The Queue

The "Civil Rights Preliminary" is about the general law of meeting, if someone writes a sequel, it should be about queuing.

If you get up early and rush to the post office to burn the first incense, even if you are the only person in front of the counter, you do not want to be able to work calmly, because the gentlemen and ladies inside the counter are busy opening cabinets, taking stamps and documents, adjusting the postmark, at this time there are customers coming in one after another, maybe one standing on your left, one standing on your right, maybe well-dressed, maybe ragged clothes, in short, will be sandwiched in the middle of you. The person in the middle may not have priority, so the three people are squeezed very tightly, thick arms, large, stable heel advantage. The person caught in the middle may not have a second turn, because there may be someone attached to your back, like a gibbon extending an arm over your head to take the money to buy stamps. The more people gather, and finally like a rugby match packed into a ball, you want to drill out is not easy.

Three people said the crowd, there is an ancient teaching. So three people get together to squeeze into a pile. Queuing is a foreign game, we are called "fish through the line" are in the very last resort under the circumstances of the action. Jin Shu Fan Wang biography: "Xuan winter month, the Inter-Han dried up, all when the fish in line, push the row and into." If the water is not dried up, who is willing to go in order, although the fish slam, still can not avoid the push row. When I was a child, I had an experience in Beiping, my father used to take me to visit the factory in New Year's Eve and enter the village of Haiwang, where there were old book stores, antique stores, jade stalls, and a few temporary cafes. My father was like a treasure mountain, books, antiques are his hobby, hovering for a long time, happy, but the crowd is surging, the more gathered. By the time we were ready to return, the gate was already congested. There was only one entrance, and it was the same for entering and leaving. No one paid attention to the left side of the line, so the gate became a bottleneck, and everyone was free to move, stuck in a mess. There were also a lot of people who deliberately crowded in where there were many people, because there were big girls and young daughters-in-law inside. My father had several bags of books in his hands and couldn't take care of me. In order to avoid being trampled on, I was carried by a tall policeman and squeezed out. I never went back to the factory until I was old enough to carry my own children out and in.

China is a big place, it is not necessary to squeeze, but squeezing has its own fun. Strolling Longfu Temple, Guoguo Temple, if it is cold and miserable to find, how tasteless! But times have changed, people almost every day everywhere to be like a temple to catch up. Crowded down for years really can not stand, so the queue of this foreign plaything was born. Strangely enough, this foreign plaything has been emerging for so many years, so far it has not become a trend. The older generation rushes around in crowded places, and of course the children think it is one of the survival skills.

Schools cannot take responsibility for teaching this because many teachers are good at disorderly conduct. There is no explicit law about lining up, and the police can't control that much. Everyone is free to move around and survive. Don't think that it is our national nature to be disorderly and not to line up, but it is possible to change our habits. When I returned to Beiping after the war, my family told me many stories about the bullying of the enemy, one of which was that in front of the ticket office at the Qianmen Railway Station, a Japanese policeman used to patrol back and forth with a bamboo whip, and when he encountered someone who bought a ticket first without lining up, he raised the whip high and hit him on the back with a blow. After receiving a whip, he did not say a word at the end of the line. The order of the front gate station has improved a lot since then. I have very mixed feelings about this. Those who did not line up should be whipped, but not by the Japanese. I would like to whip our man with a whip ten times! But none of our own people would do that to someone who didn't line up! It seems to be based on the love of fellow countrymen, at first persuaded, then still persuaded, do not listen to persuasion, even if, we do not hurt the peace. No one wants to raise the whip to outlaw, shying away from saying that it is "not justified by law". A street is designated as a one-way street, an intersection is not allowed to turn left, and what is the basis? The law is set by people, what kind of lifestyle should have what kind of law.

The foreigners have another set of queuing, they are not confined to any place to queue. Post offices, banks, theaters, regardless of carry on, even to the restaurant to eat, but also often have to wait in line to listen to the guidance of one by one seating. More people have to line up, two or three people also have to line up. Once I had to eat pizza, and the line at the door was very long, so I had to find another place to eat. In order to see the exhibition of antiquities, I attended a long queue of about 2,000 people, I arrived at the venue only a thousand people, walking down the dragon's head, turning corners, walking half a day to find the tail of the dragon, set his feet, and soon looked back, the tail of the dragon and do not know where to stretch. I carefully observed and found a secret: the foreigners lined up, wasting space, they lined up to occupy a mile, by us to line up about half a mile is enough. Because each of them and another person usually keep a considerable distance between them, no skin to skin, and no shoulder to shoulder thing. We line up much more intimate, urgent nail people, lest out of step, the elbow of the person in front of you will poke your ribs, the back of the people spraying hot air will lightly brush your neck stalk. One of the reasons for this is probably that we are too crowded and the space is too narrow. In our supermarkets, they are not super enough, often close to miniature, and on days when they are 20% off, the long queue at the payment office goes to the shelves, and it is impossible to do so. The tax office of the foreigners is very good at treating customers well, with adequate equipment, occasionally there are seven or eight people lined up, the line is loose, the leader walks to the counter is also five or six steps away. It is a great way to reduce the hostility in the chest of the taxpayers, as there is no hassle of being caught around and no sense of urgency.

We are a country of courtesy and justice, a gentleman does not compete, never encourage people to compete for the first. Many places we pay attention to greeting, especially when several friends out of the door, often do not avoid pulling and yanking courtesy of half a day, in fact, the fish is enough. I don't quite understand why, when strangers gather together, they refuse to line up and must be defiant.

When I was a kid, I only knew how to line up for military exercises. I once passed by the Tong Ren Tang in Dajie, where the counter took up two storefronts, and the customers were often crowded in three layers, most of them were country bumpkins who admired Tong Ren Tang's reputation for its pills and creams. They did not know the queue, but they could also say. Naive decades later, industry has taken off, the people in the city still do not know this lifestyle in a very important project? Do you really need that one whip to do it?