Daily Lessons from Life 09-11 December 2010 - Various

I missed the last few blog updates as I was in the Great Firewall of China! It continued to want to block ALL access to Googles regardless what good people may want to say about the government! LOL!!

Anyway, a few comments off the top of my head:

1. the saga of the empty chair of the Nobel Peace Prize of the Chinese liberal in the Prize Presentation ceremony and the continued poor PR campaign run by the Chinese government. Now the empty chair becomes a 'powerful' symbol for the poor grace of the government;

2. the saga of a 3-hour clearance through the custom at Shenzhen Bay Border Checkpoint to Hong Kong on a Saturday morning! I was in Shenzhen to visit a very good friend after a workshop in Dongguan and was told that it will take maxinum 30mins to get through the custom and then another 45mins by taxi to Hong Kong International Airport to catch my flight at 1330hrs. So, it was ample time when I got to the border checkpont hall at 1030hrs. Lo and behold, it was jammed packed with human being! LOL!! The Chinese sides have about 15 queues and out of that only 1 is for Foreigner, 2 for Group, 3-4 for their e-Channel (i.e. self-clearance), and the rest the normal clearance.

In China, when there is a queue and there is NO BARRIER set up, a queue degenerated into 'catch me if you can or want to' queue jumping!! It can be amuzing when some locals tried to jump queue into the Foreigner line initially but it get a bit unpleasant when the shoving began!

I was getting increasingly agitated as I realized that I am NOT going to make the flight in Hong Kong. So, I decided to play a volunteer cop and told off a few of the queue jumpers (after the Chinese border control checkpoint), the lines become just 'Hong Kong/Macao Residetns' and 'All Other Visitors'!!. I actually shouted at some and admonished some other. In fact, one couple was so focused on pushing ahead that they did not even realised they lost their young girl! The Hong Kong Immigration Officer had to shout out if someone had lost a child!!

It seems today was an exception as the human traffic is normally manageable vs. other Border Checkpoints (which they have 2-3 besides this crossing). Yet, it showed the the authority are not keen or not flexible enough to increase the officers on duty, or to devise a better queuing system at the China side (the Hong Kong side is much better controlled). A 3-hour delay for all the people at the border checkpoint can easily worked out to be Rmb10/hr/person * 3hrs *10k people = Rmb300k/3-hr. If we bump up the Rmb/hr/person to 30 it easily adds up to Rmb900k/3-hr. Surely this is enough to pay for the extra officers on duty!! :-)

It is a worrying sign that when push come to shove, the Chinese way of 'catch me if you can or want to' means some innocent people will get hurt. That if the people in charge are apathetic, the chance for chaos and waste and conflict become greater.

Is this a way to run a sustainable nation? I have to say: NO!!

May the nation continue to change for the better or ...