How do you react to badly behaved PRCs in Singapore?

Hi there guys, I've been sent yet another link to a story about how Singapore is going down the drain because of the large number of PRCs behaving badly in public in Singapore. This time it was a PRC woman behaving very badly on a public bus in Singapore. Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the situation in Singapore here it is in a nutshell: in order to stop the percentage of ethnic Chinese population in Singapore from slipping due to the low birth rates, the Singaporean government has basically opened the doors to migrants from China to move to Singapore with little checks and balances. What has resulted is an influx of lowly educated, unskilled migrants from China who tend to behave very badly in public, making life hell for ordinary Singaporeans when they do something stupid like poop in public. I was told that the situation has gotten really bad and this is one of the main motivations for a lot of Singaporeans to want to leave Singapore for greener pastures in the West, where they will at least be free of these utterly disgusting, badly behaved China migrants and I have been asked for my personal reaction to this. Of course, there's a gut reaction to such stories - my reflex would be to get angry but I realize that getting angry about the situation doesn't really solve anyone's problems. So I calmed down, parked my feelings aside and decided to come up with a more pragmatic reaction to this situation.

I challenged myself to come up with a better reaction than anger.

Now you will encounter badly behaved idiots anywhere in the world you go - I have just returned from Georgia and I did meet my share of idiots there as well. Oh yeah, you can't escape stupid people because of the nature of the bell curve distribution of intelligence: every single country in the world will have its share of stupid and intelligent people. Yet why is it some countries in the world like Japan and Norway have such well behaved people, where anti-social bheaviour is such a strict taboo that you will never encounter the kinds of problems that you associate with Chinese people? And I can say this because I am Chinese without worrying about being accused of being racist: is Chinese culture simply deeply inferior to Japanese and Norwegian culture then, at least in the aspects which determine the way people tend to behave when out and about in public? In Japanese culture, this thoughtfulness, this consideration for others is so deeply ingrained into their culture that children are brought up to behave in a considerate manner whilst this seems to be totally absent in Chinese culture. By that token, it is so easy to say: oh yeah Japanese culture is indeed superior to Chinese culture. But then again, Chinese people aren't the only ones who behave disgracefully like that - I could name quite a few other nationalities who have a bad reputation for bad behaviour as well from Russia to India to Nigeria to Indonesia. The fact is there seems to be a correlation with considerate behaviour and wealth, the richer the country, the better behaved the citizens and so of course, China being still by and large a piss poor country, has extremely poorly behaved citizens, 

So turning our attention to the incident in Singapore - allow me to elucidate what happened: a PRC female passenger missed her bus stop and demanded that the driver divert the bus to take her back to where she wanted to go. The bus driver refused, so she threw a tantrum and blocked the bus, preventing it from going any further whilst the passive Singaporean passengers just sat there like dummies, unwilling to intervene leaving the bus driver thinking, "I'm still going to get paid for my shift, but you Singaporeans are not going to get home if you don't help me deal with this crazy woman." Whilst this incident only resulted in the bus service being delayed, it reminded me of another incident in China where a passenger got into an argument with the bus driver, hijacked the bus and crashed it - killing 8 and injuring 22 people. Then there was this other deadly incident in China whereby a female passenger got into a fight with the bus driver and as a result, the bus plunged off a bridge and all 15 passengers were killed. I'm just naming two incidents that happened within the last two months, there are simply too many to list here: it suffices to say that badly behaved passengers attacking bus drivers resulting in deadly accidents are actually quite common in China. The SCMP in Hong Kong reported that there were at least 20 such similar incidents last year, including two that happened after the fatal crash in Chongqing. But that's just scratching the surface - road safety in China is abysmal and when a lot of problems do result from bad passenger behaviour: so when the PAP imports huge number of unskilled, uneducated Chinese migrant workers into Singapore, they are also importing a lot of the social ills into Singapore as a direct consequence. Incidents like that are only going to become more and more common in Singapore until Singaporeans just get used to it.

But having spent some time in China last year working with Chinese people, let me be the first to say that you can't assume that all Chinese people behave so poorly: in fact, there is a huge diversity within Chinese society and it is a hugely divided, very unequal society with some Chinese people enjoying a very high standard of living, whilst others being desperately poor. And of course, the Chinese people I worked with in Shenzhen were highly educated and rich - so of course, they had all the social graces which made them a pleasure to spend time with and I got along extremely well with them. I was a guest at a business event in Shenzhen, so I was treated like a VIP at the event and so the delegates like myself were carefully shielded from any of the poorer locals who may behave badly (and thus leave the foreign delegates with a bad impression of China). Oh yes, the locals in China are only too aware of the challenges they face when it comes to trying to present foreign visitors a very good impression of China and fortunately for them, I was the only delegate who spoke any Mandarin, so by that token they were able to curtail the movement of the delegates when we were in China to prevent us from 'accidentally' interacting with any of the badly behaved, poorer Chinese people. And by that very same token, if you were to come to London, there are plenty of places where you may encounter uncouth, disgusting, poorly behaved locals as well - I remember once being taken to a rough, East End pub by a friend for a laugh just because he was convinced that I had never set foot in such a pub before. It is true that I don't usually surround myself with that many poor, drunk people. That was the most uncomfortable 18 to 20 minutes of my life - I felt uncomfortable there but I still stayed for one drink and said, "okay mate, you've made your point, I'm going to leave now."

The fact is there are parts of London which are not just unpleasant, but downright dangerous - there have been plenty of headlines of nasty crimes such as stabbings and murders happening in London but of course, the one thing that these headlines do not tell you is the obvious: the crime is mostly concentrated where the poorest of the poor live. Such crimes rarer occur in more respectable, upper class neighbourhoods where rich people live. So the rich and the poor in London lead very separate lives: the rich kids go to the posh private schools where they never have to go near the poor kids who go to the government schools. The rich people end up working in jobs where they deal with other rich people and never have to cross paths with the poor. And of course, they end up living in much nicer homes in expensive neighbourhoods where the poor people are simply priced out of the market - thus they are further isolated from the poor where they live. So when I read the story of the 14 year old who was murdered in East London, I wasn't surprised that the teenager had been involved in drug dealing and gangs in East London because that's exactly the kind of thing that happens in the poor neighbourhoods in the wrong end of town. So never mind PRCs behaving poorly on public transport, good grief, in London, if you're poor and if live in the wrong part of town, you are having to deal with drug-related murders on your doorstep. This leads me to think that perhaps it's not so much a factor of one's culture per se, but rather whether or not you have the money to live in a nice neighbourhood to protect yourself from the social ills often associated with poverty.

This then raises a difficult question: do poorer, working class people deserve to live their lives in peace and be able to go to work in peace, use public transport in peace without suffering the effects of nasty PRC migrants behaving poorly in public spaces - or indeed, in the case of London, avoid the horrific crimes like stabbings and murder often associated with the poorest neighbourhoods? Is it fair that the poor disproportionately suffer from such social ills? Allow me to put my geography degree now to good use and analyze some crime statistics: naturally, the poorest countries in the world like South Sudan, Afghanistan, Liberia and Venezuela are some of the most dangerous places in the world whilst the richest countries like Singapore, Japan, Iceland and Denmark are some of the safest countries in the world with very low crime rates. So the correlation between poverty and safety is clear, whether you look at it on a national level or even if you were to break it down by neighbourhoods within a big city like London. So by that token, what I can observe is this: Singaporeans have quite rightly come to expect rather high standards when it comes to the quality of the lives they lead - that's why when they experience some kind of disruption to their daily lives (such as in the incident of the crazy PRC woman behaving badly on a public bus), they are shocked because this is simply not the kind of thing they have come to expect and they don't know how to deal with it. They want to have the kind of experience of living in a civilized society like Japan, but in reality, things are changing so fast that this is no longer possible. Allow me to give you a case study to explore the mindset of Singaporeans when it comes to something like that using my very own parents as an example.

Many years ago, my mother had a really bad scare in her very own bedroom - you see, in the house she lives in, there is a roof terrace outside her bedroom window which is the roof of our kitchen downstairs and whilst it is not designed to be a balcony, it is technically speaking possible to climb onto it from next door (or downstairs, if you're really good at rock climbing) to gain access to the window. Now back then, we had dodgy neighbours who brought loads of young men over to visit all the time and one of these young men heard that there are two young ladies (ie. my sisters) living next door and one of them decided that he could climb over to the window and peep in, hoping to catch sight of a young lady asleep or undressed. Instead, he saw my mother and because he cast a shadow into the room, my mother saw him pretty quickly and shouted at him to go away - startled, the young man quickly climbed away but my mother was truly upset by what happened because she felt that she had the right to feel safe in her own home, this is not the kind of thing that should happen. My mother was very traumatized by what happened. When we confronted the neighbour, they claimed that one of the guys were on the roof of their kitchen to investigate a leak in their kitchen, but no one was trying to climb over to our side of the roof terrace at all and it had all been just a terrible misunderstanding. Did we believe them? No, of course not but did it ever happen again? No but thankfully at least it didn't ever happen again which was a satisfactory outcome.

I knew how upset my mother was by the incident so we got her to speak to a family friend about it: we have a family friend called Mrs Foo who was the kind of sensible, rational and intelligent auntie you could run to with any kind of problem. So Mrs Foo came up with the suggestion that we could install an alarm system which would be triggered the moment an intruder stepped onto the roof terrace, but the fact that you have signs that say, "this house is protected by ABC alarm systems" is probably enough of a deterrent for any would-be burglar or peeping Tom. She even kindly referred us to a friend of hers who would gladly install the system for us at a very reasonable price - by that token, kind Mrs Foo had solved my mother's problem. However, my mother refused to get the alarm system because she couldn't accept that things have changed to the point where one needs to pay for an alarm system to continue feeling safe in your own house. My mother kept saying things like, "this can't be happening, this is not supposed to happen, it can't be." In her mind, she couldn't reconcile herself with what had happened, she would rather forget what had happened - to somehow wipe it from her memory rather than spend some money on the alarm system as suggested by Mrs Foo. The fact is if you were to go to a more unsafe city like Jakarta, Johannesburg or Rio de Janerio, investing in such security & alarm systems are so common that nobody would bat an eyelid about spending a bit of money on protecting your home with such an alarm system. However, my mother simply couldn't get over the fact that she needed one and even up till today, she still refuses to get one because according to her, "it is not fair - this kind of thing is not supposed to happen".

The thing is that people like my mother are not exactly stupid per se, she is just so Singaporean that she has a blind spot when it comes to rationalizing issues like that. You see, your typical resident in a city with much higher crime rates would simply take such an incident in their stride and accept that they need to spend more on security to stay safe - but no, not your average Singaporean. In her mind, she has made a deal with the PAP: "I have supported the PAP all my life, I dutifully follow all the rules in Singapore and am a model citizen - in exchange, you're meant to protect me and prevent such things from happening. This is not part of the deal, you've broken your deal with me now I expect the government to fix the situation, rather than have to find a solution to the problem that I have before me. I kept my part of the bargain, why did you let me down?" Her reaction is pretty much the same as all of these Singaporeans who didn't know how to react when the crazy PRC woman hijacked a public bus because she had missed her stop and demanded that the bus turned around to take her home - now I would have gladly taken matters into my own hands by dealing with that woman myself, such as by dragging her sorry ass off the bus and threatening her with physical violence (fuck being PC, I have grown up with a total coward for a father and so this is exactly the kind of thing I would do just to provoke my cowardly father). But no, most of the Singaporeans on the bus just stood there, dumbfounded, unable to believe that their civil society has been taken over by PRC hooligans and turned into a nightmare; yet like my mother, they expected the authority, the government to do something rather than take matters into their own hands and solve their own problems.

You see, the reason why I am not paralyzed by inaction like that is because I don't put my faith in the PAP. I don't expect them to swoop in and solve the problems I encountered when I was living in Singapore - I suppose that came with growing up with clueless, autistic parents. I couldn't rely on them so from a young age, I was quite used to finding my own solutions to my problems. Some people may see me as a rebellious trouble maker back then who had nothing but contempt for those in positions of authority, but that mindset enabled me to function a lot more independently when it came to solving the problems in my life whereas people who put a lot of faith in the Singaporean system end up paralyzed by inaction, incapable of thinking for themselves and finding their own solution to their problems. Quite often, these problems can be solved with money: you can buy the best security system out there to guard your home, so no intruder can ever threaten you in your own home. And if there are stupid poor people from China making a lot of trouble on public transport? Simply buy your own car or use a taxi/Uber, so you don't need to interact with others on public transport. In fact that's one of my primary motivations for working so hard to become rich - I am extremely pragmatic, I cannot expect my life to be free of problems, but I am in a much better position to face whatever challenges that may come my way in the future if I have enough money in the bank to spend on solutions that I need to make my life better.

I suppose this is part of the reason why I got so angry with my nephew when he said he wanted to become a maths teacher. I had already dedicated a whole post to discuss the issue - however, here's yet another reason why I objected him becoming a teacher. As a teacher, you're not going to become so fabulously rich that you can use your money to have that kind of wealth to protect yourself from stupid people in society as Singapore gets increasingly flooded by PRC migrant workers - don't get me wrong, you can earn a decent living as a teacher, but you're not going to become crazy rich. Furthermore, you have absolutely no control over whom your students are and that's one aspect of the job that I find particularly scary: it's fine and dandy if all your students are intelligent, hardworking, sensible, well-behaved and reasonable people - but what if you get students who are stupid, lazy, immature, badly behaved and come complete with the most unreasonable parents from hell? Now I'm not sure he has even considered that - yes it is a worst case scenario, but one that teachers must be prepared to deal with those circumstances. Now I use my wealth and privilege to control exactly whom I have to deal with, so my life is stress-free and the chances of me being bothered by a crazy PRC woman are very low indeed; but in becoming in school teacher in Singapore, my nephew is putting himself directly in the firing line and he could potentially have to deal with such people on a daily basis. Some people are diplomatic enough to deal with such challenging situations because they have excellent social skills, but like me, my nephew is autistic too and I know he simply would be much better off if he didn't put himself in such difficult situations in the first place. I simply want him to have a peaceful and happy life - not one where he has to deal with so much angst and stress on a daily basis.

So that's it from me on this difficult issue, what do you think? How do you react to the fact that Singapore is fast becoming like China, with the many migrant workers bringing with them social ills that Singaporeans are just not used to? It's not like you can just get rid of the Chinese migrant workers so what can you do about it? How about arresting people like that and throwing them in jail to teach them a lesson or is that simply trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon? Is using your wealth to isolate and protect yourself from such people the only rational and sensible reaction or do you have a better solution to this situation? Please do leave a comment below and share your thoughts - many thanks for reading.