NO ONE IS GOING ANYWHERE, SO SIT TIGHT! 今天誰也別走了，就這麼耗著！

A while back I reported on a fracas on Chinese Public Transportation involving riotous old people almighty indignant that some brash young fellow did not have the courtesy to yield his seat.
They pushed and shoved the swine.

This is a subject dear to my heart. Despite being older than Jayzus by the standards of the yuppies infesting San Francisco, I always give up my seat for the elderly, pregnant women, the handicapped or excessively burdened, and women who are above college age. As well as women significantly younger than that, especially if they are carrying too many textbooks.

Which is something few yuppies ever do.
They were badly brought up.
That's the problem.

I'm fifty five, but I can stand. Given how many young urban professionals find that incredibly hard, I take immense pride in that ability.


It also marks me as NOT a young urban professional -- an exalted state if ever there was one -- but I will probably have to live with this.


Old people especially should be given a seat. That's just the way it is. They've done their time, and letting them sit down is part of the glue that holds this society together. Same goes for pregnant women, plus over-burdened females of any age. And why is it always women who do the food-shopping for the entire family? Also young ladies who are carrying a load, such as for instance their infant younger siblings, or schoolbooks, or anything at all really that leaves them wobbly and with only one hand to hold on. Centre of gravity meets years of conditioning.
It simply makes sense to keep them from falling.
Let them sit.

On the mainland, however, today's prosperous vibrant urbanite finds such a concept ridiculous. Yes, in the past they would do such a thing, under a crushing sense of propriety and social responsibility.
But that is so last century!
No longer.

We have an increasing number of mainlanders who now reside in San Francisco, including large numbers of Mandarin speakers, and either they have gone native with blinding speed (kudos!), or they are fully in tune with the manners and mores of their kin, who nowadays are not much different from urbanites elsewhere. Many of them seem at times oblivious to the common courtesies, whereas the Cantonese almost without exception 'get it', and get up.

Not so Mandarin speakers.
My seat! My bottom!
哇！真舒服！
Huh!

Like the crop of recent carpetbaggers from elsewhere in the United States, they were their parents' precious little monsters, and believe themselves far more deserving than they could ever possibly be.

Such people wouldn't offer their seat if Christ on Crutches himself were right beside them. "Hah, stupid cripple, my parents think the sun shines out of my grass; do yours?"

Well? Do they?



You know, most of you programmers, law office wallahs, and marketing types have been sitting all day. It won't harm you to stand for a dozen blocks. Good for your flabby thighs!
But if grampa over there loses his balance and breaks a bone, it might take you another two hours to get home, and the emergency personnel will look at you like you are a selfish and unmannered cretin.
Precisely as I am doing now.
While standing.

Grampa is beyond caring; he's about to topple.


GET UP!


From BBC:

An elderly Chinese man, who claims he was not offered a seat by younger passengers, stood in front of a bus for two hours to stop it moving.

The man was spotted standing in the road and waving his arms in front of the bus in Baoding, a city not far from the capital Beijing. "No-one leaves," he was heard shouting, as he blocked the bus from moving. Whether he had actually been offered a seat on the bus is disputed by eyewitnesses, but the issue appears to be the reason for his tirade. A woman who was travelling with him is reported to have shouted: "College students these days have no character, not a single one of them gave up their seats for us."

[END CITE]

Yes, mainland Mandarin-speaking college students really are deficient.
It's the modern age mixed with that entitled arrogance, coupled with the fact that Mandarin is NOT as subtle a language as Cantonese, nor Northern Chinese culture as civil as the South.


我們這麼大歲數了，現在的大學生沒素質，沒一個讓座的，公交車司機也不管，今天誰也別走了，就這麼耗著！

[“Wǒmen zhème dà suìshule, xiànzài de dàxuéshēng méi sùzhì, méi yīgè ràngzuò de, gōngjiāo chē sījī yě bùguǎn, jīntiān shuí yě bié zǒuliǎo, jiù zhème hàozhe!”]

[Translation: 'We are already so old, today's university students lack character, not a single one yielded a seat, and the driver also didn't give a damn, (therefore) today no one is moving, so just sit tight!']


The bus didn't move for two hours. Police were called to end the stand-off, the two indignant people were not arrested, and young Chinese got to vent their general loathing for the elderly all over the internet, protesting the temerity and effrontery of fossils.

Frankly, I sincerely applaud the old man and his female companion.
I am surprised and not a little outraged that a mob didn't form.
To support them, and "chastise" the students.
Or at least stage a "sit-in".


More grey-haired folks need to start rioting. I sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if they did.


*      *      *      *      *


The intelligent reader will at this point object that I am conflating, or at least opportunistically overlapping, three distinctly separate issues.

To whit:

The lack of courtesy which is on the rise in mainland China;

Equivalent boorish behaviour here in San Francisco;

A very slight dislike of Mandarin speakers.


Indeed, the three are only thematically connected at best, and there is no logical link that can convincingly be fronted. I'm seeing a pattern where, in truth, there is none.

My argument is based almost entirely on my own biases.


I've never been to the mainland, and for all I know the old folks there are all vicious delinquents, running roughshod over the poor oppressed adult single children who are fated to inherit a decrepit society.

Many yuppies in San Francisco may be sincerely dead-tired after a long day doing momentous things, the like of which will change our world in unimaginably good ways.

Mandarin-speakers might, on the whole, be as capable of feelings and rational thought as their Cantonese cousins. And as likable, too.


Well all righty then.


You can sit on it.



現在這群雅皮士沒素質，我呸!




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