What is a Chinese fire drill?

Answer 1

In the middle of the 1800s, when the big gold rush in the West was starting and the railroads were trying to build a link between the East and the West, there was a large movement of Chinese to the U.S. to work on the railroads. These poor souls were crammed into fairly small ships to cross the Pacific. To try to keep the Chinese alive by giving them some fresh air, sunlight, and exercise, a ship's captain would organize a fire drill in which the Chinese were lined up all around the deck to form a bucket brigade such as was fairly commonly used to bring water to the site of a fire by passing it along the line in buckets. In the fire drills on these ships, there was no fire, so at the head of the line, the water would be dumped back into the sea. A Chinese fire drill is the term used to describe a foolish busy activity that accomplishes nothing. It has been joked that on one of these ships, there was a real fire, and the Chinese, not understanding the purpose of the drill, did what they always were told to do...they dumped the water into the sea.