Fuddland

To me, that “When in Rome…” expression is merely meant to encourage you to be a little adventurous. It means, “run naked from the sauna and jump into the freezing waters of a lake in Finland”, not “club a baby seal to death while passing through north-east Canada”.

It is not anywhere near a justification for abandoning the common courtesy and manners that you’ve been brought up to respect, just because you have seen some locals behaving in a way that wouldn’t rub in your home country. So while in China it might be—legally and traditionally—all right to light up a cigarette at the table while others are still eating, when you’re British or from the US, Canada and any of the other countries of the world that have realised just how stinky that smoke is, you should know better and I will give you a withering stare over the top of my fork until you stub that filth out.

Similarly, if you’ve travelled by public transport here, you’ve probably seen some Chinese people listening to music on their mobiles without the use of headphones. This is intensely annoying. You know damn well it is, because when you were living in your homeland, whenever anyone had his or her headphones bleeding music into the surrounding air, you tutted and rolled your eyes and exhaled with exasperation. But the thing you haven’t quite got is, they tend to listen to music like this only on public transport—crowded bus journeys that will be over relatively soon.

So why on Earth you—and I’m now talking to the Western man at the table next to me as I write this—think it’s all right to sit in a cafe, playing music on your laptop speakers when there is already muzak on, is beyond me. It’s easy to tune out the muzak, but as soon as you add your inane tinny beats to the mix, it becomes a spasmodically syncopated annoyance that is impossible to ignore. [And you haven’t even ordered anything to eat or drink.]

Last week I had the perfect storm of North American man who had already proven himself to be the worst speaker of Chinese in the whole of Chinadom when attempting to communicate with his local girlfriend, sitting three feet from me smoking a cigarette, oblivious to where the smoke was drifting [yes, all over me], playing Stand By Me on his iPhone speakers and singing along, in a cafe where people are trying to read, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The girlfriend was steadfastly ignoring him. I wish I knew her secret.

#1

Thane | 2009 / 10 / 22 – 20:15

It’s true - China would be so much better if all the undeserving foreigners would just leave, wouldn’t it? I sympathise, mate.