Wednesday, June 25, 2008

More irritation - with Chinese characteristics

I had made a lunch date with one of my former students today.

I had been rather looking forward to it.

10 minutes before we were due to meet, I got a text message from her suggesting a change of rendezvous - different place, same time.

To be fair to the dear girl, she had sent it nearly two hours earlier, but it had evidently got held up in the pipeline somewhere (our SMS network here tends to be something less than 100% reliable!).

However, as I pointed out to her, somewhat heavily, 2 hours is not really sufficient notice of a change of plans like that - not, at least, for us finicky foreigners.

The new meeting point she'd requested wasn't actually all that far away - just far enough to be really irritating. I knew to a fine margin how long I'd need to reach the rendezvous I'd specified (7.5 minutes). I knew the restaurant I wanted to go to (a nice-looking little Vietnamese bistro that's recently opened up down towards the Drum Tower). I knew what I wanted to do afterwards (shopping, and perhaps a meeting, nearby the restaurant, in my 'hood). I knew what I was doing before (putting in a full and very tedious morning's work on an editing project - which was planned to finish at 12.52pm precisely).

So, I really don't want to be told, just as I'm about to head out of the door to a meeting just around the corner, that in fact she's waiting for me nearly 3 miles away. Having unilaterally changed our plan without waiting for a confirmation from me, you understand. And without thinking to actually try to call me to discuss it.

It would only have been a 10-minute ride on the subway; but, just lately, the subway is a sweaty hell - the air-conditioning on the trains and on the platform struggling to make any impression on the 90%+ humidity (even when it's working, and a couple of times recently I've been unlucky enough to get in a train carriage where it wasn't). In fact, the weather today has been so thoroughly foul that I hadn't even fancied the 7.5-minute stroll to the corner of Jiugulou Dajie, and I was quite glad of the opportunity to cancel my appointment with my ditsy student. Heck, I'm going down with allergies - croaky throat, itchy eyes - from the opaque, poisonous Beijing air even while sitting indoors in the comparatively protected environment of my apartment.

So, searching for a positive to take from this negative experience, I can say I am relieved (and probably much healthier) because I didn't have to go outside this afternoon. Ooh, and I got my beast of an editing job finished as well.

However, I confess to being still deeply, deeply pissed off about it. Not with the girl - she's an old, old acquaintance now, and I can forgive her just about anything. And not at the disappointment of my plans - I can meet her some other time, check out that new restaurant some other time (and I really haven't had much of an appetite today anyway).

No, I only get really down about this sort of wayward and inconsiderate behaviour when it strikes me as being emblematic of a wider problem. And I'm afraid today's little episode is. The Chinese, I'm sorry to say, seem to be largely incapable of showing any consideration for other people, or of being able to 'decentre' their viewpoint to imagine what other people's interests and concerns might be (it just did not occur to my student friend that I had reasons why I had suggested the time and place that I had, and that it might be highly inconvenient for me to depart from that). A phenomenon - a vice - no doubt closely related to this is their incessant last-minutism: they really think nothing of informing you of an important meeting or of changing a scheduled appointment at half a day's notice, an hour's notice, 30 minutes' notice, or 5 minutes' notice.

6 years here, and I haven't got used to this yet. Maybe I never will. Maybe it's time for me to leave.

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