Just SayingWhat umbrella revolution? It’s umbrella Armageddon in Hong Kong
Yonden Lhatoo has had a bellyful of bad manners in the streets of Hong Kong, where umbrella etiquette is for the birds and selfishness is the name of the game
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, because the rainy season is upon us and it’s umbrella Armageddon in the streets of Hong Kong.
I’m talking about the take-no-prisoners, stabbing, gouging, splashing, dripping, shoving free-for-all with eight-spoked weapons of mass destruction that overtakes this city every time the skies open up. It’s madness out there.
Social ineptitude is already endemic in Hong Kong, where people tend to walk in straight lines on narrow pavements without swerving to avoid collisions, and shuffle along crowded streets with noses buried in their smartphones, expecting everyone else to get out of the way.
But when it rains, the lack of common courtesy is ramped up to rudeness on steroids, as umbrellas become physical extensions of the human form that take up extra space where there is none to spare.
And if you’re a head taller than most people around you, like me, navigating the crowds can be simultaneously scary and infuriating, with umbrella spokes at exactly the right elevation to take an eye out. You have to constantly sway and swerve like a boxer to avoid a maiming.
