Chinese Manners
Talking about manners, and particularly manners of people from a country different to one’s own is often difficult to do while remaining balanced and unprejudiced.
There is a story over at Mainichi talking about mainland Chinese manners at Hong Kong DisenyLand. The article “Ill-mannered mainlanders taking the Mickey out of Hong Kong Disneyland” is an article on another article written by one of Japan’s lower, but top selling weeklies - the Shukan Post.
The gist of the article is that mainland Chinese visiting Disneyland in Hong Kong are exasperating even their Hong Kong cousins, pissing and spitting, smoking and littering; even the Chinese habit of queuing in multiple random lines comes under attack.
I must say that being here in mainland China I have seen everything that the article mentions. Young Chinese children wear pants split between the legs and often (in summer; it is a little cold I guess for it now) go to the toilet on the side of the road. Not pretty. And one lines up for things if one doesn’t want to be served.
The article ends by saying:
“China, especially the mainland, has a tendency to regard all actions in terms of whether they will bring a profit or loss. People live with the belief that obeying rules causes them to lose,” the commentator tells Shukan Post. “Go to a toilet if you really want to see an example of ill manners. They don’t flush and you’ve got urine and feces overflowing everywhere, but nobody is at all ashamed by it. Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympics and I find it hard to see morals improving by then.”
Of course one can find fault with things whereever one goes. When I first arrived in Japan, shop assistants constantly yelling welcome in deafening voices really got on my nerves. Still China is a developing country and these things take time. After all it has taken New Zealand over a 1000 years to be perfect.
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