Shanghai -boy

Confucius say "queue of a thousand people begin anywhere you like". Here at the Expo in Shanghai are some of the finest examples of queue jumping you will ever see. We witnessed a woman not only ignore the queue for a portable toilet but harass and nearly throw out the occupants, a mother and child who had the door open; they won't be doing that again.

 

Another fine example was a guy that seemed to think that nudging and grunting every time the queue moved forward would improve his position. Possibly, he thought the space between each person could be reduced thus making the queue shorter and his journey to the front quicker. Of course if there are spaces they must be filled (by the jumper no doubt) and nature does abhor a vacuum. But, our pusher thinks [and please read with an appalling accent bordering on racist] "Why do these western pigs in front not move when I push? They prevent me from claiming space in front of them and I cannot pass because of plastic barriers. Why did central government put plastic barriers here?...... l push people in front out of way, then I fill space and make queue shorter for everybody...........Ah wait, here is corner where barrier is wide, I run around female. Success - past two, two thousand more to go.......... I know western pigs talk about me, voices are raised in my direction - but to more important matters; there is family in front, do I push child?..... What the...?!? Why is tall westerner tapping me on shoulder? What does he indicate? Why does he motion me to jump over plastic barrier? Stupid western capitalist dog. Just ignore him...tsk...grumble.... What! Holy chairman Mao! Now western female has stepped in front of me. What is going on - why is world so confusing - I go back to farm." *

 

*I recorded the grumblings of our queue jumper and these are his exact thoughts translated using a combination of online translators and guess work based on well known stereotypes.

 

And just to complete my own stereotype of the Brit whinging on about queues I'll give one more example: Chinese people seem not to be fazed by anybody who pushes in so it was extraordinary to hear consternation in the crowd when a whole tour group barged in the middle of a queue bound for the 88^th floor (observation deck) of the Jin Mao tower. This was Olympic standard pushing in and they did China proud. We were stupid enough to join this queue when we could have skipped it entirely in favour of (a) an ultra relaxed bar on the 87^th floor or (b) fewer people at the world's highest observation deck in the neighbouring Japanese building. Of course, now that we had done the most unpleasant of the three 'high rise' options we just had to do the other two too.

 

To be fair I could be misinterpreting people's actions. Some folks from outside the city may never have seen a queue in their lives and think that a long straight line of people are nothing more than a freak of nature; simply people hanging around who have organised by chance into this linear configuration. After all, no one has a sign on their back saying "I'm waiting for the loo with a hundred other people, please don't push past me". And who really knows if the people (apparently) waiting to get off the train in the metro actually want to get off; they may harbour a secret wish to be forced back a metre or two by a stampeding mass.

 

All gripes about queuing aside, I was glad to see, finally, what an Expo has to offer after having only fuzzy ideas of what the various pavilions may contain. Half of China seemed to be there along with half of China's cameras, all with one mission; to photograph every inch of the Expo area several times. And when they're done with the Expo there's The Bund (the main promenade next to the river) in the centre to photograph and there I didn't mind joining the masses, especially at night where the building nightscape is even more impressive than Hong Kong.

 

One of our 'must sees' in Shanghai was the Propaganda Art Museum. A great collection of public persuasion posters where proletariat babies bayonet Uncle Sam, "liberated" Tibetans welcome their new masters with white smiles and Chairman Mao is depicted with the sun shining out of his, head I think. All very interesting.

 

Other 'must sees' and 'must dos' turned out to be 'shouldn't have dones' like a tourist tunnel under the river that lights up with weird and wonderful patterns and the longest magnetic levitation train in operation. Both sound cool (for a male at least) and I for sure needed to do them in order to know I shouldn't have done them or never need to do them again. (It makes sense in my head anyway)