China Blog by Chinaorbit.com

Here in Beijing, I’ve noticed the locals do not believe in personal space, they probably don’t even know what it is! You have probably witnessed this lack of respect in the subways. Getting on or off and even while in the subway cart everyone is directly next to you, touching you as if they were hitting on you. Another example is when crossing the streets here. The culture is just go and dodge the cars and buses. Most people when crossing the streets here are literally millimeters away from cars because the vehicles don’t stop, especially the buses I’ve noticed. People are often caught between lanes while cars and buzzing by millimeters away from death. Quite scary sometimes. Even in NYC cars are ruthless and often zroom by but there’s a small ounce of respect and safety that people have. NYC locals don’t risk peoples lives like they do here. In my opinion, here in Beijing there is no such thing as personal space or respect for others. It’s kind of a society and culture that is very impatient, and only cares for oneself and your family, no one else matters. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a different type of culture to get use to.

Last week my friend and I went to O’Brien’s, a big Irish sandwich chain, and asked for fapiao when we received our check. Surprisingly instead of a real O’Brien’s invoice fapiao, we saw our waitress ask a woman on the street for fapiao. When she brought it to us we realized it was fake fapiao. The silver scratch part wasn’t able to scratch off. It was just silver coloring. I couldn’t believe a big chain like O’Brien’s had FAKE FAPIAO!! Good thing we didn’t need the invoice for work or taxes, we just felt lucky that day and thought we’d win some money, i guess our luck never even had a chance.