Let's talk about rude Chinese people again

Hi again guys. I had a strange conversation the other day with my friend 'John' - he works in retail, at a high-end luxury designer boutique in London and that brand happens to be very popular with the Chinese tourists. He started the conversation by saying, "I'm not racist - I really like you Alex, but I hate Chinese people so much." Turns out that he gets a lot of grief from the Chinese people who visit the store where he works and I had a very frank conversation with him about the rudeness of the Chinese people. I'm not trying to excuse it by explaining it, but I do think it is something we need to talk about. So in today's post, I am going to recreate that conversation I had with John as we explore the topic: why are Chinese people so very rude then? It is common knowledge that they are rude, but has anyone ever tried to explain why? Therefore in this post, I shall recreate the conversation I had with John as I explained some things to him.

Me: So why do you hate Chinese people so much John, tell me?

John: They are so obnoxious when they come into the store - you don't even need to see them coming in, you can hear them. We have customers from all over the world as this is a world-famous designer label but no other nationality is this loud and rude as the Chinese. The staff are always extremely polite to all customers, we would greet the customer and offer to help them with anything they need. But when I say something like 'good morning' or 'hello', I usually get ignored. Sometimes we try saying 'nihao, huanying' but they just blank us deliberately. The goods are neatly arranged and displayed throughout the store but when a group of Chinese shoppers come in, they just chuck the items around and the staff would have to clean up after them. Your average primary school student in the UK would be much better behaved.

Me: Oh dear. I know it sounds bad but somehow it doesn't surprise me.

John: It gets worse. They always treat the staff with at best thinly veiled suspicion, at worst with real contempt. So for example, when they buy an item, they always demand, "you give me new one, don't give me display model". I would assure them that it is new and we would show them the original packaging, but they still insist on checking as if I have just lied to them. Sometimes they would demand a better price and we have to explain that we don't do discounts in the store - they would ask me for the price of an item, then turn to another colleague and ask the same question because clearly they think that I am not going to give them a fair price or I am trying to cheat them. They come into my store, assuming the very worst of the staff and treating us with such rudeness, such mistrust, such contempt. I wonder if they behave like that back in China, when they go shopping in a Chinese city, would they treat the staff there just as badly?

Me: Yes and no. There is so much to unpack here, but let me introduce you to the very ugly concept of 'assumption of mutual hatred'. The Chinese people assume that because you're white, you must be a racist and you must hate Chinese people, that you will look down on Chinese people. So based on that assumption, they will treat you like the enemy. Now I know what you're going to say, I am not a racist - but you have to look a little deeper into Chinese history to understand what is going on here. China has always been ruined by corruption because of the system of emperors passing the throne from father to son - the person who gets to be emperor of China isn't determined by meritocracy but by lineage. That is led to the period known as the 'carving of the Chinese melon': upon the defeat of China at the hands of Japan in 1895, this led to many Western imperial powers gaining concessions and territories, otherwise known as 'spheres of influence'. I could go into a lot more detail, but I'm going to fast forward to WW2 when China was decimated once again at the hands of Japan. Note that Japan is much smaller than China, had a much smaller population, yet militarily, they were much more superior than China. China faced one humiliating defeat after another at the hands of the Japanese and if it wasn't for the Americans bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima, who knows how the war might have ended for China.

You see, in the past, China had always been weak and corrupt, but they only had to worry about enemies like the Mongols invading on horseback - but modern technology enabled foreign powers from far away to start staking their claim on China's land. In response to the shock of WW2, Mao Zedong decided to shut China off from the rest of the world, banishing foreigners from China and pursuing a policy of self-sufficiency, self-reliance and isolation. For three decades from the 1950s to the 1980s, China barely interacted with the outside world and in that period at least, they were blissfully oblivious to just how much poorer they had become compared to their counterparts in the West. But with Deng Xiaoping openly up the doors of China to the rest of the world in the 1980s, Chinese citizens began to reengage with the outside world and yes, they realized that they were much, much poorer than say the Japanese and the Americans. So we basically pick up where we left off in WW2, with the Chinese having a huge chip on their shoulders, thinking that everyone from the Japanese to the Americans will look down on them, will assume the worst of the Chinese and hate the Chinese. I could go a lot deeper into Chinese history, but this is a summary as to how China has been kicked around over the centuries and why they remain suspicious of foreigners and assume the very worst of them.

John: Do Chinese people really believe that? That everyone outside China hates the Chinese? I mean, it's one thing to choose to hate foreigners and be racist, but to assume that everyone hates you because you're Chinese? Really?

Me: It sounds incredible but many actually do have that mindset. Even my father has that mindset, he doesn't speak much English so he has no way to form any kind of meaningful relationship with a white person; so he very much just defaults to this assumption of mutual hatred - "I believe you hate me, so I am going to hate you too." His inability to speak English has always been a source of his insecurities, it fuels his insecurity because he lives in an English speaking country Singapore and even when he walks into a bank or a post office, he looks around for someone who can communicate with him in Mandarin because he is afraid that if he has to speak to someone in English, they're going to look down on him and mock him for being uneducated, for being unable to communicate in English. When you're unable to speak English or any other European language, then you can't actually get to know a white person who's going to change that mindset. All you need is English really, I remember being in Zagreb and seeing some Brazilian tourists chat to the Croatian locals and what language did they have in common? English. English has become the global lingua franca, it will allow you to speak to the world and many Chinese people still don't speak much or any English at all.

John: Do you ever try to change the way your father thinks about white people?

Me: I have tried and failed - mostly because my father is very autistic, that means that he automatically shuts down everyone else's opinions and is not interested in learning new things. Once he has made up his mind on an issue like "all white people are racists", there's no way anyone can change his mind. It is scary just how many Chinese people actually think just like my father, because it is easy to say that my father is very old, quite uneducated and autistic, that's why he thinks like that but many people in China today do feel exactly the same way: they do assume that everyone from the Japanese to the Americans look down on the Chinese so the moment they step into your shop, it is on the assumption on mutual hatred. Now, they do not have the ability to engage with you in a reasonable way to tell you that they are rich, that they have a lot of money - so instead, they default to treating you like crap, showing you as much disrespect as possible because in China, you get away with treating the people who work for you like crap. The concept of HR and treating your staff well to motivate them is very much of western concept. These Chinese shoppers want to show you who is boss, so they behave like the boss in a Chinese factory who treats all the workers like crap. I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule, but the concept of hierarchy is far more deeply ingrained into Chinese societies than in the West. 

John: That sounds awful.

Me: It is awful indeed. It is extremely ugly. I won't defend it - that's a totally disgusting aspect of Chinese culture.

John: Do Chinese people generally just treat each other in such a rude way?

Me: Actually no. There are rules about whom you can be rude to and whom you have to show respect to. So for example, in Chinese culture, you're meant to show your elders, especially your parents, respect regardless of whether they have earned it or not. Now I have a lot of problems with this rule because I think it's utter and totally bullshit, it's downright stupid and I believe that respect is earned, not demanded. I once said some really awful things about my uncle in front of my father - my uncle is a good for nothing who is always asking my mother for money. My father than scolded me for daring to be disrespectful to someone in my family who was older than me and that just set me off: I told my father exactly how I felt about my uncle just to provoke him because I don't give a shit what the rules are in his Chinese culture. I didn't back down and it led to a real nasty shouting match when I refused to concede. I'd rather provoke my father and make him angry than to back down over something like that. I'm going to do and say exactly what I want and nobody - not my father, not his culture - can have any influence over my decisions in that aspect. It wasn't even personal, I don't have an axe to grind with my father, but it was his culture that I really deeply despised, I can't put into words just how much contempt I have for my father's attitude and his culture - that's why I have rebelled by rejecting his culture.

But here's when it gets even more stupid - you're meant to show your elders respect no matter what scumbags they are, but people who are socially beneath you? You can treat them with contempt and be as rude as you want, that's socially acceptable. I remember being on a flight from Singapore to Brunei and the Chinese Singaporeans were so rude to the crew! They were barking orders like, "give me coffee" instead of "can I have a coffee please?" I was mortified but the crew seemed to be totally used to be spoken to like that - none of them even once said 'thank you' to the crew for their service. The rule seems to be that if you have earned the status of being the customer by paying for the ticket of the flight, then treating the crew like crap is a right you have paid for and it is considered socially acceptable. Now in the West, particularly in America, you have a totally different relationship with service staff because they are earning their tips - so they treat you well and if you are impressed, you leave a good tip. I can imagine there being a real clash of cultures if a bunch of Chinese tourists tried treating an American waiter like crap, oh boy. So in Chinese culture, they almost feel the need to treat those socially beneath them like crap, just to demonstrate to others their social status - they may feel like if they don't resort to rudeness, they fear that they may be perceived as the social equal of the lowly waiter. So yes, a typical Chinese person who would be super polite and respectful to his grandmother, but can be extremely rude to the waiter serving his grandmother. So you can be very rude to some people but you must be polite to some other people.

John: So the only way to escape this rudeness is if you are at the top of the Chinese food chain?

Me: Well yes, in that sense you've earned the respect of others, the others dare not show rudeness to their social superiors. So if a Chinese waiter has to deal with an unreasonable and difficult customer, then they just put up with it - an American waiter would probably not! So John, unfortunately for you, you work in a shop, thus the Chinese tourists would consider you socially inferior to them and thus it is their right to be very rude with you. The Chinese do have a pretty clear sense of a pecking order - that's why Chinese kids are put under so much pressure to study hard, to become doctors, lawyers, bankers and other professions which would put them near or at the top of the food chain, so they would always have the respect of others in their community. I remember the local GP in my neighbourhood, Dr Quek - because he was a doctor, it didn't matter or not if he was your doctor or not, the fact that he was a doctor meant that he was at the top of the food chain and so everyone showed him a lot of respect, I can't imagine anyone in the local community ever being rude to him. Chinese parents would be like, "you have to study very hard and make sure you have a good career, so everyone would respect you. If you end up driving a taxi or an Uber, then everyone is going to think you're a total loser and treat you like shit. What kind of future do you want?" That is just the kind of mindset that is so ingrained into Chinese people, so those who do 'make it' in professions where they earn a lot of money and are respected, their abusive behaviour is them venting a lot of pent up anger, for all the crap they were put through to get to where they are.

John: Wait, so the staff in shops in places like China and Singapore have to put up with abuse all the time?

Me: Pretty much so and they just take it as their punishment for not having studied hard enough to become a doctor. That's quite unfair of course, because not everyone has the kind of childhood where they were nurtured through their studies and given the kind of help they need to go to university. Especially in China, a lot of poorer folks don't get a half decent education and end up working in lowly paid jobs. The story of Wang Fuman 'ice boy' for example: he was born into poverty in Yunnan and all the odds had been stacked against him. So for people like that, it really isn't their fault that they didn't become a doctor or a lawyer - yet Chinese society blames them for their personal failures in ending up in these lowly paid jobs and the general consensus is that they deserve the abuse they get at work. Clearly, we don't agree with that in the West. I don't walk into a supermarket thinking that I have the right to be rude to the staff there, I don't see the need to be rude to anyone unless they've done something to provoke me, to make me upset with them, then yeah that's when I get nasty. But why should I have the right to be rude to the staff in a shop, in your shop for example? I do believe that I can have a far more pleasant shopping experience if I am nice to you and you help me get what I want.

It takes a very perverted, perverse Chinese mind to actually enjoy throwing one's weight around by being rude to service staff. In fact we have a few phrases in Mandarin to describe that kind of behaviour, the closest approximation in English would be 'showing off/putting on airs to make someone feel inferior' but even that doesn't quite capture the true essence of this Chinese concept. Sure not all Chinese people are that evil - the outpouring of charity over the Wang Fuman 'ice boy' story shows a softer, more compassionate side to modern China. What this creates is a situation where the Chinese shop assistants just assume that the customers are going to be rude cunts, so they tend to hold back a lot more, they don't really try too hard to be friendly like they do say in America or Japan because it is fairly pointless to be nice if the customers are going to treat you like crap regardless. You know that feeling of dread you get when you see a group of Chinese customers step into your shop? Yeah, unfortunately that's exactly what the Chinese shop assistants have to deal with all the time, but for them it is just normal so they kinda just get used to it. They just take all the nasty abuse.

John: Can you explain why Chinese people treat those considered socially inferior that way then?

Me: Good question: You see, the Chinese have always had a very clear social structure - not unlike the British with their class system. Even as early as the Qin dynasty, there were four classes: landlords, merchants, craftsmen and peasants. Your place in society was clearly defined by the kind of job you had and there was very little social mobility: if your father was a peasant, then that's what you will be in this lifetime. Mao took charge and dismantled that system under his brand of communism, trying to create a more equal society. That experiment lasted about 35 years. China soon fell back into the capitalism system in the 1980s but Mao had disrupted the old system sufficiently for China unable to pick up where they left off with their traditional social structures. For example, power and money is now closely associated with the CPC (Communist Party of China) and your social class in China today depends a lot on your wealth, but you need to be in a the right kind of job, the right position to wield influence if you want to accumulate wealth in China today. It suffices to say that the transition from socialism back to capitalism has caused great social upheaval in China and it continues to do so. 

Let's compare this to the UK: the class system is far more subtle. I can tell a person's class status by the way they dress through very subtle details and through their accent, their choice of vocabulary. There is a fairly close correlation between one's social class and one's wealth in the UK - however in China, this is nearly impossible. Someone could have fine manners and speaks in an intellectual manner but still be fairly poor: China has too many highly qualified graduates and too few well paid jobs today so you have the bizarre situation where graduates end up doing jobs they are vastly overqualified for and get paid peanuts. Whereas someone who dresses like a factory worker can be an important party official and be extremely rich. Whether you are rich and influential depends so much on your relation to the CPC and the CPC doesn't care if you have fine manners or not. Some these party officials are so well-paid, so rich yet they don't seem to have any dress sense at all. Thus in this context, your fabulously rich party official may not have the dress sense of a fine gentleman, yet he is afraid that when he walks into a designer boutique in Beijing, the staff may think that he is too poor to afford anything in there. He may worry that he doesn't command any respect in there so how does he establish his social 'superiority' there? Well, he starts treating the staff as if they are socially inferior, so they get the message loud and clear that he is very much their social superior and is an important, rich man regardless of his manners or clothes.

However, this may work when one person does it but we have a saying in Chinese: 打肿脸充胖子 - that describes the act of pretending to be something greater than you actually are. So if both the poor factory worker and the important party official are going to dress equally badly, the factory worker can walk into the most exclusive designer boutiques in Beijing and treat the staff very rudely, hoping that nobody is going to call his bluff and question if he really has the right to treat others as if they are really inferior. What this means in practice is that if both the important party official and the factory worker are going to default to the same kind of mannerisms when they enter a shop and treat service staff like crap, then everyone is going to be rude to the service staff: rude is the new normal. In fact the factory worker may be afraid to be polite to the service staff, because doing so would mean that they acknowledge that the service staff are their social equals. You see, in the UK, I am always polite to service staff and am happy to treat them as my equals of course, being nice to them doesn't diminish my social status and more important, being a bully and treating service staff like crap doesn't make me a better person, hell no. However, the Chinese are still figuring out this whole thing about social status.

John: Can we address the issue of their loudness - why do Chinese people shout when they talk?

Me: Sigh. I can explain it but please don't imagine I'm making excuses - the same way I can explain why Hitler did what he did in a history exam, it doesn't mean that I personally condone his decisions. I have covered this before in a previous post in fact. Big Chinese cities are notoriously crowded and have extremely high population densities - some much higher than Singapore. People living in such cities get used to the noise that never ceases even late at night, they train themselves to ignore it and can fall asleep in rooms which would seem extremely noisy to most of us. When you want to make yourself heard in a noisy place like a crowded restaurant or a packed train, you would raise your voice and shout - but when you have to that all the time as there's hardly anywhere quiet in your city, then shouting becomes the new norm. You don't realize how loud you are if everyone is equally loud, that's why they stand out when they come to England where our average conversations are never as loud. It is simply not a cultural taboo for them the way it is for us and if they were more aware of the effect they had on others, then perhaps they would adjust their behaviour. But the problem with a lot of Chinese people is that they are woefully ignorant about cultural norms in other countries, that is why they come across like a bull in a china shop when they are abroad, causing a lot of offence everywhere they go.

Let me give you an example from another culture - in Japan, it is perfect acceptable and normal to slurp your noodles noisily when you eat. It is done to demonstrate to the chef that you are indeed enjoying the noodles and the action of blowing/sucking air to create that slurping sound also helps cools down the boiling hot noodles, allowing the diner to eat them more quickly. I find that sound quite disgusting. In the West however, it is considered extremely impolite to eat in such a noisy manner and the question is then what do you do when you order ramen in a Japanese restaurant in London? Do you go for the authentic experience and slurp your noodles as you would in Tokyo? Or do you assume that the other diners around you are probably not Japanese and you should eat in a way which would not be offensive to them, since you are in London? Thus I have come across Japanese tourists whose table manners have offended people because in other cultures, making any kind of sound when you eat is highly offensive and people will think that you're an uncultured, rude peasant if you eat like that. However in Japan, eating noisily is quite normal and acceptable. It boils down to being aware of what is acceptable around you and what is considered taboo. If you go to another country without making an effort to be aware of their culture, then you're going to cause offence and make a fool of yourself.

But whilst we're comparing Japan and China - what makes Japanese society so gracious is their concept of 'mindfulness of others'. This concept is not unique to Japan but they are the one nation who have perfected the art of it. In simple terms, it means not behaving like a dick to annoy others, be considerate, don't be selfish. So take the example of speaking on your mobile phone on a train - in Japan, it's quite taboo and even if someone has to take a call, they'll whisper, "Sorry I can't talk now, I'll call you back later" and hang up. In the UK, we have quiet zones on our trains where you are not supposed to use your phone and other zones where it is okay - so if you wanna talk on your phone, that's fine but be prepared for others to do the same around you if you do sit in the non-quiet zone. But in China or Singapore, nobody gives a shit about others around them - it's a completely selfish attitude when it comes to disturbing others. So there's a sliding scale: on one hand, in Japan people are ultra-polite; in the UK, people are in the middle of that scale whilst in Singapore and China, you will find the very worst examples of people being hideously rude. The difference lies in what the societal norms are: if the average person in China has no concept of being 'mindful of others', it is only because they were brought up in a society where being utterly rude is consider normal rather than disgraceful.

This has huge implications - so imagine if you're a student in a Japanese High School or a worker in a Japanese office, if you behaved in a rude manner then there are immediate consequences. You would be shunned by your classmates and colleagues - if your behaviour persists, you will be taken aside by a teacher or a HR manager and be given a warning if you are continually upsetting those around you. In short, there are consequences to your rude behaviour, that's how they maintain that quality of decorum in Japanese society by being intolerant of those who dare to break their rules. However in China and Singapore, there are virtually no consequences for being rude at all - you'll have to take it to an extreme before anyone would step in and do something about it; in the case of Singapore, the most people would do is to take out their phones and film your display of rude behaviour. That's probably as far as they will go, they will not intervene directly.

Am I being too harsh in condemning Chinese people this way and shitting all over their culture with as much contempt as I can possibly muster? Perhaps. But then again, everything is relative. It is what you're used to. Let me give you an example, my mother is from Singapore and when she first visited London, it was in the summer and the temperature dropped down to like 16 degrees at night, she found the nights actually vey cold. I was like,16 degrees? I told her that it was warm, relative to the kind of sub-zero temperatures that we could experience sometimes in the winter. For me, 16 degrees is not cold for I live in England but for my mother, it is a lot colder than the kind of tropical weather she has grown accustomed to in Singapore. What we're used to, what we consider normal is completely dependent on where we live - thus when my mother sees a Chinese person acting in a rude way, she doesn't bat an eyelid as that's the kind of thing she witnesses on a daily basis. She's used to it the same way I am used to 16 degrees in the summer. It's just normal for her, whilst I would be totally appalled by Chinese people behaving in a rude way because after 21 years of living in Europe, what I consider 'normal' is defined entirely by European standards and not Chinese ones. It's all relative.

John: You've talked about the relationship between bosses and staff, customers and service staff as well as within the family. What about amongst friends? Are Chinese people rude or polite with their friends?

Me: Good question. I have worked with people from China and they think I am needlessly polite with my friends and family. So for example, if I were to ask you for a favour John, like if I am moving house this weekend and I need a few friends to help me carry all my heavy furniture from the truck to my house, I would ask you really nicely then thank you over and over again for your hard work. I would go out of my way to show my gratitude because I would come across as rude and ungrateful if I didn't recognize your efforts. In Chinese culture, they probably won't do that. They'll be like, hey I need your help this weekend and after you spend hours carrying furniture, you won't even get a thank you - not because your Chinese friend isn't grateful, but it is then an unwritten contract, an understanding that the next time you need help, I'll be there for you for he is indebted to you. He doesn't need to say 'thank you' for those are just words - it's a Chinese thing, they don't ask for help nicely and they never say thank you. It's not like the vocabulary doesn't exist, I know how to be very polite in Mandarin. But if both parties don't mind the way they treat each other, then is there really a problem?

Let me give you an example. When my parents and sister came to visit me in London, my sister went out of her way to do so many things for my parents to make sure that they were comfortable. Like she would make sure they had every things they needed and wanted, did everything according to their desires whilst denying herself even a few minutes to look at something she was interested in. Did my parents once say 'thank you' to my sister? Hell no, my parents were downright rude to my sister to the point where I blew up and scolded my mother for being so hideously rude and ungrateful. I swear my parents were both obnoxious and unreasonable. In my opinion, if you stop thanking people, it will get to a point where they will think, well screw you, what's the point of being nice to you when you don't appreciate a thing I do and just take everything for granted? But my parents' reasoning was, we have done so much for your sister in having taken care of her son when he was younger so she could continue working - so she owes us a lot thus we don't need to say thank you to her. Good grief, I thought my parents' reasoning was bullshit but then again, that's the way it works in their culture. Even my sister told me to leave it, that it was okay with her, she wasn't complaining and it doesn't bother her in the slightest that my parents treat her like that. What can I say, we're siblings but culturally, we're at least 8 time zones apart. It's like I respect and I love my sister, but I so don't understand why she defends her culture like that.

John: Will things change with the younger generation in China or will they always be like that?

Me: Hmmm, not in the short run at least. Children won't feel the need to be polite unless they were brought up by parents who had taught them manners and if they look at the way their parents treat others with such rudeness, then they will copy their parents, follow their bad examples. And it is not just their parents: if the kids see the adults in their community behaving this badly, then where are the role models for them? Who is going to teach them how to treat others with respect? No, the younger generation in China will probably be just as rude as their parents as I just don't see the catalyst for change present. The only way for change to happen is if the young people start consuming enough foreign media in vast enough quantities to have a major influence in the way they think and treat each other. Also, if large numbers of Chinese youth go study, live and work in other countries, then they will have to start changing their ways to adapt to other cultures. But I just don't see that happening in the short run - you need to speak English to start consuming foreign media and the uptake is still stubbornly slow in China. They have a long way to go before English is widely spoken like in a country such as Sweden or the Netherlands. Chinese people also face a lot of obstacles trying to get visas to live abroad, so only a very limited number will ever have that opportunity. Thus in the short run, the status quo will remain.

John: So what can you recommend, what can I do when I encounter rude Chinese people at work then?

Me: I don't know the answer to that question - I think that this awareness that they're behaving like that out of a variety of factors: they probably have low self esteem and are scared that you are looking down on them, or think they're poor. I don't know if being friendly or polite is going to change or even being to challenge that mindset - if that's the impression they've had of white people for decades, you making friendly small talk for a minute or two isn't going to make that budge even an inch I'm afraid but at least perhaps it may help them feel a bit more relaxed, a little less threatened.

John: Threatened? I'm the one who feels threatened.

Me: You have to put yourself in the shoes on the Chinese tourists who is incredibly worried that you are going to look down on him because you're white and they're Chinese. They're walking around London fearing that every white person is a nasty racist. As for the volume, just know that they are not doing it deliberately to annoy you - it is just like a Japanese person slurping his noodles loudly, they aren't aware that what they are doing is highly offensive outside their country. I think it is important to separate what is a result of ignorance or insecurity and what is a result of pure malice - it is not always easy to do so of course, but I find giving people the benefit of the doubt makes it a lot easier for me to sleep at night! From my own experience, looking at my own father, I say there's a strange mix of ignorance, insecurity and malice shaping his perception of white people, but it is mostly ignorance and insecurity rather than malice per se.

One common explanation about why Chinese people are so rude is the extreme poverty that a lot of Chinese people had to go through in through for much of the last century - like first there was WW1, then civil war, the invasion of Japan in WW2, then more civil war. The Mao ruined the country through the cultural revolution - modern academics estimate  that between 40 to 55 million Chinese people starved to death in the Great Leap Forward. Chinese people became selfish out of a necessity to survive, they had to push in front of you in line at the food store because the rice would run out and some people would go hungry - if you queued up politely, then you literally could starve to death. It's a convenient excuse of course; but I'm from Singapore and not China, we're the world's third richest country and we've always been very rich. There has never been any starvation in Singapore, only an obesity epidemic. Yet Singaporean-Chinese people are still extremely rude, their relative wealth has not made them any more gracious or polite like the Japanese or their counterparts in the West. Yes they are less rude than the people from China, but they're still by no means polite at all. Not by a long way. So you can't blame it entirely on China's history, not everyone from poorer countries are as hideously rude as the Chinese - it is not the experience with poverty per se, but something far more fundamental with their culture.

Okay, so that's it from me on this very controversial topic. Please let me know your thoughts, many thanks for reading.