Didn't Your Mama Never Learn You No Manners?

I read an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday entitled, China Changes Coarse. The subheading of the article that appeared on the front page said:

The government has set itself a monumental task ahead of the 2008 Olympics: teaching the nation's 1 billion people how to be polite.

Among the behaviors officials hope to eliminate or at least mimimize, according to the article, are: public spitting and urinating, driving that evokes a "Road Warrior" set, and an inordinate fondness for cutting in line.

My wife and I had the good fortune (and I am not being sarcastic) to visit Beijing back in June of this year. Honestly, I was expecting a lot of rude, pushy behavior so I figured I ought to prepare in advance by increasing the frequency of my visits to Costco on weekends and hang around the food samples or checkout lines. What we found at the real thing, however, was much more pleasant. Now I have to qualify all of this by saying we were part of a major company tour and got the red carpet treatment during the organized activities, plus we stayed in a good part of town. So we did not really see any "underside" although we did spend some time on our own walking around plus we encountered natives during our tour activities. And from my observations, I see much more rude behavior by customers at Costco and on our freeways and streets than I did during our one week in Beijing.

The staff that helped us at our hotel, plus the wait staff at the restaurants we went to and the stores all seemed sincerely helpful. And there were so many of them, too. China has a tremendous population and there is no shortage of people to fill the labor pool. Maybe it is the competition for jobs or maybe it is the result of the training efforts that are underway but we were treated very nicely no matter where we went. I noticed a refreshing lack of "attitude" among those who helped us. We also, thankfully, did not see any instances of urinating in public but we did see some spitting. Heck, I see people spitting over here; it's no different.

One thing that really stood out to me was that traffic in Beijing is crazy. There are motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians going every which way at all hours of the day and night. As far as I can tell, it is a laissez-faire system in which the largest object on the road has the right of way. Those idiots over here who think it is their right to take their time strolling across the street and holding up traffic wouldn't last very long over there -it's every man, woman and child for themselves when it comes to navigating the roads or crossing the streets. You see bicycles weaving in and out of cars, and pedestrians standing on the white line lane dividers in the middle of the street while cars and bikes whiz past them on both sides. On first glance it is chaos.

But, it seems to work. People get where they are intending to go and they just fill in the gaps and keep moving. I was impressed by the efficiency. That's not to say there aren't traffic jams because there are; the number of vehicles is too large for the amount of roadway in many places. One thing I also noticed was that I saw very, very few cars with any dents in them. You also do not see any road-hogging SUV's. There are buses and some vans for public and tour transportation but the majority of locals use small vehicles and bicycles. Everyone just goes. Like I said, it seems to proceed in an efficient, matter-of-fact manner.

I didn't see any line-cutting, either. So what is this Times article talking about? Well, like I said, we were in a nice, touristy part of town and didn't see the underbelly. As we rode in our tour buses, we could see plenty of broken-down houses and poor neighborhoods, and families sitting outside their houses and stores with their little kids running around naked or taking a bath in a little sidewalk tub. I guess that would be cause for some people to turn up their nose at those "disgusting natives" but it really didn't seem that shocking or horrible to me.

Maybe the people where we were had been trained well in order to get tourist business. That's fine, it has to start somewhere. At least there is evidence that the training works. Maybe someone ought to start doing that over here because there's plenty of businesses that could take a lesson from the help and wait staffs we encountered in Beijing.

Coming back to the USA: One place I'd like to commend for making an effort to improve their customer service is Mervyn's. Every time you buy something your receipt has a web address and a customer code/password to allow you to complete a brief survey about your experience at the store that day. I think they are taking this seriously because I've noticed that the cashiers really make an effort to smile, and be courteous and polite. That's not to say Mervyn's has a monopoly on this as other places have good service, too. But there are also too many places that don't have good service. It's a matter of training and weeding out the people who don't know how to take care of a customer. So what they are attempting to do in China is a good idea no matter where you are; China by no means is the only place that needs to learn manners!

By the way, another thing we noticed was that there were very few overweight people in China. The biggest examples of rudeness, and the worst examples of obesity were among the tourists. The Saturday after we returned, I made a shopping excursion to Costco. In the checkout line I took a look around to compare outlines of people here versus China. The majority of people in line were huge compared to the Chinese people in terms of belly overhang. With so many people in China riding bikes and walking, it keeps them in shape. As cars become increasingly prevalent I can see the population becoming heavier. The end result can be seen in our country by walking around your neighborhood warehouse store or mall, or attending your neighborhood sporting event.

(note: the picture of the polite sign was taken at the Forbidden City)