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2) People pushing / not waiting in lines - it's just survival. Before you guys speak with contempt about chinese lacking manner, keep in mind EVERYTHING in china need to handle 4X more. Think your morning drive is bad? imagine 4x more cars. Trains/buses are too crowded? imagine 4x more people on it. Hospital has longer wait? ...4x more people. School cant handle this many kids? 4x more kids in it... There is no time to be mellow or waiting, otherwise you get left behind.
why would i care about that? i dont care if that is what they learned to do out of necessity back home. it doesnt make it any less annoying for me. they have a reason, woopty doo i dont care.
why would i care about that? i dont care if that is what they learned to do out of necessity back home. it doesnt make it any less annoying for me. they have a reason, woopty doo i dont care.
Your post reminded me of a story my mother told me about her experience travelling to the Middle East back in the 70s. There she was on a plane waiting to disembark to this Muslim country and the flight attendants were handing out headwraps for the women to cover their hair. Fine, it’s not America, right? But who is making a big fuss on the plane, preventing disembarcation? An American woman objecting to covering her hair because it wasn’t the American way. So yeah, it’s not like we’re not just as guilty of ignoring local customs as foreigners here in America.
My approach - either ignore it and laugh or try to explain to the foreigner how it’s rude/annoying, whatever. If after that they keep doing it, either ignore or fight fire with fire. Usually people are accomodating, unless they’re jerks and there is no way anyone can say that Americans are immune to being jerks.
I am Indian myself. My parents up to my great grandparents' generation were NOT from India (I was born and I lived in NJ my whole life). Due to privacy reasons, I am not going to say what country they are from. Not even one person in my family acts Indian at all nor do they know any Indian language at all. English is our only language. My family and I tend to look down and get turned off by the Indians from India. They live a completely eastern lifestyle compared to the Indians that are from my parents' country. Honestly, I don't even know much about Indian culture, since I am raised by parents who weren't even from India. Yeah I know how Indians are. My mom always told me to be careful with Indians. They have a tendency to stare at people for no reason.
I was at a grocery store with my mom once waiting in line to pay. This old Indian man in front of us stares behind him for no reason. We had the shopping cart in front of us. When he kept staring, I said to my mom, "Mom make sure you're running over his foot with the shopping cart" and then I whisper, "because he is staring at us". My mom replies, "Shh." When we get to the car, she told me I shouldn't have said anything, because Indians have that tendency to stare. Yeah I hate that. It's so annoying when Indians do that. Thank goodness my family is not from India.
We have Indians that live on my street too and we had a couple of issues with them when me and my brother were little kids during those days when we interacted with every child on the block.
The one good thing Indians bring is a strong ethic when it come to education. Obviously that gets lost after a generation or two. For confirmation just go two posts back.
I am Indian myself. My parents up to my great grandparents' generation were NOT from India (I was born and I lived in NJ my whole life). Due to privacy reasons, I am not going to say what country they are from. Not even one person in my family acts Indian at all nor do they know any Indian language at all. English is our only language. My family and I tend to look down and get turned off by the Indians from India. They live a completely eastern lifestyle compared to the Indians that are from my parents' country. Honestly, I don't even know much about Indian culture, since I am raised by parents who weren't even from India. Yeah I know how Indians are. My mom always told me to be careful with Indians. They have a tendency to stare at people for no reason.
I was at a grocery store with my mom once waiting in line to pay. This old Indian man in front of us stares behind him for no reason. We had the shopping cart in front of us. When he kept staring, I said to my mom, "Mom make sure you're running over his foot with the shopping cart" and then I whisper, "because he is staring at us". My mom replies, "Shh." When we get to the car, she told me I shouldn't have said anything, because Indians have that tendency to stare. Yeah I hate that. It's so annoying when Indians do that. Thank goodness my family is not from India.
We have Indians that live on my street too and we had a couple of issues with them when me and my brother were little kids during those days when we interacted with every child on the block.
Ha. I know Indian people who were born and grew up in Guyana and in Trinidad and their families were there for several generations. One of my coworkers, born in India, married an Indian guy from Trinidad. They got married in India. He was exhausted when they came back because he was unfamiliar with the Indian wedding celebration traditions over there. It was party after party after party for two weeks.
Interestingly, her cooking is not anything most Americans would recognize as Indian cuisine. She comes from an area where curry is not a big thing, and she mixes up her traditional dishes with her husband's Caribbean foods.
An American woman objecting to covering her hair because it wasn’t the American way. So yeah, it’s not like we’re not just as guilty of ignoring local customs as foreigners here in America.
we are all individuals and have no responsibility for the actions of others. im certainly not going to take any responsibility for the actions of some random lady that i dont know just because she was born on the same land mass as me.
In case you missed it, I was not just trashing China for fun but relaying actual information from my daughter's direct experiences while going to school in Chengdu for a semester and later living in Beijing for 15 months.
She hopes to live in Shanghai next.
Your list of reasons for why China is the way it is are valid, but that doesn't mean there isn't a culture clash. If someone starts shoving people out of the way on the NYC subway, no one is going to smile benevolently and say, "Oh, that's just those poor Chinese people and their means of survival." They're going to be angry.
Similarly, when my daughter lived in Beijing, she took the subway to work and she said sometimes the way people pushed and shoved would set her off at the end of the day. She said she once said loudly when on the ride home, "Some of you really have to learn the concept of saying 'excuse me'."
stereotype much? vast majority of the chinese people dont push or shove, they behave just like everyone else in the US. Only a very small percentage of the older folks do and i already explained why, not that you need to accept it.
Just like a small percentage of the "culturally superior" folks here, who sits in the middle of 2 seats in a crowded train like everyone else is invisible, throw garbages everywhere on the train, or yells on the phone or force their **** music down your ear on volume 100.
There are rude people everywhere
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I asked her what people said in response. She said, "Nothing. They just looked at me like, 'How does this tall blonde white girl speak our language?"
oh i know what those people are thinking, they are just too polite to tell her. In china, white people are still treated with kid gloves.
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