Conveyor of Misery
I am all for security. I don’t want farmers bringing dynamite on the train. I’ve seen the big gory photos in the Beijing train station of what happens to people who tried that in the past. In case there were illiterate, dynamite-carrying farmers in the train station, those photos said what the written word could not.
Baggage x-ray machines are fine. As long as they don’t go looking for trouble in the form of bottled water and fingernail clippers, like they do in airports, I’m fine. Really.
But there is something WRONG in this country, because quite a few people here do not at all understand the basic idea of the x-ray conveyor belt.
I mean, it is bad enough that someone asks them to stand in line to have their bags x-rayed. Stand in line? Only a few people here know how to do that.
Push. Shove. Slap me around. Surrounded on all sides, I don’t know if those pushy hands are in my backpack or where. I can’t feel a thing but claustrophobia.
Finally, I get to the conveyor belt. I calmly put down my bags, go through the metal detector, get quickly wanded by the magic beeping security wand, and wait for my bags to come out.
Except the lady who is behind me in what eventually became a line, the lady who put her bags on the conveyor belt AFTER I did, thinks her bags are going to come out before mine do. She acts like a linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys and tries to knock me over sideways to get out of her way. Luckily she is shorter than me, and probably five-to-ten years older. I pretend not to notice. I have my eyes on my backpack, because I don’t know if her ruckus is a ruse to divert me from a thief. My computer is in the backpack too, and I don’t want it to fly off the conveyor belt and get damaged.
She then pushes me with her arms. I still don’t budge and I don’t say a thing.
Then she puts her hands on my hips and shoves me. I don’t budge.
I reach down for my bags, which MIRACULOUSLY came out on the conveyor belt before her stuff did! But she is mad now, and so she starts yelling and flailing her arms and trying to climb on the conveyor belt and reach inside the machine for her bags.
Next thing you know, bananas and apples begin rolling down the conveyor belt. Hers. She’s yelling trying to make everyone think I, the big bad blonde foreigner, sent her fruit flying to show my foreign dominance. I don’t think she convinced too many people though. The people closest to us saw what happened, and none of them were feeling very sorry for her.
I kind of felt sorry for her though. Mostly annoyed, but a little sorry. Maybe she’s never been to a train station before. Maybe she doesn’t understand the basic laws of the conveyor belt…first baggage in will be the first baggage out. Maybe her ma didn’t teach her any manners. I know for sure that no one taught her to wait her turn…really and truly, only a few people here know that rule.
You wake up in the morning hoping to be a good witness that day, but the forces of the world somehow still conspire against you. I did things the orderly way, and still, somehow I was made to look like the bad guy.
A Chinese, someone who gets the whole manners thing, told me it will take another fifty years for polite public manners to take root in this society. Really? Fifty years? I may not be around then. Sigh. I would really like to stick around long enough to see that.
In the Taoist temple in Shanghai, I saw many of these Taoist robed priests chanting. It looks real, but they do it the same time every day so tourists can see it. Kind of seems like a "show" to me. Also, you have to pay to enter the temple. Can you imagine having to pay to go into a church to pray?
This is a female at a Buddhist nunnery in Shanghai, near Yu Gardens. Apparently she had lots of friends outside the nunnery (note that she is talking on a cell phone). She's about to put on those robes she is holding for a Buddhist chanting ceremony, not totally unlike the Taoist ceremony mentioned above.
In a country that is officially atheist, people have found a spiritual void. They are trying to fill it with things that will not satisfy. To them, it is like choosing a name brand cell phone. Will they choose Iphone, Samsung, Motorola? Will they choose Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity? That's the mindset, although we know Truth is not based on personal preference.
