China wants Olympians to see its best behavior
By Calum MacLeod (USA TODAY)
Updated: 2006-02-09 11:20

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-02-08-china-manners_x.htm

BEIJING — Iconic Olympic venues are sprouting all over the Chinese capital. The national stadium is being woven in concrete and steel to resemble a bird's nest. The "water cube" swimming center will soon be a giant box of blue bubbles.

The Chinese Government is trying to improve the manners of busy Beijing commuters.
By David McIntyre, for USA TODAY

Communist planners are making China's dowdy, gray capital beautiful for the 2008 Summer Games. Now comes a bigger challenge: Can they make it polite, too?

That might be one hurdle too many, says the woman whose job is to convince Beijingers that common sights here — spitting, swearing, belching and cutting in line — are no way to welcome the world.

"Building the stadiums is no problem," sighs Zhang Huigang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethics Development Office. "But raising people's quality and civilization is not something we can do in one or two months, or even one or two years."

As the Miss Manners of the Beijing Games, Zhang is racing against time to help China save face. She and her team use daily TV commercials, newspaper cartoons and other tools to try to change the ingrained habits of the host city and the 15 million people living in and around it.

Few countries in modern Olympic history have invested as much national pride in hosting the games. None has mobilized as quickly as China: Venue construction, dangerously behind schedule at the 2004 Athens Games and other Olympics, was moving at such a rapid clip here last year that the International Olympic Committee ordered Beijing to slow down to avoid high maintenance costs.

China's ruling Communist Party views the 29th Olympiad as a coming-out party that will showcase three decades of breakneck economic development. Sadly, Zhang says, the refinement of Chinese table manners and public decorum have not kept pace with the construction of roads and gleaming skyscrapers.

"Chinese people are very friendly and hospitable, and we want foreign guests to see the good side of Beijing," says Zhang, 47, a prim career party official with exemplary manners. "What I hate most is spitting, pushing and crowding. ... We want to give foreign guests a good impression. It's hard, but I am confident they will be impressed."

Zhang isn't the only one concerned. "I really worry whether the audience will stand up when the national anthem of another country is played," Beijing Mayor Wang Qishan said last year. There is no guarantee Chinese spectators will applaud the performances of home-country athletes who don't win gold, he said.

Encouraging etiquette

To head off embarrassment, China's Olympic chiefs have set aside $2.5 million for Zhang's campaign. On the politeness front, the campaign features:

* Instruction in "civilized spitting" and distribution of millions of paper spit bags.

The government's response highlights one of many cultural differences between East and West: The problem is not spitting per se, but where to spit. "It is unhealthy to swallow spit," Zhang says, "so we need to help people spit in a civilized way."

* Trash boxes about every 300 feet on major streets and other public areas to discourage littering, plus requirements that pet owners carry cardboard or plastic poop collectors when walking their dogs.

* Etiquette handbooks to be sent to 2.8 million households, challenging residents to improve their table habits. Examples: no more slurping of soup, no coughing, belching or passing gas at the table — and a reminder to say "excuse me" if you do.

* Roving lecturers to train students, workers and volunteers in Olympic etiquette. Beijing students, already pressed to complete their studies, must take courses in Olympic knowledge.

Soon, the capital will double its new 1,500-person army of "civilized bus-riding" supervisors, laid-off workers hired to stop the crowding and fighting when a bus pulls in. Subway monitors have been deployed to encourage passengers to form orderly lines instead of jostling to get aboard.

The manners movement is the latest in a series of sometimes misdirected campaigns over decades by China's Communist leaders. Mao Zedong mobilized the masses to build backyard steel mills, believing steel was key to closing the economic gap with the West. Another of his campaigns sent peasants into the fields to kill millions of swallows — seen as crop-eating pests — only to learn that the birds were needed to kill caterpillars that munch crops.

As recently as 1984, the party urged Chinese to resist the "spiritual pollution" breezing in from the capitalist West. Now that China has embraced capitalism, the government mandates Western-style manners.

Spitting mad

This time, it might not be easy. Decades of state propaganda has left some in Beijing contemptuous of party authority. Chinese bloggers decried a recent crackdown on public swearing and argued that the anti-spitting campaign is futile.

"We won't just stop spitting because the leaders say so," taxi driver Yu Yongxing says.

Deng Xiaoping, China's top leader from the late '70s until the early '90s, was an enthusiastic spitter who kept a spittoon close by when he greeted visitors at the Great Hall of the People.

However, attitudes are changing. In a poll of 10,000 residents by the city government in September, Beijingers listed spitting and littering as their top irritants.

"I know China has bigger problems," says office administrator Chen Lei, 27, "but issues like banking debt don't affect my personal space as much as the spitting and throwing of cigarette butts everywhere."

Zheng Huawei, a former dancer working as an Olympic etiquette instructor, is appealing to Beijingers' pride and sense of history. She tells her students they must respect foreign visitors as they do their own family members. "Confucius said, 'Without manners, we cannot do anything,' " she says.

Apart from preaching Confucian virtue, she labors to explain the many ways in which foreigners are different. "Westerners, apart from the French, don't like to eat animal innards, fish heads or chicken feet," she tells her classes.

The manners message has filtered down to the capital's notoriously gruff neighborhood bureaucrats. "We must treat ordinary people better," says Shen Guifen, head of central Beijing's Yuetan District Work Committee, one of dozens of local record-keeping offices. "Before, we would ask any visitor 'What are you doing here?' and make them come back two or three times a day to get anything done."

Shen and her staff have a manual detailing 488 ways to be more polite and customer-oriented. "Instead of (Communist) ideology, we focus on service. We are not the mother and father of the people, deciding everything, but must help people to resolve their problems."

Pre-Olympics competition

The Olympic etiquette bosses have tried to spice up the campaign to keep from losing public interest, sponsoring English-language contests and other competitions.

In central Beijing recently, more than 300 excited seniors gathered for an English-language singing contest. "We need a few sentences to help the foreigners who will come here," said Tian Jinsheng, 73. "It's easy for youngsters because they use English all the time, but singing helps us old folks remember."

The contestants warbled Eidelweiss, Red River Valley, Jingle Bells and other favorites with varying levels of comprehension until 73-year-old Song Guoguang stole the show crooning My Heart Will Go On from Titanic.

With the world at China's door, nervous manners boss Zhang pleads for understanding from athletes, officials and spectators. She also observes that London, host of the 2012 Summer Games, should get cracking on its own manners campaign.

"When I visited London on an inspection tour, I saw people spitting there," she says. "And lots of litter."