South Sanlitun; My Current Haunts

It's not home, but it's the closest I'm going to get in Beijing. South Sanlitun now knwos me, from the friendly doorman who waves at me to the convenience store owner that says "Nihao, laowai!" (hey, foreigner!) when I walk in (such friendliness sometimes surprises other customers). I know the area well enough that I have given people directions, and I've led a few of my Chinese friends the right way on the subway when they were confused. I've got the place down.

But I have a few complaints that will make me very happy to get back to the US. Some of the stuff that has really bothered me these last 6 weeks:

1) Cutting in line; Beijingers try it a lot. They are usually unsuccessful, because I will tap them on the shoulder and say "Ni gan shenme?" (What do you think you're doing?), and they'll usually waddle behind me. Sometimes they don't, and I figure it's not worth a fight in a foreign country.

2) Spitting. It's loud (you know that sound when you push up all the junk in your nose and throat right before you spit it out), and then it's all over the sidewalks. People do it all the damn time.

3) Car horns. The Chinese have an adolescent relationship with their horns that is like a Freudian nightmare. Bus drivers are the worst, careening into the wrong side of the road and blaring their horn at anyone that dares oppose them, or honking at cars at intersections that have not yet even begun to think about entering the road. But besides them (I know I have complained about them already), there is incredible honking at all hours of the day. On my way to work, one man leaned into his horn for well over 30 seconds, not letting up, behind a line of cars at a red light. He smiled and let off it as they moved, as if he had had some effect. He's not the only one that holds that delusion.

4) Loud ringtones. My cheap cellphone has vibrate, and I know theirs does, too. They just haven't figured it out, or are so enamored with their ringtone that they want to share it with everybody in the office when someone tries to call them while they're away from their desk. One ringtone is literally a child crying. Literally. Seriously, people, why do you do this to me?

5) Pushing. Chinese folks, you'll have to tell me if this happens to you, too. But when people want to get by me, they don't ask me to move, and they don't even silently tap me on the shoulder to get me to move, they just shove me. Old ladies, big young men, doesn't matter. If there is some sort of language problem, it is that the Chinese have not figured out how to get someone's attention without using words. But I think there is some small pleasure felt in pushing whitey around.

6) Tour groups here suck, too. If you go to a famous college or live in a large city, you've seen them. Chinese tour groups are their own detour sign, and have absolutely no care that they might be in everyone's way at once. It is no different here.

7) People are always in my way, even if they're not tour groups. I have not noticed this in other large cities I've been in (Philadelphia, New York, Boston), but for some reason, Beijingers are just in the way. Maybe they walk a bit slower. Part of the problem might be that there are more people per square kilometer, but part of it is certainly that they don't naturally create "right-side" and "left-side" opposite flows--groups tend to just crash into each other in some terrible disaster.

8) Pushy salesmen. This can get epic, especially in tourist locations. Do most of you white people cave in and buy something when someone shoves it in your face and screams at you? Am I the only one that evades this? If not, it seems like terrible business practice, but it keeps happening. It's the one thing that will get me to ignore anything a vendor has to offer, and the single greatest obstacle to me souvenir-shopping.

9) Pushy flyer-pushers. You know the LaRouche guys that try to give you pamphlets telling you that space-alien clone Cheney is planning to use Halliburton's private nuclear stock to attack Azerbaijan for its vast stocks of toenail clippings? You know nothing! Saturday, after seeing Chairman Mao, Michelle actually got assaulted by three ladies trying to stuff travel agency cards in her purse, and she and I both had to push them off. We considered calling the police. She said "this just happens sometimes."

10) Rude smoking. Now you all should know that I don't complain about smoking. I live all around it, and tolerate it in just about any private establishment--if you want to smoke, I can leave. But in China, people frequently ash on the ground (despite ash trays on their tables...), and cigarette butts litter the bathroom stalls at work, along with ash. The smell, combined with regular bathroom smells, is pretty terrible.

11) Personal space problems. I have found it is harder to get someone to leave you alone or give you physical space using body language. Some of my travelers will note this happens in bars--women have to be pretty obvious for a very long time before men will stop hanging on them. I also don't know how to politely say no in China (traditional Western methods of evasion seem to have no effect here), so I have been roped into some pretty lousy stuff that I thought I had made it clear that I was not thrilled about, especially at work.

12) The subtleties of flirtation are lost upon young Chinese girls. I am told that traditionally, Chinese women silently pine for the men that they like, and also that the new generation of girls has rejected this for more personal initiative. But as I've told before, from the girls stealing my telephone number to the 15-year-old telling me boys her age were too young for love, such forwardness would turn me off even if I were single.

13) American college students are even more obnoxious here than at home. I now know where the "ugly American" comes from, and it's college students. Men and women my age, alike, are entirely clueless about other cultures, and make absolutely zero cultural preparation before their mommies and daddies drop $20k for them to spend an "educational" summer abroad. And they seem to neither notice nor care how their hosts feel about their behavior. I have had a special revulsion that I have reserved for other "laowai" in China, and I yearn for American obnoxiousness in an American context, where it belongs.

I guess this is not "a few" irritations, but many. China can be an irritating place.