Bad manners are worst Chinese import

By Rong Xiaoqing Source:Global Times Published: 2016-1-7 22:38:01

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Once upon a time, Chinese movies came to the public theatres in the New York only once in a blue moon. When I first came to the US as an international student 15 years ago, I had to buy an external hard drive to copy a new movie by the director Feng Xiaogang that my friend spent two days downloading into her computer via some bootlegged software. The disc cost me $150, or my living expenses for two weeks. It was the least worthy investment I've ever made in my entire life. But that was how desperate Chinese moviegoers here were back then.

Those days are long gone. Now popular Chinese movies are often released here within a few days after their domestic release. And they are often sold out when shown in some major movie houses, just like a Hollywood offering. This doesn't mean US audiences are suddenly so keen on Chinese movies, but the Chinese population in New York is now big enough to provide a sizeable market that can no longer be just seen as a niche. Indeed, sometimes, the full house is more than just full.

I witnessed the latter just a few days ago when I went to the AMC Empire 25 at Times Square to see the phenomenal Mr. Six from director Guan Hu,  starring none other than the director-turned-actor Feng.

It was already clear during the previews shown before the main feature that there were more people in the theater than there were seats. And by the time the movie started, the walkways on both sides in the theatre were all taken up by diehard fans who didn't seem to mind perching on the hard and cold stairs.

But of course, the theater's security detail did mind. They arrived in the middle of the movie and ordered everyone on the stairs to leave. When the order was resisted by those who had valid tickets but had not been able to grab a seat, the security guards paused the movie and asked the audience one by one to show them their tickets. Those who sneaked in - probably after buying tickets to another movie - were kicked out before the movie continued. This all took about ten minutes amid a lot of complaining, histrionics and some swearing.

The brouhaha might be unusual in a mainstream American movie theater, but such happenings can be expected when Chinese audiences are involved. In recent years, accompanied by the increasing frequency of Chinese cultural events in New York, be it movies, concerts or stage plays, more and more theatres have had to cope with some brazen behaviors.

At Carnegie Hall, I witnessed the audience taking pictures with flashlights during a concert. At Lincoln Center, I witnessed some people in the audience cracking sunflower seeds during a Chinese New Year gala performance. Also at Lincoln Center I saw an audience use their cell phones as flashlights during the performance of a Chinese pop group. 

The security staff in these theatres all tried to intervene at the beginning, but then they had to give up since there were too many violators and there was no way to discipline all. At the pop concert, even the band members on the stage pulled out their cell phones to interact with the audience, leaving the hapless ushers helpless in the middle of a "sea of people."

Frankly, the rules and systems in US theatres are far from perfect. For example, if movie theatres adopted the ticketing system of Broadway theatres that assign seats with numbers, movie crashers would have little chance of succeeding. But a system like this certainly cannot support the current holistic pricing system movie theatres enjoy because no one would like to spend the same amount of money to get a seat in the front row and strain your neck to see the picture from only a few yards away. And prestigious theatres that have been sticking to the traditional rule of "no-photos during the performance" for decades now find their inflexibility challenged by today's audience who are all equipped with camera-embedded cell phones. 

But what's striking here is not the out-of-date rules in US theaters, or even the theatre manners of Chinese audiences, but the attitude of the new generation of Chinese immigrants toward the rules in the host country.

Up to five years ago, Chinese immigrants would quickly pick up the US behavior codes once they settled here. Following the rules was a big part of assimilation, which was top of the agenda for most of them. But now, the newcomers don't appear to care much about that. They simply bring over their own rules and codes of behavior and expect others to bend for them.

Undoubtedly the defiance is rooted in the rising confidence of the Chinese population based on 30-odd years of a booming economy. And the confidence is long overdue. But for the Chinese who traveled a long way to a foreign country to look for something new, it is important to differentiate between confidence and over-confidence. The former can help us avoid getting lost in a foreign country but the latter may mean we don't learn from our host country, and we don't grow and evolve as people.

The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com

Posted in: Columnists, Viewpoint

blog comments powered by Disqus