Summer heat in Shanghai has made its subway a haven for those seeking to cool down. One particular station in the city’s western suburbs has become the daytime home of many nearby residents whose houses lack air conditioning.

On Tuesday subway authorities and chengguan — city management officials — started patrolling in West Jinshajiang Road Station, on Shanghai’s Subway Line 13. Their targets: crowds of people, many who had stripped down to varying degrees, who were lying on the stations floor obstructing walkways. 

Zhou Juying, 49, sat on the tiled floor inside the subway station together with her 4-year-old grandson. With a temperature of around 29 degrees, the woman said the station is much cooler than their home. “I’ve spent the past week in this subway station,” she told Sixth Tone. “I leave at around 11 p.m. when it closes.”
    
Shanghai’s summers are usually hot and humid, but July’s weather has proved unbearable to many. The city issued its first orange heat alert of the year — the second-highest rating on the three-color scale — on July 21, when temperatures reached 40 degrees. Conditions have remained consistently above 35 degrees since then and the heat is expected to continue to the end of July.

On Tuesday afternoon some 50 people were gathered in West Jinshajiang Road Station, a third of them children. Many were residents of nearby Xingfu Village, a relatively underdeveloped residential area that is home to many migrant workers. They spend their time watching movies on their smartphones, working on their embroidery, or taking naps.

Zhou’s family of four lives in a 7-square-meter room in Xingfu. “We couldn’t afford to get it equipped with an air conditioner,” she said, adding that the room costs her family 700 yuan (about $105) a month to rent. Both her son and husband work on a construction site nearby.

The station became a topic of online discussion after photos were shared on social media. Some users of microblog platform Weibo called for the swift removal of those resting in the station, but one user echoed the sympathetic sentiment of many, calling for tolerance by authorities because the people resting in the stations had helped build the city.

Bai Sisong, the subway station’s manager on duty, told Sixth Tone the vast majority of passengers have so far been very understanding. But he said that when the crowd had grown to more than 100 people they decided to intervene because it was making it hard for people to walk.

Bai emphasized that the subway company takes a “firm but fair” approach, allowing people to seek shelter as long as they are properly dressed and don’t lie down wherever they please. The station has been in operation since 2014. During last year’s summer, cool-seeking crowds also gathered in the station.

Scorching temperatures place a burden on more than just Shanghai’s subway stations. The city’s ambulance workers are used to an uptick in emergency response calls during summer months. Those who work outdoors are entitled to “heat allowances” of around 200 yuan per month when temperatures exceed 35 degrees, but many say they don’t receive them.

With contributions from David Paulk and Fu Danni.

(Header image: People rest on the floor at the West Jinshajiang Road Station, Shanghai, July 26, 2016. Zhou Yinan/Sixth Tone)