Shanghai’s 12345 hotline was the best among the country’s 300-plus similar hotlines in terms of service standard last year. — Illustration by Huang Yihuan /Shanghai Daily WHEN I took Metro Line 12 on my way to work on Monday, I was surprised to find myself in a carriage carrying neatly posted messages from netizens about why they love Shanghai. It was a pleasant surprise, though, as most of these messages were thought-provoking, and thus a better sight than most commercial ads. Just take a few examples: 1. Road signs in Shanghai are so clear that you never get lost even without a road map at hand; 2. Shanghai is a city where you can either run at full speed or rest at ease; 3. Here you have a sensible combination of sense and sensibility; 4. A city friendly to foreigners; and, 5. Nice bookstores here and there, which make reading easier. The next day I checked news online and found that there were more than 300 such messages on Metro Line 12, selected out of 3,000 contributions from netizens by a leading local media outlet in cooperation with the Shanghai Metro. These messages broadened my view about what it means to live in Shanghai, and prompted me to ponder why, born and bred in Yangzhou, an ancient city in Jiangsu Province, I love Shanghai. Which led me to think of a call I made a couple of weeks ago to complain about water pollution near my home in suburban Shanghai. I dialed the citizen’s hotline 12345 to alert relevant authorities that some construction workers had been shoveling plastic waste into the river circling our neighborhood in Zhaoxiang Town, Qingpu District. I told the receptionist that I had taken pictures. The hotline was set up over four years ago as a response to non-urgent issues pertaining to people’s daily life. I was not sure…