On the 2 line, which runs under the second ring road (which incidentally used to be the Beijing city walls). The ticket lady was really helpful once I was finally able to talk to her after about 20 people pushed in front of me to buy tickets. She said to take the blue line to Ji Shui Tar, and since I was almost exactly opposite that station, me and a couple of American students who had just finished teaching English in the countryside helped me pick a direction (based on the least number of stops). The subway, the ultimate expression in mass transportation; in Soviet Moscow the subway was ornate, with chandeliers and all sorts of luxuries to better serve the people. In today's Beijing, all the little plastic handle dohickeys (in New York they'd be leather, in San Francisco metal) have advertisments on them. The subway wall even has moving shoe advertisements using, I believe, a variant of the "flipbook" method.
EAP China! Robert Klein