For me, the most annoying part of the Beijing subway is neither the fake beggars nor the noisy vendors, but the security baggage screening they started doing one month before the 2008 Olympic Games began. Three months ago, a passenger refused the subway security check and put caused big mess at Tiananmen West station.

To justify the subway security check, Beijing Subway authorities organized a Contraband Exhibit yesterday. As the BTV news reported, 40,000 forbidden objects have been confiscated in the past six months. Besides the stuff that you can imagine — knives, gasoline, and fire crackers — uncommon weapons can also been seen at the exhibit: guns, landmines, bombs, and a mortar shell. WTF?

However, I still have a simple question: if the police can simply find C-4 by detecting trace amounts of powder in the air, as the news claimed, why should we still put our bags through the machine and risk exposure to radioactive x-rays?