| JS and Stephen. It's funny you talk about cue jumping. As I have an Asian face, I feel that the locals assume that I am one of them so it is ok to jump the cue. If I had a white face, I think the Chinese locals would think twice before doing it. My motto is to be polite until "someone screws with you". ;-) In other words, I will line up in cues, hold the elevator door open (not shut it right when you want to enter... haha), and also allow people to exit the elevator before entering! Normal western things most people tend to do... even in HK. These days, I'm not as polite as JS when I see a cue jumper. I think because I come from a western society, I'm fed up with well educated people being rude to strangers. With these obnoxious people that jump the cue or cram 100 people in a small elevator, I will raise my voice and let it be known that it is not right. My Chinese isn't that good (I learned it after moving to Shanghai) but it is good enough to make them lose face. Sometimes, I would be polite and ask a double negative question like, "don't you think smoking in a non smoking area with a pregnant woman beside you is bad?". Other times I would just say, "line up like everyone else!", or "give me some space and line up, will you??". Something kind of funny happened in Beijing. We were cueing for the taxi for 30 minutes at the airport and 2 guys jumped the cue in front of us. No one said a thing (everyone was Chinese in the line up that day). As a foreigner, I couldn't handle that so I let it be known that they need to get back behind us. These guys actually had the balls to argue that it was ok for them to jump the cue... haha. My father (is able to speak better Chinese than me) was actually more upset than me! (He left China when he was 18 so he isn't really Chinese anymore). He actually was able to get the whole crowd going and against the 2 guys. Eventually the security guards came and told the 2 guys backed off and get in line. Moral of the story? As JS mentioned, the Chinese tend to follow peer pressure / group think instead of just following the rules. |
Business of Zhending Chicken - Part II