Get in line

In a city of 7 million people, there's going to be a lot of queuing.  There's a queue for the bus, for the lift, for lunch and especially for the new iPad.  I once witnessed a queue halfway around the block that was just to get into a department store lift.  I have never wanted to shop in a department store badly enough to join that queue.

There are several approaches to queuing in Hong Kong.  Ninety-nine percent of people queue, in the finest British tradition, with extraordinary patience.  They have long ago resigned themselves to the fact that doing anything in Hong Kong takes a really long time.  A visitor to Hong Kong can witness queues that curve neatly around corners and obstacles seemingly of their volition.  In some cases, the queue curves to avoid obstacles that have been moved out of the way since the queue formed.

Alternatively, you can just send your underlings to queue for them - the South China Morning Post recently carried a photo of a happy Lady Gaga fan so dedicated that he sent his maid to queue for concert tickets from 6 am.  He then swanned up when the box office opened at 9:30 am to pay for his tickets and give an interview.  Presumably forcing your maid to go out and queue at 6 am breeds the sort of resentment that would make giving her your credit card a bad idea.

A less amusing version of this is the increasingly popular practice of sending thugs to queue for consumer goods.  Whenever a hotly anticipated item goes on sale in Hong Kong (usually an iThingy - although in one case it happened at the release of a new designer range of women's clothing at H&M), grey market retailers send paid queuers along to buy as many as possible, for resale at a profit in mainland China and other countries where they haven't been released yet.  The thing about paid queuers is they don't really want to camp out overnight; so instead they just turn up fifteen minutes before the doors open and threaten to beat up the people in the existing queue.  At some point the police turn up and restore order, hopefully before anyone gets hurt. The SCMP generally describes these people as of "southern Asian appearance"; clearly this is supposed to be a euphemism for a particular nationality or ethnicity but I'm happy to say I have no idea which one.

The final approach is to just push in. Pushing in isn't exactly common in Hong Kong, but those that do employ this method have it down to a very fine art.  I firmly believe that Hong Kong queue-jumpers (pusher-inners?) can compete with the best in the world.  I often see tourists on the MTR left agape, unable to believe that someone has pushed in front of them so blatantly and shamelessly.   First, they wander up to the queue, feigning ignorance of where the queue starts or what the queue is for.  When the queue starts moving, they just step in front of the first person.  It's just that simple.  They wear earphones so that they can just blissfully ignore any angry remarks, and unless someone wants to challenge them physically they pretty much get away with it.

If only queuing and queue-jumping were sports, Hong Kong would be world champions.  So keep an eye out at the London Olympics.  Hongkongers will be there, competing with and beating the world - in the queues at the stadia, on the tube and at the check-in counter at the hotel.