Hissy Fit Potential

I am sitting on the train heading into Shanghai for a couple days of meetings and appointment. My thoughts:
The train from Nanjing to Shanghai passes through a number of smaller communities many of which are farmlands. At present through the scenic fields there is a large project under way. The new train lines, a super high speed train due to be completed in 2010. At this time it takes the high speed train about 2 hours to go from Nanjing to Shanghai with no stops, with several stops it takes about 2.5 hours. Today we are on a train that has four or five stops and between those stops our cruising speed is around 190 to 204 kmh. The new train will take just one hour to make the same trip at an average of 400 kmh.
We are riding in our car, #14, which is first class accommodations or as the Chinese refer to it as soft seat accommodations. In China the first class seating is typically Car #1, #7, #14 and #15. Car #7 is nice because you don’t have to haul all your stuff to the end of the train when boarding or exiting. If you are in the other cars be prepared to hike a bit. Also you have to take into consideration when you are packing as you will go up and down several sets of stairs. I have not found on station in all of China that had functioning elevators or single level stations. Occasionally you will get a station that has escalators for the folks going up but there is only a 50/50 chance of those escalators actually working.
Once you get on your train you have to find your assigned seat (lessons are needed to translate the tickets properly) and get settled in. In the first class also called soft seating is very spacious and clean, bathrooms are questionable depending on time of day. The seats being softer than the rest of the train, I don’t know. Today Bill and I had seats 1 and 2 which gave the additional luxury of a small table with seats 7 and 8 FACING us. I have a problem with this… It would have been ideal if the people sitting in seat 7 and 8 were traveling with us or at least “westerners” as they would know the whole personal space rules. But NO! Thank goodness I have spent enough time on the trains that I knew how to spin that bad boy to face the other direction and as we were the first passengers to arrive in our car, it was done before the passengers assigned those seats were given a chance to complain.
Why did I have to alter the state of the seating…oh my god. I really wish I had a stupid amount of money so I can fly all of you over here to experience the cultural differences between us and the Chinese. In the Chinese culture it is completely appropriate to do number of things without regards to how these things affect your fellow earthlings.
1) Spitting: not little spitting, I am talking hawking up the biggest amount of phlegm you can and projectile it in any direction that you think is most appropriate.
2) Pissing: Children peeing and the occasional adult male, in public on the sidewalks as you are walking passed them. I have seen people walk right through midstream. WTF.
3) Poop: as in taking a dump. See the pissing comments. This seems to be limited to the small children. They wear crotch-less pants from the birth till the time that they are potty trained. At any moment you may have a parent squatting with a little one holding their legs wide open so that they can poop on, well, the sidewalk, sometimes a newspaper, sometimes directly into a trashcan.
4) Smacking and spitting of food: Chinese slurp, suck, smack and overall are the noisiest eaters I have ever encountered. They see nothing wrong with slurping in a bowl full of noodles and flinging the juice where ever it may land. Then add the fact that many of their dishes are not deboned…you get a mouthful of bones, no problem, spit them out back onto your plate.
5) Farting and burping: nothing, they have no reaction. Oh, sometimes you get the little smile from one of them as if to say “oops, did I do that?” Mainly, it is a free for all, let it rip.

So you can see where I was just a little, ok – completely not in the freaking mood, for staring at two Chinese persons for 2.5 hours while I tried to act like I was not noticing any of the above mentioned possibilities.