Beware: Beijing's airport sharks bite
They say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If that is true, then Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan's quest to make his city a less obnoxious place prior to the 2008 Olympic Games should start at its airport.
Travel in China is about as much fun as a broken leg. As one of the mainland's busiest air hubs, Beijing Capital International Airport is a heaving throng of people pushing, shoving and yelling their way to and from destinations near and far.
In 2008, this airport will be the first impression of China for tens of thousands of foreign athletes, journalists and spectators. Their experience in the first moments after landing will set the tone for their entire visit.
If they were to arrive today, instead of three years from now, they would have to queue in what must be the world's slowest immigration lines. They would then have to collect their checked-in bags from a luggage-handling system that - my sources tell me - has been outsourced to Ocean Park.
Confirming this tip was a 15-cm-long gash inflicted on my suitcase during a recent visit, which appears to have been made by a shark gnawing on the bag. My sources tell me that hundreds of sharks, having lost their fins to Hong Kong soup chefs, have been trained to unload bags from planes so that they can lead productive lives. Yes, I know it sounds too fantastic to be true. But if you saw the damage done to my suitcase, you would believe it.
However, the biggest peril would still await our Olympic friends: getting to their hotel. Even before they were through the security area, shifty young men with pseudo-official laminated passes that say 'Beijing Airport Taxi' in English would appear at their sides. They would half-whisper the words, 'Taxi, taxi?', the way that the scoundrels on Nathan Road do when they peddle hashish or fake Rolex watches to passersby.
God help anyone who stopped, or even slowed down to make eye contact. To do so would likely result in one of the touts grabbing their bags and dashing to the nearest exit, yelling into his mobile phone to summon his minions with the car.
The going rate for a trip into Beijing from one of these con artists is anywhere from 300 yuan to 500 yuan, compared to the 80 yuan it should cost. Distance has no real impact on the fare - it depends on how gullible you look.
Unfortunately, our Olympic arrivals would have a hard time avoiding the touts and their unlicensed, illegal car services. The 'criminals' all speak English and are relatively courteous and helpful. The legal taxi drivers do not speak English and are surly and unhelpful.
I can only speculate that when officials from the Olympic selection committee came to Beijing on their visits, they were ushered through the VIP immigration lane in the airport, were spared the luggage mangling, and got chauffeured to their hotel in one of those swanky black government Audis you always see zooming around town. If they had arrived in Beijing the way the rest of us do, the 2008 Games would be in Toronto - a city with far less charm, but a much better airport.
Doug Nairne is a Hong Kong-based writer
