A lesson on subway etiquette: Pole-iteness counts!

Unnecessary violence on the Metro? Check. Random nudity on Line 1? Check. Alas, it looks like there’s yet another top runner in the category for the weird and offensive that goes on in the metro line and becomes a viral hit on the web: pole dancing.

Yup, “Shanghai Metro Pole Dancing” is as avant-garde of a public art form as it gets in Shanghai, and faithful subway riders - to their dismay, we hear - have been getting more than they’re paying for.

To throw the feds off the scent, video users have been putting up this racy video (above) on online viewing sites, like Tudou.com, under the title “Invincible Small Diced Meat”, because that’s not suspicious at all. In the video, a woman dressed in red has her back turned towards the camera, before she drops her shoulder bag and does a couple 360’s around the subway pole, and then goes into a move that we can only imagine requires a lot of flexibility.

Voila, there you have it - Pole Dancing 101 for the everyday busy bee taking the No. 1 (in the direction of Shanghai South Railway Station). The video plays for a minute and 41 seconds, and its video count has already exceeded 91,440 views since it was published on May 18.

Apparently, this isn’t the first exhibitionist freebie showing to happen this year either. Looks like the folks over at Shanghai Metro need to do an overhaul on their ads they play on the LCD screens if they want more airtime than our lady in red.