Originally Posted by lipoff

Is it just me, or has airport security in mainland China just gotten ridiculous?

They ask you to remove from your carry on and place in a bin the following items: laptops, e-readers, cameras, lenses, batteries, chargers, umbrellas, glasses. On two seperate occaisions in the past month, they literally took everything out of my backpack. They looked at my comb, my shoehorn, they were upset that I had an eyeglasses screwdriver, but let it go in the end. Lighters are not allowed in your pocket, in your hand carry luggage, or in checked luggage. Even mini scissors are not allowed in carry ons. One time, a security guy found me half-way to my gate and apologized and said they missed something and asked to look at the zipper pull on my backpack to check if there was a Ferrocerium rod inside it. While aersol spray bottles are fine in checked in luggage, only one bottle is allowed per person on the gaotie, the high speed rail trains.

It's gotten more troublesome than gulf countries, than Israel, than anywhere I've ever been. And it's worse if you take a domestic flight to Ürümqi or Lhasa.

It didn't used to be like this. What's going on?