CHINA: Beijing introduces 'Civilised Queueing Day' up to next years Olympics

Rush hour at Beijing's bus stops are filled with people crowding to climb onto their buses. In view of the 2008 Olympics the Capital Ethic Development Bureau has announced that the eleventh day of every month will be "voluntarily wait in line day", an attempt to eradicate queue-jumping, a chinese nationa sport, before next year's Olympics. Orderly queues are a rare sight in a city which is also hard at work trying to put an end to spitting and littering and present a more "civilised" face to the world in 2008. Volunteers have queued to sign up for the job of organising crowds during rush hour into orderly queues. The first of the Queueing Days will start Sunday in Wangfujing, a welknown shopping district where volunteers and traffic wardens will extoll the virtues of queueing to the weekend shoppers. The campaign will be launched under the slogan "It's civilised to queue, it is glorious to be polite". Dr Zhang, Director of the Ethic Development Bureau, says; "Waiting in line is a major indicator of peoples' quality of life and their habits." The campaign will also continue the attack on littering and spitting in Beijing's streets. Culprits caught spitting, littering or pushing in line will be fined fifty yuan ($6.45). "Littering and spitting is not good for our health, we need to explain the dangers to people" said Dr Zhang. Dr Zhang beleives that this fine will be effective in embarrasing the offenders into changing their habits. She is confident that this campaign will succeed and that the situation will be much improved in time for the Olympics. "We are trying to work in accordance with the government project of organising queueing day. We've been working on it every day," says Mr Zhao, one of the traffic wardens at the bus stops charged with enforcing the new queueing policy. The passengers certainly agree that queueing would help the crowds at bus stops, one passenger says: "To queue up and board the bus is a good thing, it saves everybody time and you can avoid being crushed." The campaign slogans associate these new initiatives with the upcoming Olympics. The government have widely publicised that reform of these habits will be a major contribution to ensuring a successful Olympics.

ITN Source | February 8, 2007

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