I focus on tea on this blog, and food secondarily, and then all the colorful people involved. However, ranting about China is a prerequisite for every travel.
China was the land of manners, with rigid, nuanced, social graces decreed by Confucius. Incidentally, Confucius’ most infamous words of wisdom were ‘one must die if the King commands’( does not appear in fortune cookies.). It is a fundamental error in Chinese social structure: absolutely everyone must obey those in power, even to the wrongful, senseless, head scratching puzzling death. That is what rulers jostle for power everafter for: the right to execute people without reason or due process, because Confucius said so.
For a country that obeys such a crazy rule though, no one follows any other rule. No one can queue up properly, no one respects any public signage ( no spitting/climbing/running/jumping/swinging), everyone, it seems, is hellbent on breaking as many rules as possible, being as disrespectful as possible, and disrupt and destroy public property, lie and cheat on goods, etc. Everyone is venting, because that one inalienable, irrefutable right of all humans to live life has been taken away- by the wisdom of Confucius, and supported by rulers for the next 2 thousand years.
Enough ranting for today….
