{"id":283,"date":"2010-06-26T22:33:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-26T14:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=283"},"modified":"2010-06-26T22:49:03","modified_gmt":"2010-06-26T14:49:03","slug":"the-%e2%80%9cdomestic%e2%80%9d-or-chivalry-isn%e2%80%99t-dead-and-the-shake-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cdomestic\u201d or chivalry isn\u2019t dead and the shake down"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The \u201cdomestic\u201d or chivalry isn\u2019t dead and the shake down<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u00a0morning I caught the bus on my way to a temple.\u00a0 The lunch time rush was starting so I got to stand just inside the front doors.\u00a0 I soon heard and saw a very heated discussion between an elderly man who was standing at the front and a middle aged or older \u00a0woman who was sitting on one of the front seats.\u00a0 Soon several other passengers were involved on the side of the woman.\u00a0 I thought it was a domestic played out in public \u00a0until I got to move in a bit further and realised that there was an empty seat and the man was trying to push another middle-aged plus woman onto it while the passengers wanted him to have it as he was older.\u00a0 In the end she sat down, but not before a lot of noise and passenger participation.<\/p>\n

I took a couple of buses\u00a0 and saw people quickly stand and surrender seats to \u00a0elderly persons.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen it happen in my city, but not readily and definitely not if there\u2019s a spare seat down the back.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been offered a seat except once or twice in other cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My guide book to Prague stated that older people were offered seats on public transport.\u00a0 I was happy to be the recipient of such courtsey during my visit a couple of years ago.\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t there long enough to learn much, but theirs is an entirely different culture too.\u00a0 \u00a0Going to the opera was not a bit expensive deal and its the only place I\u2019ve seen lots of people walking around holding hard cover books covered with plastic and they wern\u2019t library books.<\/p>\n

Manners have a whole other meaning here.\u00a0 Last year one of my students who was helping me with language eventually suggested that we knew each other well enough that I didn\u2019t need to keep thanking her.\u00a0 Later I read somewhere that it is uncommon to thank a person for every day matters in Chinese culture.\u00a0 No wonder that people think I\u2019m odd as I do tend to thank people and apologise when I bump into them especially on crowded trains, buses etc.\u00a0 One of my more recent students complained of the constant need to say \u201cpardon.\u201d\u00a0 Others tend to use the colloquial \u201cwhat?\u201d\u00a0 When I visited London last year I read a fascinating and very readable book on the social anthropology of British customs and manners.\u00a0 All very different from Chinese customs.<\/p>\n

The Shakedown<\/p>\n

After I arrived at the bus terminus I needed to take a minibus to the temple.\u00a0 However, the\u00a0 bus terminus was unlike any I\u2019ve encountered before and the minibuses weren\u2019t minibuses.\u00a0 It consisted of a big yard containing many small and none too flash-looking passenger vans.\u00a0 There are good looking public minibuses in Kunming because I\u2019ve seen them but they weren\u2019t in that yard.\u00a0 A woman came over, asked me where I wanted to go, I showed her my piece of paper containing the magic words in the right language and she proceeded to tell me the price.\u00a0 When I didn\u2019t understand she picked the requisite notes, 40 yuan, from her bag of money.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t remember the estimate I\u2019d been quoted at the hostel, but knew it was nothing like that.\u00a0 I refused to pay or bargain and tried to call the hostel. I couldn\u2019t get through and realised my phone battery was almost dead so I decided I was better off recharging my phone and moving to plan B.\u00a0 While I was fiddling with the phone a man offered a 30 yuan trip and another begged for money.\u00a0 While walking to the bus stop to return to the hostel I remembered the estimate I\u2019d been given was 8 yuan.<\/p>\n

After recharging my phone and doing some washing I went to a local temple which required a long walk to the bus stop and another cheap local bus ride.\u00a0These two photos are of Yuantong Temple.\u00a0 Part of it is 1200 years old.\u00a0 It has a population of Buddist nuns and monks and the atmosphere and upkeep were quite different from that I’ve experienced in temples in\u00a0northern China most of which don’t have any religious living in them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0I then visited a famous park in Kunming,\u00a0Green Lake Park\u00a0and walked back to the hostel via the cubby hole medical service. In the park were numerous dogs in addition to photographers with seriously long lenses trained on the first of the lotus flowers.\u00a0 So, an interesting day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My other recent experience of a shakedown happened on Wednesday.\u00a0 I went to the Ethnic Nationalities Village.\u00a0 It is an enormous place, worth visiting and one day is insufficient.\u00a0 Staff is young and wear ethnic costume.\u00a0 \u00a0I was sitting watching a show and fiddling with both cameras.\u00a0 An elderly woman in an ethnic costume arrived late and sat beside me.\u00a0 She was friendly and alerted me to developments on stage when I had my head on the camera deleting old pics.\u00a0 However, I didn\u2019t need her prompting.\u00a0 She had no fear about feeling the degree of meat on my forearm and noting that I had 2 cameras.\u00a0 Just as well it wasn\u2019t the time and location for cannibals or I\u2019d have been worried.\u00a0 \u00a0She was just sizing me up as a likely mark for the inevitable request for money when the show ended. \u00a0However, I could have been skinny without cameras and she still would have done it I\u2019m quite sure.\u00a0 Beggars are not uncommon in China.\u00a0 There is a small camp of homeless men near the hostel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Moso people singing performance<\/p>\n

One of the concession vendors at the village was over greedy too.\u00a0 Her cost for a bottle of water was way over the top so I refused and got one later for a much more reasonable price.\u00a0 I was resting in a nice little arbour near her van just before I left.\u00a0 I noticed that a couple stopped and moved on without buying anything so maybe \u00a0she wasn\u2019t just discriminating against pink people. The village is enormous and it was a quiet day and she didn\u2019t do much business in the times I was around to observe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lotus Flower in green Park close to Yuantong Temple<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two of performers in Green Lake Park.\u00a0 Most were older people singing Chinese songs.\u00a0 All had PA systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cdomestic\u201d or chivalry isn\u2019t dead and the shake down Yesterday\u00a0morning I caught the bus on my way to a temple.\u00a0 The lunch time rush was starting so I got to stand just inside the front doors.\u00a0 I soon heard and saw a very heated discussion between an elderly man who was standing at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[93,31,1],"tags":[12,9,15,21,40,32,23,35,39,37,36,38],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-kunming","category-uncategorized","tag-bus","tag-china","tag-culture","tag-dogs","tag-ethnic-minorities","tag-kumning","tag-lake","tag-manners","tag-park","tag-performance","tag-religion","tag-temple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kerry.net.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}