Most irritating habits of (small city) Chinese

I’ve lived in small Chinese cities by choice, and while I continue to do so because I really enjoy doing so, there are times when I find my skin a little thin and, just as how when one’s immune system is low one can catch colds, certain common behavior of Chinese people in small cities can irk the crap out of me. Big city Chinese may exhibit similar characteristics, but in my experience travelling it’s so watered down that I don’t even notice it. It’s a relief to be in a place like Chengdu or Kunming, for example.

Here, my friends, is a compendium of typical and ubiquitous behavior that can irritate the unaccustomed or jaded foreigner alike. Needless to say, there are Chinese nationals who are just as offended or more so by this behavior as I am, and it obviously doesn’t apply to everyone.

1. Snot rockets. This is the holding one’s nose (to cover one or the other nostril, or otherwise establish trajectory and insure propulsion) and shooting snot into the street. This is followed by a wiping of hands on pants or each other or perhaps fruit, if the person happens to be a fruit seller.

2. Hawking. This is the sound before spitting, when the Chinese person in question will try to accumulate as much phlegm as possible from the nether regions of their interiors. The louder the hawking is done, the more effective it must be, and this is not just a hobby or nervous tick as it might appear to the wayward onlooker, but rather part of a daily health regimen to rid the body of noxious fluid. Note that this hawking can and does take place in restaurants.

3. Spitting. Almost a let down after the stentorian hawking, as the Chinese have no distance or style in their spitting, as compared to their American counterparts. Rather, it’s just a little “ptuh” landing in front of them. This is not uncommon in restaurant, bus stations and any and all public places, whether there are signs prohibiting it or not.

4. Spitoons in restaurants, and particularly the use thereof. I’ll probably never fully erase the memory of a man behind me in an upscale restaurant hawking like he was fending off impending death by phlegm, and then graphically spitting wads of it in a spittoon which was also very near to me. In the spittoon were several floating goobers.

5. Not flushing… It’s bad enough that there are no doors on stalls, no soap in bathrooms, no toilet paper, you name it, but after seeing a few thousand crap cornucopias (uh, this is when, well, a person craps on an already established pile, thus creating a sort of performance art piece challenging both our ideas of humanity and of banana splits) the novelty has fully worn off. No longer do I keep a camera at hand to snap the most beautiful of all still lifes!

6. Eating with mouths open, slurping, and otherwise showing pigs once and for all how eating is done like a beast. How it is possible the eating with one’s mouth closed is merely a cultural habbit, and the converse is NOT unacceptable to civilized persons anywhere is, I must admit, still surprising to me. Just this morning – and I must remind gentle readers not to judge me too harshly for such infractions on my delicate sensibilities are constant and unending – I happened to look over to another table at a KFC only to see a young guy’s gaping O of a mouth, looking rather like a mini cement mixer filled with bread, a complement of crumbs and sauce on adorning his lips. It didn’t help that this same fellow had previously stepped in front of me in line as if I were a mere statue (see, “cutting in line”). Also note that eating with mouths open usually coincides with alarmingly large mouthfuls of food.

7. Plowing down on pedestrians and leaning on the horn when it’s their light. Traffic in these parts is the survival of the biggest. There is a law which is almost precisely the same as in the West, with one small difference that you will probably be able to identify: “The pedestrian is always meat.” Coupled with treating pedestrians as offending curs in the road, drivers will genuinely be non-comprehending that it’s at all inappropriate for them to honk at you when it’s actually your turn to cross the street. If you are a pedestrian, than the man in a car is your lord God, and not a benevolent one, and you’d better be god-fearing. Note here that this kind of offensive behavior is actually illegal and would get heavy fines elsewhere in the world.

8. Cutting in line. What the hell?! This is a perfect example of the absence of the “Golden Rule” in parts of China. Who wants someone to cut in line in front of them? Therefore, why should anyone cut in line in front of anyone else? Nevertheless, there are people both above the law and above mortal humans, for they deserve to be first in line regardless of how many people have been waiting how long. As a foreigner, one may discover that the best place for a Chinese person to cut into a line is in front of the foreigner, who doesn’t know how to say, “bie cha dui” (don’t cut in line). The latter is one of the most useful and effective phrases I’ve learned.

9. Calling you “foreigner”. This is usually said without any regard for your feelings and with the assumption you don’t know what “lao wai” or “wai guo ren” or “mei guo ren” or “ying guo ren” means. If can feel just a bit like being pelted with little pebbles when one tries to walk down the street and is barraged with a steady stream of pointing fingers and utterances of “lao wai”… Sometimes one just wants to be left alone and not really noticed, rather than be a freak show star without a circus.

10. Taking your picture (eating noodles). Those damned camera phones. God plague he or she who designethed the condemnable machine. What a great thing to share with friends – a picture of an unsuspecting (they think) “wai guo ren” trying to eat spicy noodle soup with chopsticks. This is part of the “monkey syndrome” in which foreigners are given the same courtesy one would generally award to a monkey (see “staring”). For sure I’d photograph a monkey whether he or she liked it or not, eating, even fornicating (though I might think better of a such a picture and delete it).

11. Staring. Isn’t this offensive in all cultures and among all animals including fish and snakes? How is it possible that anyone can not realize staring at someone, who is looking away and back at you to see if you are still staring at him, might be disconcerting? This epitomizes the aforementioned “monkey syndrome”. I once was trying to eat with a Chinese friend, and a man at the next table fully turned around in his chair and just stared at me like I was a performing monkey. Finally I said, “Bit kan wo,” (don’t look at me), and it was as if it shocked him into recognizing that I was a fellow human, cognizant and self aware, possibly in position of an interiority. People can and do stare all the time, and just as often point and announce “foreigner” to whoever may be around.

12. Bargaining. Bargaining means, for the foreigner, trying to haggle down to get the minimum overcharge possible. You will never get a deal. It’s just about you making an effort, speaking Chinese, to not get ripped off. I hear some people enjoy this. Some people enjoy all sorts of things. Do an internet search. People can enjoy anything.

13. Lying. It’s not a lie if you don’t know it’s a lie, and it’s not a lie if you DO know it’s a lie either as long as you’re not going to make a stink about it. The difference between lies and the truth is inconsequential. The purpose of lying is for the Chinese person to gain some advantage over the infinitely wealthy foreigner, and in so doing to do a service for not only himself, his family and inner circle, but for China at large. One doesn’t have to justify lying to or cheating a foreigner, because this is actually a morally sound practice that upstanding Chinese should all adapt in order to benefit the homeland. (Note that I’m employing hyperbole here for effect, though there’s truth in all humor and has been too much of this particular brand of humor in my personal life.)

14. Bird’s next hairdos. Yeah, it’s not a major thing, but in the smaller cities fashion is somehow both behind and very contemporary as kitsch applies. Fashionable boys will parade around with swirling gelled up hairdos that would present excellent homes for countless species of birds.

15. OK, I’m running out of steam here, so just one more, but an important one, Even though you are working in China you must be fantastically wealthy because you are a foreigner. I have asked my students to look around the classroom, look at the desks, the walls, the ceiling fans, smell the waft of the WC coming under the door, and recognize that THIS is where I work. “This is my job.” If I tell them I have a wife and four kids and a giant house and 3 cars every one of my students will believe me. If I tell them I have a stack of yuan from teaching here, they won’t. Anyway, what bugs me about all this is that people consider me richer than, say, the businessmen I’ve had the sincere displeasure of working for who made more off of my work than I did (of course, that being the nature of business). I couldn’t afford one of those black sedans with black tinted windows if I saved my Yuan for years. In reality, while I’m treated like “rich” (even by those richer than I who justify ripping me off under the rubric that I am somehow richer than they are even as the pilfer my salary and benefits), in reality I’m middle class, sort of. Let me add that predacious private schools capitalize on the misconception that foreigner teachers are at the top of the food chain by asserting that we “make more than doctors in China.” Well, a doctor in China only needs a B.A. and doesn’t necessarily perform any operations, so, in reality, it’s more like saying, “the foreign teacher will make more on an hourly basis than will a local pharmacist in China, though that doesn’t include lesson planning and marking papers.”

Thus ends my tirade. I feel better now and am looking forward to going out to greet my lovely Chinese townsmenandwomenandchildren. It is, after all, a beautiful day today.