Made in Macao | Chinese queuing culture

Jenny Lao-Phillips

I have often been told that Chinese people, especially those from the mainland, have difficulty understanding the concept of lining-­up. They are known for their expertise in pushing their way onto public transportation, into shops, or even pushing their way through on the street. “Why don’t the Chinese have a culture of lining-up?” a non-Chinese friend asked me once. Well, it is not that we don’t have a line-up culture, but rather the Chinese culture is to not line-up or to jump the queue when lining up is unavoidable. But why? There are quite a few interesting explanations of the Chinese “non-queueing” culture.
A few writers have attributed the culture of not lining-up or jumping queues to the increasing competitiveness of Chinese people since the opening up of the country, as a result of the Chinese economic reform. The famous instruction of Deng Xiaoping to “let some people get rich first” swirled up individual competition among the people to either be the first to get rich or be left in the poverty of which they had tired. So, without any direction or instruction on how to get rich in getting rich, people were merely given the target – to get rich. As a result, people of the nation focused on getting ahead of others to accumulate their own wealth, and thus, wanting to be the first to gain any form of advantage, even just being the first to get on a bus is a form of success. As a Chinese saying goes: “missing out on opportunities is worse than losing all family assets.” I guess, that’s why Chinese people need to get there first, no matter where or for what, for fear of missing out on any benefits.
Another quite common explanation of the Chinese queueing culture points to bad examples from leading officials during the time of great turmoil in the mainland in the 50s and 60s. It was noted that during that time, resources were scarce and they were centrally distributed to citizens who had to line up everyday to receive their share of food and other daily necessities. However, leaders and officials did not have to line up. Creating a social concept that only the lower-­level people had to line up, people of even the slightest importance were not required to queue. Well, how many people nowadays do not think that they are important?
No matter what the reasons that caused the Chinese queueing culture as we know it today, China is well-known as a culture where people generally do not line-up. Although this is not a new complaint against the Chinese, the discussion about the queueing behavior reminded me of an incident over 10 years ago.
It was a summer in Beijing in a crowded train station, and hundreds of passengers were lining up to get on the train. No one was formally lining up though, people were just following one after another in crowds. A teenager was politely following the crowd, when suddenly her mother screamed at her asking her to “push… push… push” and calling her stupid for not pushing through the line. The teenager was embarrassed and finally gave in, perhaps out of filial piety or simply didn’t want to argue with her mum, and pushed her way into the train with her head lowered feeling ashamed and apologetic. So, that is hope for change, right?
The younger generation seems to be aware of the significance of a small action such as waiting your turn, perhaps from their school education, or perhaps from their exposure to the outside world. As long as they do not listen to their parents, well, just with the pushing and jumping the queue, there is hope for a more civilized social culture in our future. Jenny Lao-Phillips