Yesterday, while purchasing a subway ticket, I encountered the common - but slightly more subtly irritating - corollary of the infamous Chinese tendency to ignore queues and barge in at the front; when they do queue, they often get ridiculously close to you.
As I turned to leave the ticket-window, I bowled over a young woman who had been standing all of about 3 INCHES behind me. Now, if you have grown up without any concept of personal space whatsoever (as seems to be the case in this country) and you think it is OK to get that close to someone, at least commonsense would dictate that you might step backwards and/or sideways a little when you see that person is ready to move away, wouldn't you think? No. Probably she was so close to me that she couldn't see that anyway. Maybe she just couldn't see.
I was right up close to the ticket window myself (you have to do that, to discourage the queue-jumpers), so she wasn't really leaving me any choice but to edge out sideways before turning round. That is, if I'd known she was there. She had come up behind me in complete silence and stationed herself a few inches off my bum. I was completely unaware she was there at first, because she was tiny - barely reaching above my navel. All I knew was that, as I began to take a half-step backwards with my left foot, my heel caught against something. Not thinking at first that it could be a person, I half-turned to look over my shoulder - and clocked the stupid woman across the side of the face with my elbow.
Maybe it was a prank. Maybe she wanted to make me fall over and look stupid, for the amusement of the other early morning commuters. Maybe, in another few seconds, she would have been properly in position, crouching on her knees directly behind my calves. Yes, perhaps that was it.
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