Welcome to Beijing airport’s new terminal three. As William Langewiesche reports for Vanity Fair, the floors are not the only area that the Chinese government is intent on having squeaky clean in time for the Olympic Games.
At the forefront stand the 15 million residents of Greater Beijing. In preparation for the Games, a municipal agency called the Capital Ethics Development Office is trying to whip them into shape, with campaigns against spitting on the street, using foul language (even though in Chinese), or getting rowdy while watching, for instance, Ping-Pong matches on TV. A survey conducted by Renmin University in 2007 showed that progress was being made (naturally), and that over the previous year public spitting had been reduced by 2.41 percent. According to the Chinese state news service, the survey was based on observations from 300,000 people at 320 public places and in 200,000 cars. Littering was down 2.44 percent. Meanwhile, the Civic Index was up by 4.32 percent. The Civic Index scores the Beijing population on its compliance with rules regarding public health and public order, attitudes toward strangers, etiquette at sporting events, and demonstrable enthusiasm for the Olympic Games. I myself have conducted a survey, based on 457.5 observations, and have concluded that 98 percent of the Chinese lack any measurable sense of irony. This is a preliminary finding only, and further funding is required, but there is no doubt that the Chinese Earnestness Index is extremely high. The 11th of every month is now officially Queuing Day, when people are expected to give up their traditional scrums and practice standing in orderly lines. The date was chosen as a variation of pictographic script, because the two digits 1 and 1, when placed together to form 11, represent the expected behavior during the upcoming world championship in delays. And, sure enough, on the 11th of every month Beijing residents earnestly go about the assigned practice, temporarily transforming the city into a variation of a Germanic ideal. Individualism then re-asserts itself on every 12th, but the Queuing Days help, and the Capital Ethics Development Office expects that the coming months will continue to show improvements.
Related:
Beijing’s Olympic Nightmare (Vanity Fair)
That picture looks familiar… Oh! The space-station corridor in the movie of 2001: A Space Odyssey!
The Chinese Airport is explaining the Chinese development now a days they have become advanced in infrastructure as well