Scuffles broke out and at least one person fainted within the mile-long line that occurred to secure an Olympic ticket in the last round of tickets to be sold to the public. According the Bloomberg.com:

“Things got rough at 4 a.m. and a fight broke out,” said Gao, a 34-year-old real estate agent, in an interview. “Some of the barriers were wrecked and it got scary at one point.”

Huang Dong, a 23-year-old civil servant who queued for almost 24 hours, said thousands were involved in the disturbance caused when some people tried jumping the line.

Mile-long lines certainly show the Chinese enthusiasm for the Olympics, which many are viewing as something likes China’s debutante party. Things like this, however, have made it a rather rocky “coming out” for China, which the Western media has already seen fit to put to the fire for everything from pollution to human rights to trading with Sudan. Nobody wants to be reminded, I’m sure, of the notorious lack of manners in China’s urban centers.

The “queuing scuffles” however, happened nearly three days ago, why bring it up again here? Because of this interesting item that appeared recently in Variety Asia:

After the melee, Games organizers made “appropriate adjustments” to the sales schedule to cut waiting time.

Apparently, then, a few simple bureaucratic adjustments solved the worst of the problems.

Nothing could be a more painful reminder of why China might not be quite ready to be introduced the polite society of the first world. Under the many other things that Western countries want to embarrass China for is the simple fact of bureaucratic inefficiency, one that makes it tough for civil servants to make decisions and get things done. Government employees in China are often so burdened by rules and layers of bureaucracy that they are simply uninspired to do their jobs–which leads to all sorts of creative ways for people to try to get things done, from aggressive line-cutting to various forms of breaking the rules (like bribes and favors).

So, certainly, China’s notoriously bad etiquette is partly socially ingrained and, as such, will also likely subside as the country continues to develop but, if the P.R.C. really wants to change the world’s opinion of China and it’s people, it should start by reforming its very bureaucracy that the Communist Party runs on.

Scuffling–the first competitive event of the 2008 Olympics.