China Rising

So Changi Airport has slipped a couple of notches. So what? We got Changi Airport Millionaire Game! You got or not? But seriously though, Shanghai Airport in our books is doing pretty well because when we got to immigration, an officer lifted a barricade for us and let us through without having to queue. Priority for families with young children. Win.

It’s been less than ten years since I made my first trips to China, and those first trips were full of me making fun of how backward China was, and how, once when I flew Air China overnight to Beijing without having dinner first, I starved all the way until I got to the hotel in Beijing because I turned down the plain porridge they served in-flight thinking there was going to be breakfast and refreshments before landing.

There was also the illogical security checks at Guangzhou Airport in 2004, where one could take out any illegal items from one’s check-in luggage before putting them into the x-ray machine, and then placing the same illegal items back into one’s luggage afterwards to be checked in.

It’s different these days, and the only thing they need to get up to speed with is sending people who smoke in the airport taxi queue to jail for life. Naomi counted 8 smokers who didn’t give a shit about there being children around, including one who chain-smoked (3 cigarettes) until he got to his taxi.

If they don’t die from smoking first, these folks here will be doing everything we do better than us. We had better buck up, or at least start doing something they haven’t done.