Yesterday I made some rude remarks about the standard of catering and accommodation in China. It was probably very foolish of me to do so, as one day the Chinese are going to rule the planet and then they will go through the cuttings files to see who has been nice to them and who has been nasty, and I shall pay for it then unless I make up for it. Which I intend to do now. By saying that when I first got on to a plane in China I discovered that the resourceful and clever Chinese have solved a problem which we Westerners have never got near solving.
This problem is just that, the problem of getting on to aeroplanes. When we get on to a plane, we all get on in a random order and therefore we are all fighting to get past each other to get to our seats, carrying our hand luggage as weapons. As is well-known, the aisle of a modern plane is not even wide enough to take a refreshment trolley AND a person desperate to get to the lavatory, so it is not likely to be wide enough to take two laden people trying to get past each other. The result is a scrum. When you do reach your seat you now find that the luggage locker is already full and occasionally you find that your seat is also full, because one in ten passengers cannot read the number on their boarding pass. (See my essay: "Seat numbers and their doubtful value in an illiterate society".)
We in the West have vaguely tried to solve this problem by embarking people in groups. "Boarding is now available to passengers in seat 1 to 17..." But this merely restricts the fighting and frenzy to a smaller part of the plane, or divides it into smaller areas throughout the plane. It doesn't eliminate the jostling and jousting for position. There must be a way of ensuring that we all get on to a plane without any hassle.
And there is! The Chinese have discovered it, and it is so simple that a child could have thought of it. In fact, a child might well have thought of it, because it smacks of the kindergarten. What happened to us at this provincial Chinese airport was that we were all taken out on to the tarmac and led to a place where they had painted, on the ground, a series of squares representing the seats inside the aircraft. Six squares at the end representing seats A 1-6, then six more behind representing seats B 1-6 and so on. It was, if you like, a life-size diagram of the inside of the plane. We were all made to stand on our own seat number, like children lining up for class. This meant that when we then filed into the plane, we all got into the plane in the right order, and the first six people went straight down to their seats at the end, followed by the next six and so on. There was no shuffling, no fighting, no barging, no apologising.
Now, this could only happen in a society where people are used to doing what they were told (see my small monograph: "Communism, Bad for Running Countries, Good for Getting People on to Planes") and Britain may not be Communist but it is such a society. Even if we pride ourselves on our individuality, we always get into queues and wait patiently for our turn, although nowadays we sometimes have to take numbered tickets to do it, and I don't think the airports of Britain would have any difficulty lining up British passengers into their flying formation before boarding. Could be a way of amusing the passengers during those interminable waits. And once we had cracked that, we could get down to solving the other problems which cripple British society.
Interminable supermarket check-out queues, for one.
People with tickets for the middle of theatre rows arriving last and making everyone else stand up.
Tourists walking very slowly along pavements of historic towns in front of busy shoppers.
People arriving on time for dinner....
(I'm thinking of how the invited guests say: "What time shall we come?" and the host says: "Oh, I don't know - about eight?" which means about 8.15 or 8.30, but somebody always insists on arriving at 8 on the dot, just when the hosts are finishing dressing for dinner or at least pouring themselves a quick drink they don't want to share with guests ...)
But see my forthcoming article: "Why Not Invite Them For 8.30 Instead and Get Two Drinks in First?".
Wednesday Sep 6 2000