The humble lifestyle and people-friendly approach of Gary Locke, the US ambassador to China, has made him a welcome figure for many Chinese.
However, what I experienced recently made me come to the conclusion that the visa hall of the US embassy in Beijing could use a little bit of Locke's attention.
To complete all visa application procedures, one is required to queue six times. And the final step, waiting for the interview, is the longest. According to my recent experience, the final line takes two hours and 10 minutes, which didn't make my day after having waited for about an hour at the previous stages.
During my more than two-hour wait, hundreds of applicants, men and women, young and old, weak, ill, disabled, and pregnant, inched slowly forward in the unending lines.
And employees were constantly reminding guests to queue in two lines in order to accommodate more people. It was like being on Beijing's buses and subways during rush hour.
The air quality inside was regrettably worse than outside, and the seats numbered just enough to accommodate about 10 people. I've been told that the Chinese embassy in the US also receives a large number of visa applicants, but the conditions are much more comfortable.
Naturally, I'm a bit annoyed by all of this. During my wait, I had plenty of time to consider this injustice and chat with other applicants.
First of all, the new US embassy is larger than other embassies in China. In 2010, the number of visa applications reached over 1 million.
On each working day, about 4,000 applicants could get visas among the 5,000 applicants received on average. A large number of people apply for visas in the visa hall.
I stood there wondering whether the designers of the new building considered this when calculating the area of the application hall and deciding how many clerk stations to provide.
Judging from the shortage of available interview windows and the fact that handing in forms, taking fingerprints and interviews are all done in separate stages (all of which require another line), my guess is no.
Second, why couldn't the embassy even adopt a system of taking a number and provide applicants with ample seating space?
This would provide a much more humane environment. Applying these small changes would not require a huge investment in technology. Many banks in China do this. If the US embassy in China did this, it could run much more efficiently.
Third, not enough is done to provide priority services for the old, weak, ill, disabled or pregnant applicants who have to wait in these long lines. If such services do in fact exist, I saw no sign of them. In China, people over 70 years old enjoy many special services. It's not reasonable that the US, a country that values human rights, doesn't provide better services in its embassies.
Fourth, embassy staff could control the number of people entering the visa hall and arrange more queuing areas in the embassy entrance. Expanding the waiting areas and providing seats and hot water is relatively simple.
In Chinese people's view, providing special services for those in need and valuing air quality are important duties that the US embassy in China and its staff members claim to pay attention to. But I feel that, even in the off-peak season for visa applications, these points are still not reflected in the visa hall of the US embassy in China.
Of course, these problems are not caused by Locke. But the environment of the visa hall affects both people's health and the image of the US. So I suggest he test the air quality inside the visa hall to reflect the embassy's attention to air quality outside. Such values that are typical of the US should not only be found in the media but also in the visa hall.
It's a win-win situation and I'm sure something that ambassador Gary Locke would like to see.
The author is a visiting scholar to Johns Hopkins University in the US. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn