Civilizational Level Issue

Speeding home across Shandong once again.  Chinese trains have certainly come a long way.  Chinese rail ticket purchasing has traveled a shorter distance.  I got in to the station this morning around 7:25AM with the intention of buying a train on an 8:00AM train out to Jinan.  Plenty of time.  The counter I’d bought it at last time however was closed.  I traversed back to the security entrance and found a series of queues.  I resisted the impulse to join the shortest lane.  Like some pretty colored frog in the jungle this must be dangerous. 

My line had fifteen people or so before me.  But I had time, right?  As we got closer the drama intensified.  A guy in a trench coast heads right up to the front of the line and begins to try to ask for help.  People start yelling at him.  As I reach the third place behind the window a young lady with a big mane of hair positions herself on the opposite side by the window ready to cut.  The young guy in front of me says: “hey don’t cut the line.”  She ignores him and tries to force her way in.  I repeat that she shouldn’t cut the line and the young guy agrees.  I can’t resist saying “she has a civilizational level issue” “素质水平的问题”,a time honored, stock phrase for assholes.  The young man heartily agrees. 

She storms off in a huff, after she can’t be helped and we are left with one the young guy in front of me.  Unfortunately he has a significant shopping list involving multiple tickets and multiple destinations.  And has he winds up the young lady behind the gate, with the thankless job, positions her little sign that says, there is a staff change pending.  She then takes five minutes which seem like fifty five minutes, to finish up her work, count her money and get all ready for the next lady, who I nearly assault once she opens up the window and allows for me to put my passport and two hundred ren min bi notes in, before anyone else can try.  Somehow, someway, Beijing and the citizenry can do better. 

Twenty-three years ago, I remember trying to buy a rail ticket in the Wuhan train station.  That was worse.  Everyone scrambled from every direction to reach one or two holes in the wall, set at about seven feet off the ground.  As a result, everyone, myself included had to look up like we were begging to a lesser god to help us.  You and how many other people would reach your hands up and be shouted at by ladies with loud megaphones.  Out in the crowds, the police had electric cattle prods to guide the crowds in this or that direction.  They would sway the sticks and people would shove one another desperately to get out of the way. 

  

Back in line, I finally got my ticket and still had ten minutes, so it wasn’t all bad.  I made my way over to the Starbucks, the likes of which was most certainly not there in Wuhan of 1993.  I can’t remember the last time I had to combat people to buy a ticket at Grand Central Station.  Everyone still queues, the way everyone drives:  “I am more important than you.  Other people are suckers.  I’m going to get mine.”   I can play such a person on TV.  But it’s enervating having to be one.  Civilizational level, still rising.