Beijing-based TV station BTV has been busy trying to make the city a better place to live by teaching the city some manners. A weekly show running on BTV at the moment aims to educate viewers about the fundamentals of politeness by exposing the unsavoury behaviour of some Beijing citizens.
In last night’s edition, a reporter waited in the lobby of a large store and followed unsuspecting shoppers out the door in order to see how many of them would hold the door open for him. He tried several different approaches, sometimes sending messages or talking on his phone, sometimes carrying several large boxes.
Incredibly, out of 100 unwitting guinea-pigs, a whopping 5 deigned to hold the door for him. The other 95 let it swing back and hit him. (The 5 well-mannered folks each received a free gift of an Olympic Friendly toy.)
Every week, the programme investigates a different example of antisocial behaviour, for example how many seconds would Beijing’s drivers wait behind a slow-moving car before blasting their car horns? (Answer: not very long at all). In this blog’s favourite edition, a reporter ‘dropped’ her bags of shopping in front of oncoming cars, spilling the contents all over the road, in an effort to see how many drivers would stop and allow her to pick the things up, and how many would drive right over them. Don’t laugh: several drivers actually did put the foot down and run over her food, more than the number who waited patiently as she gathered her stuff. (Most of the drivers drove around her as she worked.)
While a few lessons in common courtesy wouldn’t go amiss in just about any city in the world, in Beijing this is a matter of some urgency. 1 year and 361 days from now, the eyes of the entire world will be on Beijing, and tens of thousands of foreign tourists and journalists will be milling around the city. Some residents are starting to worry that the talking point of the Games won’t be the events on the track, or the quality of the air, but rather the unbefitting behaviour of the cityfolk.
