It seemed like the perfect activity for a polluted winter morning in Shanghai: head off to the railway station to hand out hot meals to migrant workers stuck in long queues for a ticket to take them home to mama for lunar new year.
My affluent angst-ridden heart thrilled at the notion that volunteers would be asked to hold the migrants’ place in the queue so that they could take a loo break. What better way to expiate postmodern guilt than to make sure workers who normally clean the loos of China can use them when they most need to.
Every year around this time, China experiences the world’s worst rush hour. As many as 1bn people all leave home at once; enough to make one thankful that Beijing has spent 60 years practising crowd control.