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Beautiful Country - WSJ.com: "Think New York is Fast-Paced?
Try Beijing
Roads Don't Wait to Get Paved, Nor Elevator Doors
To Be Shut in City Where Patience Isn't a Virtue
August 15, 2008

Think New York is Fast-Paced?
Try Beijing
Roads Don't Wait to Get Paved, Nor Elevator Doors
To Be Shut in City Where Patience Isn't a Virtue
August 15, 2008

When a friend was visiting from Beijing in June, she commented that New Yorkers were very patient.

"What do you mean?" I asked. New Yorkers have a reputation of being pushy and aggressive, and New York probably has a faster pace than any other city in the U.S.

My friend wasn't convinced. "Look," she said, pointing to a cashier in a pharmacy as we were passing by. "The line is very long but she doesn't look like she feels the need to hurry up. She's even joking around with her coworkers. In Beijing, people would have yelled at her."

I realized that my friend was right as soon as I landed in Beijing a week later. I missed a transfer flight to my hometown and had to get the ticket for a later flight. There were at the most 20 people standing in line, but they all looked restless and stood uncomfortably close to each other. (At least that was how I felt.) Within five minutes, a man behind me spoke up: "Why are there only three counters open when the line is so long? The quality of service here is so bad." A few others concurred.

In fact, the whole process took me less than 15 minutes. In New York, nobody would have thought about muttering a word about the wait.

A lot of things in China move at a fast pace. A Shanghai-based British economist even designed a "China years" table to measure China's changes, as my colleague Alan Paul wrote a while ago. The economist concluded that a year in America is the equivalent of three months in China.

What really surprised me in Beijing is how fast things get built. The road in front of the apartment building where I was staying was so muddy during my first week there that I had to beg cab drivers to drop me off in the basement garage. But somehow in one night during my second week, a four-lane, 500-meter-long asphalt road was paved. Two days later, a huge lot across the road that was littered with bricks and other construction materials was covered with grass and flowers.

Obviously, efforts to beautify Beijing for the Olympic Games were a factor. But it's not all about the Olympics.

In Beijing, many things move at a much faster pace than in New York, and I, as a New Yorker and a former Beijing resident, had problems keeping up.

While still at the Beijing airport, I was pushed aside by a man behind me because I wasn't walking fast enough. "For God's sake," I thought to myself, "How much time could he save by pushing me aside instead of stepping aside?" We were walking in the spacious Terminal 3, which, by itself, is bigger than the five terminals of London's Heathrow Airport combined.

But the airport turned out to be a less challenging place for me than elevators in office buildings, where the etiquette in Beijing is completely different from that in New York.

In New York, I've learned to hold elevator doors and wait patiently for the person 20 feet away. In American movies, only rude, mean or angry people shut the door in somebody's face.

The first morning I stepped into an office elevator in Beijing, a man gave me a nasty look before he stepped forward and pressed the "close" button forcefully in a gesture of protest. Soon I found that the first thing almost everybody does after getting in an elevator is to press the "close" button.

One morning, after thanking me for holding the elevator door for him, a young man leaned forward and put one of his index fingers on the "close" button the whole time from the first floor to the 11th. He held that position with an intent look and would start pressing the button as soon as the door opened. I don't think he knew what he was doing. But I could tell that saving a few seconds was the most important thing for him during the two-minute elevator ride.

Human behavior is shaped by surroundings. I wouldn't have found his behavior inappropriate before I came to the U.S. In fact, when I first arrived in New York, I was surprised that almost nobody pressed the "close" button in elevators, and many people held doors for others, which I only did for people I knew in Beijing.

The stereotype of Americans in China is that they're extremely casual and don't care about social norms. What I found is almost the opposite. Americans have high expectations for public manners, and there's an underlying belief in respect for one another. New Yorkers (certainly not all of them) hold doors for others not because they're patient but because they're taught that it's the polite thing to do. It can be reputation-damaging to be called "rude."

I first learned that lesson when I was studying at Columbia. At a dinner after an evening class, I told the waitress, "We're starving. Can we have our food faster?" One of my classmates said to me half-jokingly, "You're so rude." She explained that waiting-table is a stressful enough job so it's not very polite to rush the servers. Now I don't even dare to ask where my order is unless it's way too slow.

I also learned to stand in line for 15 minutes in a grocery store without feeling anxious. At least, I can catch up with my tabloid reading. Even when I'm running to an appointment, I will always stop and hold the door for the person behind me.

I've avoided judging any culture in this column out of belief that each has good reasons for doing things in certain ways. But I have to admit that I like the social norms of U.S. public manners. I will hold door for others and expect others to do the same for me. I will queue no matter how long the line is because it's the most efficient and fairest way for everybody.

It's probably true that more buildings are built in Beijing in a year than 10 years in New York. But individuals are paying a high price in this fast-changing culture. You'll have to be prepared to fight for your survival every morning when stepping out the door. And a lot of energy is wasted on unpleasant and petty things. It's the ultimate "survival of the fittest," except that everyone can be the fittest or the weakest depending on different social circumstances.

But I have also experienced hope that a sense of morality is growing in Beijing along with economic prosperity. I was taking a cab during rush hour one afternoon, and the driver stopped to let a man pedaling a three-wheeled cart pass first, which never happened during my two weeks in Beijing. I was surprised by his gesture and asked him about it. To my delight, he said: "If everybody yields to others, we'll all have a more pleasant life."

Write to Li Yuan at li.yuan@wsj.com