a bad day

Every once in a while, I hate Chinese people. I hate their apathy, close-mindedness, their ignorance, their steadfast belief in outdated notions of health, their rudeness, and, perhaps most of all, their indifference to rudeness. Yeah. It's been a bit of a bad day.
Every morning I participate in a twenty-minute long, four-subway-stop commute from Zhongshan Park to People's Square. I can't really describe what it's like to ride one of two operating lines during rush hour in a city of fifteen million. I thought about photographing the scrapes and bruises incurred during a typical week and about snapping pictures of the escalators between 8 and 9AM, but neither would really accurately capture the terror and frustration of being shoved and swept along in a sea of faceless commuters.
The most incredible aspect, to me, is that nobody seems to mind being jostled and mobbed and trampled upon. I realized long ago that my automatic 'excuse me' was a waste of breath, and that, similarly, I must not expect others to beg pardon. My uncle hypothesizes that it's all an angry chain reaction resulting from one or two unapologetic patrons of the public transport system, but I don't agree. I have three excellent pieces of evidence for believing that people simply don't mind being pushed in the train:
1. Internalization. Children ride the subway; children learn to push and shove without apology and be pushed and shoved without consequence.
2. I experience the same phenomenon at the mall, where leisurely shoppers carelessly push each other bodily, despite having lots of room to maneuver, and no apparent reason to wreck vigilante vengeance on others.
3. The Chinese aren't vigilantes. The first rule of living in Shanghai seems to be that everybody minds their own business. Folks are terribly reluctant to assume accountability for anything - or hassle anybody else for anything.
(I, for my part, try to instill a little social consciousness by appearing extra pained - groaning, grimacing, glaring - at the fifteen or so men and women bumping and tromping me at any given moment in the subway.)
To avoid the madness to as much of a degree as possible, I leave for work at about 7:30 each morning, which puts me in the People's Square vicinity a little over an hour before business hours begin. I kill this time with a book at the Starbucks adjacent to my office. I place the same order every morning - a tall Americano no milk or sugar (the default is to sweeten your beverage) to the same barrista, who not only cannot anticipate my order, but, two days out of the week will invariably mess up and add milk to my coffee. This morning I felt particularly mean; I dumped the brew out, and stonily re-placed my order. She apologized profusely (of course), whereupon I, having worked in food service for much of my adolescent years and having no patience for inadequacy in this sector, said 'I come here every morning and ask for black coffee. What can I do to make this easier for you?' She, flustered (of course) turned on the defensive and asked why I didn't drink milk - didn't I know it was healthy? I keep telling myself I won't return to the Starbucks, but there's simply nowhere else to go at 7:50 in the morning.
After an hour of fuming and reading, I cross the street. My office building - Shanghai Times Square - is rather beautiful. There's a sprawling marble lobby connected to a sprawling marble shopping mall, in which string quartets and French handbags are found. Said lobby is overstaffed (of course) with ten or twelve suits ready to take your umbrella, open the door, wish you good morning, push the buttons on the elevator. As I walked in today, I could see that the elevator doors were open, and picked up pace, making frantic eye contact with the lobby attendant guarding the Up button like a beardless bridge troll. He (and everyone in the elevator) ignored me, and the doors shut in my face. I threw my hands up, at a loss for words. The kid shrugged, turned and belatedly pushed the button.
* * *
Chinese attitudes towards other races and cultures stems from (I'd like to believe) a simple lack of accessibility. Most of China's population is contained in rural, land-locked areas, and has been for many generations. Foreigners and foreign cultures are a rarity. Shanghai, despite being an "international" city, is, from a mere visual perspective, much less diverse than what I'm accustomed to seeing in California, in college, in New York. The expats self-segregate - language being the primary barrier, followed by social culture, which is much more family-oriented among the Chinese. My colleagues - with curious and not malicious intent - ask me what I think of blacks, Indians and the Japanese. When I say - a little huffily - that there's not much to "think", the line of questioning inevitably becomes more objectionable (to my politically-tuned sensibilities, anyway):

'What do Americans think of black people?'
'What do Americans think of Chinese people?'
'What do Americans think of China?'

I try demonstrate that these types of questions are silly, by retorting with equally inane inquiries that generalize the Chinese:

'What do Chinese people think of George Bush?'
'What do Chinese women like in Chinese men?'
'What do Chinese people want?'
* * *
Seriously outdated notions, I guess, exist in every country that isn't America. Chinese people have some curious ideas about health and nutrition, no doubt passed down uninterrupted and unquestioned through generations upon generations. One that irks me in particular on this sweltering summer afternoon is their aversion to cold drinking water. Cold water is bad for the stomach, my colleagues tell me whenever I complain that our water cooler (I only just noticed the irony) dispenses only hot and room-temperature liquid. That's not true! I want to say, but it would be a moot point. I've noticed that the Chinese are strangely stubborn about certain traditional beliefs, an observation which seems to be at odds with their reputed highly-tuned technical skills and a lack of religion. I calmly remind myself that tepid water hydrates more efficiently, and silently down a glass.