Getting a Chinese Visa

Seems simple enough - come in person to Chinese Consulate, drop off your application, pay, come up for pick-up 1, 3 or more days later, depending on how much you paid extra.

I get here at 1:25pm and take a number.  It's 306.  They are serving... 195.  But that's not too bad, there are five windows and most people are out of there in less than a minute.  So, 110 numbers, maybe half an hour, right?

Wrong!

First thing I notice is that three of the windows haven't taken a number in a while and in fact there is no one there.  After an hour, one of the two open windows also stops taking new numbers!  This will take hours!  After another half an hour one of the other windows gets a move-on, but still, it's been almost 80 minutes and they've gotten through 45 numbers.

And that's with many people being no-shows given how they look at their number and give up.

Grr. 

So why don't they accept this by mail???