How rudeness was once a survival strategy
Zhou Xun says China's history may explain mainlanders' reputation today for being pushy. Hard times have taught that those who didn't push to the front didn't survive
Earlier this month, Thierry Gillier, the founder of French fashion house Zadig & Voltaire, announced to the world that its new boutique hotel, due to open in Paris in 2014, would not welcome Chinese tourists. This shocked and angered many Chinese on the mainland and overseas and Gillier was labelled a racist.
There were, however, a few divergent voices criticising the Chinese tourists themselves as being tasteless, noisy, rude and pushy. Happy Snail, a blogger on the mainland, pointed out that his countrymen often ignore warnings and try to take photos in art galleries, and talk loudly in restaurants. He warned his compatriots to change their "bad habits".
Now I am no self-hating Chinese, but I can understand the unhappiness with loud and rude Chinese tourists. Two weeks ago, I was catching a public bus in Sichuan province. After having spent 20 years in Britain practising how to queue, I naturally stood patiently waiting for the bus to turn up. When the bus pulled into the stop, the waiting crowds rioted.
It was like a contact sport. Two men nearly knocked me down as they pushed forward to get on the bus. Others followed them. Hopelessly I cried: "You are not civilised, you are so rude." No one paid the least bit of notice. By then the bus was completely full and the door closed on me.
Watching the bus leave, I felt angry, but I knew from experience that anger would not get me on the bus, or anywhere, in China. I also knew that to teach people in China manners would not make them less rude or less pushy. Growing up in communist China, one of the first phrases we learned at school was "to be civilised". But in this case the brainwashing did not take hold.
Could the rudeness of Chinese be cultural, someone once asked me. Of course not. Rudeness has nothing to do with Chinese culture. I have fond memories of travelling in Taiwan and was impressed by how polite Chinese people in Taiwan were. So how come mainlanders behave differently and have the reputation of being rude, pushy queue jumpers?
A few years ago, while researching the great famine of Mao Zedong's China, I learned that being pushy at the time was an essential strategy for survival. Faced by the great calamity, selfishness became the norm. One person's gain was always another person's loss.
