China bugs me sometimes

As I headed out yesterday evening, I found one of my middle-aged female neighbours (in her nightclothes, of course) at the foot of the stairs.

She was stood right in the middle of the exit, peering out into the rain through a crack in the door, and carrying on some sort of conversation with someone outside (her husband, sent on a shopping errand, I think).

She heard me coming down the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder at me as I reached the bottom of them. I attempted friendly eye-contact for a brief moment before she looked away again. I stood behind her, waiting patiently for her to step aside so that I could pass through the doorway. She didn't budge. For a good 5 or 10 seconds - until I brought my existence rather more forcefully to her notice. This is not, alas, an uncommon phenomenon.

A little while later, I was walking down a hutong, passing this Chinese guy. He glanced to his right just as I was coming alongside him. But he didn't see me. Or, if he did, he didn't pay any attention to me. No, because he chose that exact moment to fling his spent cigarette aside. The still-glowing butt nearly hit me, and landed right at my feet.

I briefly fantasised about catching this cigarette-end on my shoe, juggling it from foot to foot for a moment, and then volleying it crisply back into his face. "Oh, sorry, mate. Didn't see you there!" (The Chinese, we note, don't even apologise. And the irony would be lost on them.)

I try not to get too down about this stuff. I try to make every possible allowance for it. I try to understand why people are the way they are. I try not to make knee-jerk assumptions of cultural superiority. I remind myself that I would perhaps have greater resources for dealing with, or avoiding, this kind of irritation if I could be bothered to learn more than a couple of hundred words of the local language.

But....... again and again I find the Chinese to be almost solipsistic in their lack of awareness of or concern for anybody else around them. I find this very, very depressing. I think I'd find it depressing even if I weren't so damned depressed already.