Don't Walk This Way! Or... "This is NOT Japan!"

This is just one more thing that drives me NUTS about living in Asia.  Most people in this region simply do not pay any attention whatsoever to even the most basic and beneficial public rules and protocols.  Never mind the way a lot of people in this region tend to drive.   A whole lot of them walk around every bit as recklessly most of the time!

I guess it's always every man for himself in a desperately overpopulated place, but come on!   There are arrows (as can clearly be seen down in the lower right hand side of the photo), clearly indicating that pedestrians are supposed to keep to the right. In fact, a law was actually passed in 2009 in South Korea, finally making it official that pedestrians are supposed to keep to the right.  BUT THEY DON'T.

Why?

So... why bother painting the arrows anyway, if everybody is going to stubbornly (passive-aggressively?) keep to the left?

In fact, in South Korea, it is extremely rare to find any pedestrian (unless they happen to be foreign born, like yours truly) who even tries to obey the local rules.   I mean... isn't that what you're supposed to do when living in somebody else's country?  Obey the laws. Keep your nose clean.  But what do you do when the locals themselves can't even seem to get with their own damned program?  Basically, you try not to go out very much.  Which, I often think, is what many of them passive aggressively really want anyway.  Less pesky human traffic that way, you know.

What? You thought Asia was all about people living in "harmony?"  Think again.   All that harmony and civility hype is usually a naïve Westerner's wet dream about Asia.  You know, all that, "over there, the grass must be greener" crap.  What?  You think Asians aren't people, too, just like the rest of us?   Actually, the real Asia really isn't like that at all.  On the contrary, most Asians are actually under the constant, omnipresent massive weight of a palpable social pressure that discourages any form of public conflict, or even simple displays of everyday emotions. Sounds good, huh?

Actually, it's really not.  In the real world, when people can't be openly aggressive, painfully honest and straightforward, the way many groups of less oppressed people tend to be, they tend to get passive-aggressive to compensate.  And I mean, REALLY passive-aggressive.

Obviously, the population is very, very dense in most places in East Asia.  And, as a result, as one might expect, most people in the region are under all sorts of extraordinary pressures.  Yes, all the same pressures that Americans and other Westerners have to deal with (like financial problems, family issues and the daily grind), but on top of all that, they usually have a whole lot less space to deal with all that in.   AND... the strictly traditional, rigidly Confucian society often doesn't allow them to relieve that pressure in quite the same way that people in the West usually have the freedom to.

So, there's a reason for everything, right?   Well, in this case, the reason why Koreans drive on the right side, but still, stubbornly tend to always walk on the left, is because (but only PARTLY because) the peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945.  During the Japanese colonial period, Koreans were obliged to drive and walk on the left side, just like their former Japanese colonial masters.

Then came the end of WWII, and eventual emancipation for the Korean people.  The US, having just defeated Imperial Japan, naturally inherited the responsibility of overseeing the southern half of the peninsula.  What the Russians and Chinese did with the North... is now a truth that, one would tend to think, is painfully self evident.

Be that as it may, not long after the Koreans got their beloved country back from the latest group of neighbors who'd oppressed them (NOT the Chinese, who've most often bullied them - and a lot more often and for much longer periods of time, in fact, than the Japanese), more misfortune came to the peninsula via the Korean War (1950-53).

After the cease fire that still divides the two groups of Koreans to this very day, it was eventually made official that South Koreans should drive on the right side, and not the left, as is, of course, still the prevailing custom throughout Japan.

And everybody knows how much most Koreans HATE the Japanese!  Which is fine and dandy, I guess, because most Japanese aren't all that keen on Koreans.  So it would certainly seem that keeping to the right nowadays in South Korea would be a no brainer, right? I mean... it's only been... oh... NEARLY SEVEN FREAKING DECADES SINCE THE END OF JAPANESE COLONIAL RULE IN SOUTH KOREA!

Then I guess we can't continue to blame THEM for everything indefinitely, now can we?

Actually... I think I'd rather not even head down that particular rabbit hole just now.  Not on your life!  At any rate, my wife says that when she was young, all her Korean teachers consistently told her and her classmates to "keep left."  Old imperial habits die pretty hard, I guess.

Or is there some other reason why the average South Korean still walks around like they are still under the yoke of Japanese colonial rule?   Hmm....

Either way, that's yet another reason why I find it incredibly frustrating to have to walk just about anywhere in South Korea.  Not everyone walks on the left while I'm trying desperately to keep, as unmolested as humanly possible, to the right, but it's so common that I find myself saying to people who come to a halt directly in front of me, and won't move, no matter how much room is on the other side of the sidewalk (or even aggressively simply try to force me out of the way), "This is not Japan!"  And I say that in Korean, of course.

"This is not Japan."  Because it isn't.   Not anymore.  In fact, we're nearly seven full decades away from all that.  And seven full decades is, I really hate to have to point out, the better part of a freaking CENTURY, so... come on, guys, let's move forward already, huh?  Just a thought.

All I know is, if I lived in Japan or England, where people are supposed to keep left, I would most definitely do my damnedest to keep left.  Especially since following the rules tends to make living just about anywhere a lot less stressful.  But maybe I'm just silly that way!

So Where are the Freaking MANNERS?

Sure!  Do what you want.  It's Asia.  Just use the entire sidewalk in front of your business.  Then, just to show how SELFISH, INCONSIDERATE and TOTALLY OBLIVIOUS you are to everyone who has to drive or walk anywhere near your business, put some MORE of your product out into the public street!  Sure!  Block the lane!  Sure.  Go ahead.  Everybody else is doing it.

Don't get too down on the Koreans though.  This is even MORE common in China and Taiwan.  It's not just a problem with "personal space."  It's also the fact that law enforcement is lax, and far too many people in Asia don't seem to have a blessed clue that they might just be making life just a little more difficult for all the other people who have to drive or walk around their selfishly placed crap.

And when it's not somebody's inconsiderately parked car, it's usually a person, or groups of people, that are out in the middle out the street, or are just standing some place where they really wouldn't if... if they were really thinking about it.  You know, if they were using their brain for anything except their own self serving needs and wants.  Which often leaves me to wonder; are most of these people really thinking at all?  My wife says it's a matter of education.

Okay, fine.  That's what I came to Asia to do, but, come on!  Crikey, people!  I'm just here to teach English.   And I get tired sometimes, you know.  I mean... I gotta somehow educate Asian kids in the finer points of the English language, and still... I have to go out and think of all sorts of diplomatic, "face saving" ways to teach full grown adults out in the chaotic general public to learn a thing or two about holding the door open for the next person.  Where is CHIVALRY, I ask?  No, I BEG to know where are the freaking manners in this parts of the world!

Oh, that's right. I live in Asia.

In Taiwan, for example, some city sidewalks are so jam packed full of illegal sellers and their crap, that pedestrians literally have to step down off the curb and take their chances with cars that rush crazily by!   No joke.  And no exaggeration.

So why do they do it?  As a Westerner, it's still, even after all these years, really hard for me to fathom.   It's really quite dysfunctional and passive aggressively belligerent behavior, in fact, so all this stuff about "harmony" in Asia is really just fantasy and culture-centric hype.  Something that you learn after a while. IF, that is, you want to see it for what it really is.

Either way, there are no public trash cans in Asia to speak of, and most people you meet on a daily basis seem to have almost zero awareness of anyone in public places but themselves.

Once, in Taiwan, I was talking to a French guy I'd just met, who assured me that, yes, the Taiwanese will just about run you down in the street, or on the sidewalk if you're in their way, but "if they know you, they will treat you like a prince."  Okay.... And that's a healthy societal trait because...?

Hmm.

Whatever the case may be, from what I've personally witnessed for a dozen years, is that people in many Asian countries just tend to stand in the middle of doorways, walk in groups side by side down the sidewalk (totally blocking the way of anybody who comes from the opposite direction), and a host of other behaviors that aren't necessarily criminal... but if you have to deal with it day in and day out, it may just make you want to slug somebody.