When I try to verbalize a trail of living in Hong Kong and China that wears me down, my friends don't understand; they think that I'm describing the struggles of living in a mega city and rubbing elbows with millions of other people but that's not it. I understand the hustle and bustle of a city but this is something that has been creeping into Hong Kong culture over the past several years and it exhausts me.
I live in Happy Valley, and SB and I chose to live here because it's not as easily accessible as the MTR proximate neighborhoods, thus there is a bit of a community feeling. The community groups are vibrant and active, and most of us are neighborly with one, glaring exception: public transportation.
If you ride the tram into Happy Valley, you are most likely departing at the terminus, along with almost everyone else. When the tram pulls up to the terminus, all neighborliness goes right out the window. There will be three or four passengers who have given up and remain seated until the end but most of the passengers begin rushing for the doors if they haven't already been clustered around the exit since the previous stop (and woe to any passengers who needed to get through to depart at the previous stop). I have seen women using their children as battering rams, teaching them how to be the most absolutely rude, uncharitable trolls. I have experienced old ladies humping me from behind to prevent other passengers from slipping between our fused pelvises. I have seen helpers ducking under and around taller passengers, and men in natty suits deploying the stiff armed fend. It will make you lose hope in humanity. I suspect that at least half of the passengers understand critically that exiting in an orderly fashion and alternating between those coming down the stairs and those departing from the bottom level would be more efficient than say, everyone shoving in a giant viper mating ball, but the lure of getting one up on the passenger whose turn they took is too great.
If you ride the bus out of Happy Valley, you have likely experienced trying to sit and finding a two person seat occupied by someone who is apparently in a coma, only capable of being awakened at the exact moment their stop comes up.
New Yorker columnist Jiayang Fan wrote a remarkable essay on Yan Lianke's satires of China, which addressed the concept of zhan pianyi, which translates to "occupy small advantages". Yan describes this legacy of communism as the compulsion for people to only be satisfied if they feel that they gained an unfair advantage. Apparently the act of preventing someone from exiting until you go first in their turn, or enjoying the extra bus seat while they have to stand, is intensely pleasurable to some people. It is more than just asserting yourself, which has to happen in big cities that practice a form of social Darwinism; in Hong Kong and China I am apparently living a Trumpian dystopia where the art of the deal is all that truly matters.
I live in Happy Valley, and SB and I chose to live here because it's not as easily accessible as the MTR proximate neighborhoods, thus there is a bit of a community feeling. The community groups are vibrant and active, and most of us are neighborly with one, glaring exception: public transportation.
If you ride the tram into Happy Valley, you are most likely departing at the terminus, along with almost everyone else. When the tram pulls up to the terminus, all neighborliness goes right out the window. There will be three or four passengers who have given up and remain seated until the end but most of the passengers begin rushing for the doors if they haven't already been clustered around the exit since the previous stop (and woe to any passengers who needed to get through to depart at the previous stop). I have seen women using their children as battering rams, teaching them how to be the most absolutely rude, uncharitable trolls. I have experienced old ladies humping me from behind to prevent other passengers from slipping between our fused pelvises. I have seen helpers ducking under and around taller passengers, and men in natty suits deploying the stiff armed fend. It will make you lose hope in humanity. I suspect that at least half of the passengers understand critically that exiting in an orderly fashion and alternating between those coming down the stairs and those departing from the bottom level would be more efficient than say, everyone shoving in a giant viper mating ball, but the lure of getting one up on the passenger whose turn they took is too great.
If you ride the bus out of Happy Valley, you have likely experienced trying to sit and finding a two person seat occupied by someone who is apparently in a coma, only capable of being awakened at the exact moment their stop comes up.
New Yorker columnist Jiayang Fan wrote a remarkable essay on Yan Lianke's satires of China, which addressed the concept of zhan pianyi, which translates to "occupy small advantages". Yan describes this legacy of communism as the compulsion for people to only be satisfied if they feel that they gained an unfair advantage. Apparently the act of preventing someone from exiting until you go first in their turn, or enjoying the extra bus seat while they have to stand, is intensely pleasurable to some people. It is more than just asserting yourself, which has to happen in big cities that practice a form of social Darwinism; in Hong Kong and China I am apparently living a Trumpian dystopia where the art of the deal is all that truly matters.
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