A Man in his Pyjamas

I ride the subway almost every day, and normally there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Most of the passengers are young or middle-aged, travel with their heads in books, play on mobile devices, or stare anonymously into space like underground riders the world over. But the other day I saw a man in his pyjamas.

In China, there’s nothing extraordinary about someone in his pyjamas. Men stand on the street, walk to the market, and banter in public in their nightclothes.  I have seen them do so in Beijing, in Hong Kong, and in several other cities. But this was my first sighting of sleepwear on a subway. The man was stood on the escalator, carrying a plastic bag filled with vegetables, and unaffectedly nonchalant as he rode the escalator upward and away from line number 6. 

Sebastian Flyte had nothing on him.