“Unfamiliarity with the notion of the indoor voice”

A few shareworthy text bytes from an Aug. 10 New York Times article on mainland Chinese tourists and their heavily chaperoned visits to Taiwan:

“Beyond local business owners pleased by the surge in tourist spending, many Taiwanese openly complain about the mainlanders’ seeming unfamiliarity with the notion of the indoor voice, a collective disdain for the single-file line and their insistence on asking complete strangers their incomes.”

<MB commentary: And we believed that loud jabbering was the sole domain of the Cantonese! LOL. Further reinforcement — Elliott made a recent business trip to Beijing. His first text msg to us from the airport: Why do Chinese people talk so loud?”>

“’It’s hard to compare any place to Beijing, the home of emperors,’ Li Guihong, 69, a retired Chinese government employee, said smugly after taking in the Taiwanese capital’s urban landscape, much of it dating from the 1970s and ’80s. ‘Our buildings are more modern and even their stinky tofu isn’t as good as ours.’”

<MB commentary: Ok jeepers, you got us there. Fellow dwellers of our sacred Earth, you heard it here first: China wins. They have, hands down, better stinky tofu.>

“Shih Wen-cheng, 46, a construction worker in a yellow vest bearing Falun Gong’s central tenets, ‘truthfulness, compassion and forbearance,’ said most mainlanders recoiled when he approached. A few, however, look both ways and stuff a pamphlet in their pockets. ‘Our goal is to make them realize the propaganda they’ve heard their whole lives is just that,’ he said. ‘If we can convince one of them not to betray to the police a neighbor who practices Falun Gong, then we have achieved something.'”

“Kao Hui-Ch’iao, 60, a volunteer at Taroko National Park, said she spent much of her time picking up the touring mainlanders’ cigarette butts or shouting at those who heeded nature’s call in full public view. ‘They think they know better and just don’t like following the rules,’ she said with exasperation. ‘They just aren’t very civilized.'”

“One” country, two worlds. China must be just like Chinatown in New York, but, like, everywhere.