The aircraft experience

So you kind of assume that flying in China is just like flying in the rest of the world. It's a straightforward process of check in-security-wait-board-fly. At that point I start to enjoy myself, forced to curl up with a book or a movie for hours on end, accompanied by hot cups of tea brought by the very responsive flight attendants.

Chinese planes? Well they are a different experience altogether. You start with the check-in queue, which, despite being signposted in both English and Chinese characters, somehow always manages to fool the locals into thinking they can take the express queue just because they don't really want to wait in the others. I can see why they give it a try, really, because Chinese airport staff seem to have a problem with actually doing their jobs. It's like every person is the first flyer ever to approach the check-in desk, and the staff can't figure out how to work the machinery, despite having two people behind every counter (one to move your bags between the two luggage belts that don't connect, of course!). If you're lucky, you might get some entertainment as you wait for the paint to dry in the form of a local guy who's got himself drunk and can no longer stand up in the queue.

Past check-in, the next phase of the party is airport security. Now this is the bane of any frequent traveller's life. But there's a special level of profanity reserved for Chinese airports, surpassed only by US airports. You've got to understand that there are far more people in China at the moment than worthwhile jobs, so they've got to find as much space as they can to absorb labour. It also increases the chance of them actually delivering the service you're supposed to be providing, because it compensates for the extreme incompetence of their workers. So keeping those things in mind, it's really quite reasonable that you have five staff per line: you need one to check your passport again (with video camera behind on case of any mishap), one to play solitaire on the computer as your luggage goes through the scanner, two to feel you up after you go though the full body scanner (one for each gender, of course), and another to stand around looking completely useless but very authoritative in their freshly ironed airport uniform.

Next stop is the departure hall, where you have your choice of a range of Chinese delicacies to pick from. These include such delights as chunks of meat in vacuum packs (not refrigerated), dried packaged baby tomatoes and hawthorn berries, unidentifiable fresh fruit with spikes and fingers, pine nut and rose happiness cake, cigarettes, and of course the ubiquitous baijiu ... all at only four times the price you'll pay on the street! If you can drag yourself away from the shopping, waiting at your gate before it's even open will be a long queue of Chinese people, making sure they get on the plane first to get the best spots for their carry-on bags. Wander past the three separate people checking your boarding pass within five metres of each other, and you're finally aboard your blessed plane. The quality of the infrastructure is significantly better than you've been lead to believe (what with all those stories of Chinese planes falling out of the sky mid-meal service), and the flight assistants are quite pleasant, so you're thinking maybe this is on the up. Maybe you'll be able to relax now.

And you can ... at least until the crew tell you that you're about to land. The seatbelt light, you learn, is really more of a vague suggestion than an actual rule, and your fellow passengers are actually allowed to get up whenever they like. Particularly just when the plane's wheels touch the ground, at which point it is totally acceptable to spring out of your seat with the agility of a surprised kitten and open the overhead lockers, spilling the contents on all those who were stupid enough to heed the seatbelt sign. Of course, the next battle is to get off the plane as soon as you can, lest you be one of the suckers left behind with a 30 second delay to the baggage collection, which means you obviously can't secure the best spot to wait 20 minutes for your baggage to come out.

At last your baggage has arrived, despite the team of 7 airport staff cleaning the baggage belt with filthy rags where your baggage is supposed to be coming out, and you think maybe you're nearing freedom. You can almost smell the fragrant wafts of Beijing smog coming from the exit. But alas, another uniformed airport staff member is shouting at you in urgent Chinese. She's pointing at the sticky bag tag on your luggage and waving frantically. You see someone else motioning to the luggage tag stuck to their boarding pass. Your boarding pass, of course, is long forgotten in the depths of your carry-on as it's now adopted the stately title of most-favoured bookmark. Dig it out, prove that you did not, in fact, steal someone else's luggage along with their dirty underwear and you're freeeeeeee … 

At least, you're free to sit with a cranky taxi driver in a traffic jam for the next two hours.