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.