A world without peripheral awareness
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2006
1
122
131
Trip End
Ongoing
Shenzhen,
China
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
You know that feeling that if you saw somebody knocked over by a car or pushed over in the street, you'd stop and try to do something to help? Most Chinese I encounter day-to-day don't know that feeling.
You know that feeling that life is a little bit easier if you let someone out of the lift or through the door before you try to get in or walk through? Most Chinese I encounter day-to-day don't know that feeling.
You know that feeling where there is a shared glance or courtesy, or a moment of silent humour shared at the expense of another or your surroundings? Those little things that connect people? Most Chinese I encounter day-to-day don't know that feeling.
I don't know what causes this absence of peripheral awareness or social behaviour. I've asked people about it and heard various explanations, the most ludicrous of which was that people can't see what's happening around them because they've got narrow eyes - yes I'm serious!
Perhaps living in such a vast population puts resources at a premium so people learn to fight for everything and don't care about others. Indeed, despite economic progress many people fit the definition of living close to or in poverty.
Perhaps the fact that most people here in Guangdong are only here because of a quest to make money makes them reckless or driven in a way they wouldn't be in their home towns. Does loneliness or alienation make people mean?
Perhaps, life in a police state has made it too dangerous to look and people learned not to pay attention as an act of self-preservation. Has even acknowledging the existence of strangers become a risk too far? One look at the Chinese character for visitor (a man with long knife) tells you that the stranger has always been mistrusted, but has it always been the case that people would ignore or at best fight to be ahead of him? I don't think so. After all, social etiquette also demands that remarkable acts of generosity are accorded to visitors and strangers.
Perhaps social doctrines, not least those of Confucius have always placed the family and a rigid hierarchy at the centre of everyone's world. People outside the family are not important... I still don't buy this as an explanation for chopping off and making life uncomfortable for anybody outside your core social group. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the idea that Chinese social doctrines never built a wider idea of society as a whole. Everything is for yourself and the Emperor...? After all, in almost all societies the family has historically been the core and the key but it does not preclude consideration of others. Arguably in Western cultures, the disintegration of the family unit has paralleled an increase in anti-social, selfish behaviour.
Perhaps we can blame the education system - not the teachers. The Chinese education system is strictly prescriptive and demands high levels of knowledge and almost no ability to interpret, explain or make judgements. Perhaps students are simply never encouraged to think about what is happening around them. Whilst this is undoubtedly true of the system, many Chinese I meet think a great deal although they are reticent about unveiling original or critical thought in Chinese company. I'm pretty sure that the education system doesn't teach ethics, morals or define boorishness, but that can't be the sole explanation either. These things are deeper rooted in society.
Perhaps the truth is a complex mixture of all of these factors. Perhaps it's something else I missed completely. Whatever, the answer it is a puzzle I am sure I will return too.
China has many things going for it, and it's an amazing place, but if I could share one thing with people here that would make it better, it would be to stop fighting this perpetual war with everybody you don't know, notice what's around you and marvel a little at the world you live in. However much being in this daily war zone gets to me, I keep telling myself I can't forget to have a little peripheral awareness of my own. It's hard, but I keep trying.
