Waving little red flags, 64-year-old Ma Yingxin and his 62-year-old partner Chen were up to serious business yesterday: the two helped form six queues for people waiting for six buses at a stop in the upmarket Wangfujing shopping area.

Passengers line up as they wait to board a subway train in Beijing Feb, 11,2007. [Xinhua]

The 11th was picked because the two numbers 1-1 resemble two people lining up.

Thousands of volunteers also hit the streets, according to yesterday's Beijing Evening News. They were sent to 345 of the thousands of bus-stops in the city, said Zhang Huiguang, director of the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau.

They had help in the form of some dressed as Fuwa, the Olympic mascots, who marched through Wangfujing holding banners asking people to line up and to "behave well".

That they did, at least when Ma was there. "More than 80 per cent of people lined up without being asked when they saw the queues," he told China Daily.

In fact, the queues were so orderly that they foxed bus drivers. At Ma's stop, a driver who couldn't decide which queue was for him gingerly stopped the vehicle in front of those he thought were his passengers.

But it was too good to last no sooner did Ma and Chen leave at 5.30 pm, dozens swarmed the stop, and all rushed to arriving buses.

Also, no queues could be found at bus stops where no volunteers had been designated.

"I know it is Queuing Day, but there must be an organizer to help people line up," said a woman in her 40s surnamed Xu. "Otherwise, who is going to do it?"

Queuing used to come naturally for the Chinese, when they bought all kinds of goods ranging from rice to television sets with coupons during the time of the planned economy more than two decades ago.

Today, such queues are a distant memory but officials believe that people lining up wherever needed helps improve the image of the city.

Besides queuing up, Beijing residents are also paying more attention to public behaviour. According to Zhang, the ratio of people spitting in public declined from 8.4 percent in 2005 to 4.9 percent in 2006, and incidents of littering fell from 9.1 percent to 5.3 percent.