants of the throne had to find their way in complete darkness during cloudy or rainy days without the bless of moonlight. No one seemed to complain about broken arms or legs caused by tripping, because there are accounts in history several unfortunate dudes were drown for falling into the moat.
Now some of you might ask, what about breakfast? well, there is not even a continental breakfast, even there is, you don’t want to indulge your stomach even a little bit. Why? because no one is allowed to go to bathroom during the high court. You can’t even speak too loud, spit, or cough. If you do, the impeachment officers will jump all over you for breaking the rules of manners, the punishment can be extremely severe. Once connect such manner issue to despise of the emperor, it is even logical to apply the deal penalty.
At the beginning of each court meeting, the generals and civil officials were required to kneel down and kowtow — which means touching the ground with the forehead in worship. To prepare for kneeling down for an extended time, which happens more often than not, many prepared home-made knee pads. The knee pads found from HomeDepot must have been a best seller in those days if available, since they worn out easily. Event with the protection many suffered severe knee injury after years of such ordeal. Whether taking calcium or Vitamin D3 supplement help we’ll never know.
In many occasion during kowtowing, it’s required that the forehead should hit the floor hard enough to make noticeable sound! Bear in mind the floors of the splendid palace are not made of hardwood but hard bricks! To show mercy and possibly try to avoid internal brain bleeding of his employees by having them kowtowing on bricks too much, some emperor ordered to finish a small segment of the floor with special material so it’s easier to make loud noise when the forehead made merely a light touch with it. It should be a win-win situation because the officials suffered less, the emperors still satisfied their ego. The sad thing is, that special segments are indistinguishable from regular brick floor. As a result, the officers and generals usually had to bribe the eunuchs to know the exact location of such sweet spots of kowtowing. Based on the theory of evolution, survival of the fit, those officers who didn’t turn into idiots by kowtowing on bricks probably were those who know the art of bribery. So the emperor’s supposedly good plan was turned into a perfect formula to eliminate those officers of integrity.
No even the most fit and virile athlete can survive such hostile commute or working environment every day for too long. Thankfully for these poor men, they didn’t have to go to the high court every day. Depends on how lazy the ruling emperor was, it could vary from the most frequent 150 days a year or to less than once per week.
Next time when you are complaining about your commute, think about these poor souls who had to risk their lives, knees, foreheads and brains when they went to work.