Is it…
- The girls at the market yelling and pulling at you to get you to buy a fake purse?
- The dvd guys saying “hey, dvd? dvd? dvd? dvd?”
- The women, holding babies, trying to sell you “sex dvds”?
- The constant spitting and snot rockets flying around the side walks?
- The ring leaders of the beggars sending little kids out on the streets to hang on you and whine to get $1 out of you?
- The taxi drivers who are always looking for the “long ride” with the foreigners, so they either…
- Decline to take you where you want to go
- Drive slow as hell to piss you off
- The people outside of restaurants/bars yelling at you and getting in your face to get you to come in?
- The guys on Sanlitun bar street trying to get you to go to a “lady bar”?
- Belly shirts?
There’s a lot of talk in Beijing these days in regards to manners. There’s even a “Miss Manners” in Beijing. They also have people going around town fining people for spitting and not standing in line (I have yet to see any of this in action).
I don’t know anyone, Chinese included, who likes when someone bugs the hell out of them to try to get them to buy something. Why do people around here think the way the act will entice people to buy?
There are rude people all over the world. But, in Beijing, I think it comes down to the fact that many Chinese just don’t know how manners are defined by the rest of the world. Many people seem worried about the massive number of migrant construction workers in the city; I think that should be the least of everyone’s worries.
My view…there are going to be a lot of pissed off and annoyed people in Beijing one year from now.
