(Ricoh GX200; the underground in Beijing)While the Beijing underground system is being run by the Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railways Corporation, Hong Kong is being increasingly run over by the Mainland affected-indifferent way of doing things. This attitude is so deeply ingrained in the Mainland Chinese psyche that it governs their everyday life from selling adulterated milk powder to not holding the door for the next person going through it.
In a nutshell, affected indifference is the omnipresent attitude in Mainland China that everybody cares about their own welfare in private, and not least in public like:
1) Go in the train compartment/ lift/ gents or ladies without letting people leave it first
2) Not remove the food-tray and crumbles from the table before leaving a fast-food shop
3) Talk at the top of their lungs (sometimes on the cellphone) in public
4) Jump queues, excusing themselves to you that their friends are queuing in front
5) Block a vendor machine to make sure that the next person will still be the next even though they themselves have been fumbling for coins for a while
6) Snap up the newest limited i-whatitiscall and resell them at a dear price and so on
Fact is, unfortunately, some of these peculiar behaviours are becoming easily felt in Hong Kong. For example, probably except in the MTR Central Station at the CBD, people on the platform will rush onto the next train arriving before passengers can manage to drop off. The latest similar experience the author had was a near-stampede by a troop of Chinese woman visitors with luggage cases who tried to push people (including some children) in the lift car back once the lift arrived at the ground floor. Hong Kong seems to be vanishing in the shadows of the comrades, who are generally ostentatious in appearance and indifferent at heart -- the worst combination possible!
(Of course, there are exceptions which are however still few and far between)
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