more than usual

It was disturbing, with the heightened security for entering China thru' Harbin. It had always been a breeze to come to Harbin or Dalian, that I had come to take it for granted.

On walking towards the immigrations, I was looking intently at my blackberry with one hand, and passport with arrival card on the other. It came as a surprise when one of the immigrations officer asked me where I was from. On ascertaining that I am a Singaporean, and my boss joined me, he asked us to go to a waiting area, without any explanation. Soon, a number of people, including some elderly passengers from Australia joined us. Two Chinese nationals and one Korean also joined in the group, while the other Chinese nationals and Koreans went smoothly across.

Guess it was pretty awkward for us travellers, and probably for the security officers too... they tried to ask everyone to take seats, when there was obviously not enough for all the people they had brought in. And some people weren't too interested to sit down, and would rather know what was going on. Anyhow, me and my boss were called in to have our hand carry luggages checked. They checked through EVERYTHING... took all the papers and flipped through them. Checked every compartment, and asked about almost everything. Cameras were turned on, and photos were browsed. Laptops and thumb drives were taken to be inspected away from our sight, which was pretty disturbing for me.

I maintained to be cheerful and cooperative throughout the situation, since there was nothing that I could do to ease the situation. Whatever they wanted to check, I let them, and was very obliging to provide all the details that they wanted. The security officers that handled me were quite friendly, though they did not divulge what they were looking for or why they were going such a thorough inspection.

Well, not everyone was this lucky or patient with them, and the ladies were probably the most upset... and some photos in some cameras were probably lost in the process. And they did not allow the folks to go to the washrooms unaccompanied, making everyone feel like prisoners. Of course this was to be expected for a heightened security situation, but seriously, nobody there looked even the least bit dangerous.

We made some small talk with the Australians. A very nice lady (Trish) was sorta a head of the group, and was trying to look out for the rest. However, they had difficulties communicating with the officers and I went forward to help. Just some translation. Of course she had her points, that the elderly travellers were all tired and needed to rest, and the security officers had their red tape and could not be very flexible, so being a translator for that part of the conversation was not the most fun. But we managed to get the security officers to go out to help them inform their travel agent about the situation, and ensure that the agent remained waiting for them.

The whole ordeal took a little over 90 minutes and it was just lucky for us that we were not in a hurry. But this was enough to convince us to really avoid coming to China until the Olympics is over. Well, hope the rest of the China trip will be much better!