I Never Thought I Would Do It: Where Do Manners Come From and How Much Do They Matter?

China really distinguished itself from any other experience I have had. It was a combination of the exotic and often unidentifiable foods, the customs and mode of dress, the sing-songy Mandarin language and the amount of difficulty I had understanding and making myself understood.

It's true that I already wrote about China, but these moments left such an impression on me that I decided they deserved their own post. After all, in a country as huge and unusual as China, how could one lonely post possibly do justice to a culture so complex?

It started in Beijing. I was sitting in a restaurant, perusing a menu full of pictures with Chinese titles below each dish and the occasional English translation. Dare I order the “spicy boiling frogs”? The “mixed bacteria fresh soup lamb clay pot”? I had a lot of questions. I just wasn't sure how to go about asking them to the non-English-speaking waiter who also happened to be nowhere in sight.

“FU YUEN!” the man at the table next to me suddenly shouted, startling me out of my battle with the menu. I was astonished by his volume. Fortunately, however, a waiter came over to his table, and I was then able to get his attention and request some much-needed assistance. This episode repeated itself in one restaurant after another, until I discovered that in many places, if you do not bellow for the waiter, you may be sitting there an awfully long time. Going to visit China? Learn the word for waiter and prepare your lungs.

One day my Finnish host and I decided to do some touristy things. We visited the Summer Palace and then we headed over to the Beijing Zoo. To our dismay, most of the animals' living spaces were devastatingly tiny and poorly kept. But the biggest shocker was the behavior of the Chinese visitors, who were constantly found feeding Doritos and cheese puff-like snacks to unsuspecting gnus, deer and any other animals to which they could get close enough. At one point, we found a large crowd of visitors hovering over the black bears, laughing and talking animatedly. As we got closer, we saw that the guy standing closest to the bear, about twenty feet above, was pouring Coca-Cola its mouth, sometimes spilling it on the bear's head and fur as the crowd laughed along. Next to him was a sign written in both English and Chinese. “Please do not feed me. It can give me stomach problems.” My host was brave enough to speak up against this disgusting behavior. I wondered how many times a day these animals unknowingly suffered this type of maltreatment.

We left the zoo and decided it was time for me to try Peking duck. I'm not a vegetarian, but I've never enjoyed making the connection between what I'm eating and what its name was. So you can imagine the initial apprehension when the waiters called us over to watch them cut the duck - apparently an expectation in Beijing – and then brought the meat over to the table with the head served on its own plate. (Insert wince.)

With respect to food, I believe American society does what it can not to force us into facing our own behavior if it could be interpreted as unpleasant. Fish is usually served as a filet. We don't want to see the head. We don't put chicken feet into a soup, because despite the flavor it will give, it will also act as a reminder that this was once a living creature. Many people also feel that seeing these things is gross and possibly even savage.

And speaking of savage, let's talk about buses. The Great Wall was a special place, but the real adventure was getting on a bus to go back home. There was a giant crowd waiting to go back to Beijing, and although the bus stop was clearly marked, there was no single-file line, and when the buses came, they didn't stop at the indicated point. Instead, when people saw the bus coming, they would begin to charge in masses of over fifty. The bus would veer out of the way, and the mass would follow it, trying to get as close as possible to its doors. When it would come to a complete stop (wherever it decided to), people would push each other until they made their way up the steps. I figured I would let them fumble over each other and I'd wait for the next bus. I watched this happen four times before I finally realized I wasn't going to have a choice. Bracing myself, I pressed the “Go, go Gadget elbows!” button behind my ear, and Chinese-style, pushed my way into the sardine can. For the first time ever on a crowded bus, I genuinely worried that I might arrive home with a cracked rib or two...and then wondered if my head would be served on a separate plate from my ribs.

Yunnan was a whole 'nother level of strange when it came to manners and expectations, the first real surprise taking place on a bus. Two friends and I were on our way to a lake for a relaxing afternoon when I suddenly sensed the unpleasantly familiar smell of smoke. I turned around to find the man two seats back taking a drag from his cigarette as his ~five-year old stared out the window next to him. I whipped back around to my friend and questioned this, unable to believe what I was seeing. “You can smoke on BUSES?!” “People do”, she said. She then pointed to a sign at the front. “No smoking. But really, no smoking.” she translated. For the next twelve days, I would find that every restaurant and many buses were full of smokers. It didn't matter what the signs instructed.

One day a very playful, non-English-speaking man on a bus offered me one of his cigarettes. I accepted it, and when he lifted his lighter to my cigarette, I pointed to the no-smoking sign, smiled, and made a “Wait” gesture with my hand. He gave me a thumbs up and decided to wait too. SCORE!

Inevitably, bathrooms and bowels always make their way into travel stories, especially when they're about Asia or Africa, and I'd hate to disappoint... Chinese toilets are typically a porcelain rectangular hole over which you squat, and either have a standard flush lever or you dump water into them. This is an upgrade from many African “bathrooms” (think hole in the ground into which you throw dirt), so the only thing I had to keep in mind was not to let my pants touch the porcelain or the area around it. But China surprised me once I arrived in Yunnan. I will never forget the first moment I walked into the bathroom to find a row of females squatting over their porcelain rectangle, some even scrolling through their phones checking messages while doing so! NO DOORS! Hesitantly and with my eyes fixed on the floor, I found a free rectangle as quickly as I could, hastily and nervously squatting over it, wondering if anyone was looking around singing, “One of these things is not like the other” to herself. As I exited the bathroom - pant bottoms likely stained with other people's pee - I suddenly understood the popularity skinny jeans. The Chinese probably invented them.

I'm not sure how potty training works in China, because many babies don't wear diapers. Yes, you heard me. Frederick's of Hollywood, rethink your audience! Now there's crotchless pants for babies! No need for the hassle of unsnapping a onesy. No more boatloads of money spent on Huggies. With new crotchless pants for babies, you can hold your baby or squat your toddler over any gutter, patch of grass, river, or anywhere you see fit. No trash can necessary! A health hazzard you say? Come on! This is China! Beijing's air quality index regularly breaks 300. People hock loogies both outdoors and IN on the regular. You aren't really worried about a little baby shit, are you?

After three weeks in the country and plenty of observation, I understood why so many visitors to China have been shocked and have even described the Chinese as having bad manners. Most of the moments that stood out the most were those in which I found myself wide-eyed or suspiciously raising my eyebrows in reaction to these behaviors that just wouldn't fly in other countries. But because of a rip in my pants in Hong Kong, I rethought the whole issue.

You see, it was my last pair of pants, and the hostel staff had accidentally shrunk them in the dryer. When I put them on and leaned forward to grab something, they split immediately, tearing a gigantic hole from the seat down to the crotch. I ran out to buy new pants (yes, I changed first, thank you) and brought them back to the hostel where they had assured me they could hem them right away. I tried them on, but there was no mirror, so I was unsure if I had folded them at the right length for hemming. I asked the young lady from the hostel for assistance, to which she replied, “I don't think it's very polite of you to ask me to do that.” Immediately embarrassed, I apologized profusely and explained to her that in the United States and in Brasil, it is often the seamstress who helps fold the pant leg before hemming. But her response really caused me to think.

Who's to decide what's to be considered “bad manners” and what's not, and where do they earn that right? Who gets to determine that waiting for restaurant staff to come to you is superior to beckoning your waiter with a shout? Yes, it's true that some common Chinese behaviors may not be the healthiest choice, but they are societal practices, deeply-rooted and widely accepted. So while one can fairly argue that it's not nice to push people or to poop and pee in public, the more important piece is remembering that when you're a visitor somewhere, your job is to accept and understand how things are done. It doesn't have to be your preference, but live and let live. If we all did everything the same way, Earth would be an awfully boring planet.