It was chaos on campus at the University of Hawaii. Tempers erupted after hundreds of Chinese citizens flocked to Manoa to get their passports and visas renewed. Event organizers were expecting a much smaller crowd of 50 students but word got out of the rare opportunity to meet with the Chinese Consulate General.
"Let's go this way, this way this way this way this way all the way out all the way out, this way," said a U-H security guard addressing a mob of people.
Tempers flared inside the halls.
"You have to out!"
"It's going by numbers I don't know right now there like on 20 something, yeah, yeah yeah!"
The heat was on in more ways than one.
"It's very frustrating and earlier they were throwing out paper inside so a lot of stampede inside I think that's why the police and security come here," said Gordon Wee, a Chinese-American who was there to help a friend.
Hundreds started lining up at 6 a.m. Everyone trying to funnel into one very small room.
"Wait in line!"
The event was organized by an independent organization to serve U-H students.
"The organizers intended it to be only about 50 people," said U-H Campus Center Director Sarah Yap. "When the reservation came to us it was regular reservation we weren't anticipating about 300 people to show up."
Word obviously reached a larger audience. Many say because there is no Chinese Consulate General in Hawaii, staff members come here once a year.
"They are from Los Angeles and they travel around to get people passport renewed and stuff and this is only two days, today and tomorrow, it's the only two days they're going to do it," said Haixing Wang, a student from China.
"Either they have to renew it here or they have to go to Los Angeles to do it." added Wee.
It took police and U-H security several hours to control the crowd.
"As you can see the crowd is not very pleasant," said Wee.
A slow process complicated by poor planning and an unexpected crowd.
"I didn't know it's going to be like this," said Wang.
As of 5-30 Thursday night, people were still being processed. We're told everyone in line will be served by the end of the night...well over 400 people and counting.
