International Law

?It?s Working!?

By Stan

The words were spoken by a disgruntled expat in an elevator this morning. If I had to guess, I would say he was French, but I don’t know for sure.

Here’s what happened. The expat gets on and stands there patiently by the control panel - in this particular elevator, there is only one panel on the right side of the elevator. We go down a couple of floors and this painfully short Chinese guy gets on. He immediately reaches all the way across the French guy, who is rather tall, and attempts to hit the "Close Door" button. Before his finger gets very far, however, the French guy bellows "It’s Working!" and stares down at the Chinese gentleman until the offending finger is sheepishly reeled in. The height disparity gave the whole thing an added dimension.

Now, I’ve had my fun in the past with this whole custom over here of riding the "Close Door" button as soon as you get in an elevator. It’s a little weird, but pretty much just an interesting cultural difference between China and (from my perspective) the U.S. Moreover, the Chinese fellow was arguably invading the French guy’s personal space by reaching across him like that - it wasn’t all that nice.

On the other hand, this sort of thing happens. If it bothers you so much that you have to snap at someone with that kind of tone, you really need to take a vacation or something.

That was my first reaction, call it the literal translation. On my way to work, however, I realized that this would have made a perfect political cartoon. Picture it: tall expat symbolizing the West, short Chinese guy symbolizing the up-and-coming China, the button is labelled "Chinese development". China is riding that button, wanting things to move as quickly as possible. The West, intimidated and annoyed, essentially is saying "Hey, slow down there. It’s already working just fine."

Well, perhaps not a great political cartoon, but not bad, and also interesting in that it actually happened.

This is what I think about on the way to work. What do you do?

Full post as published by China Hearsay on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).