Defies my attempts at coming up with a title.

An incident from last night has left me really upset, and I don't know how to describe it other than just to tell the story.

Lee and I were out at a store. As we were checking out, an altercation began at the next aisle. That isn't quite the right word. A man, around 40 to 50 years old, began yelling at the cashier. She was a young girl probably around 20 years old, and about 5 foot nothing tall. He kept getting louder and louder, and then became more belligerent. He pounded the counter forcefully, waved his hands aggressively, and continued to sound more and more angry.

He was surrounded by a group of four or five friends. I'm not sure how many were with him, because there were other people around as well, including employees and other customers. The employees just seemed to stare at the floor, and some of the bystanders seemed to think that this was very funny. I only later realized that some of those must have been his friends, because when he finally did leave, they left with him. Everyone else just looked on passively, including the employees, and even the two security guards in the area.

The girl became more and more distraught. She was not arguing back, and she looked like she just wanted to crawl under the counter and hide. Finally, she crumpled onto the floor sobbing. Then, and only then, did a couple co-workers come to her and comfort her. At that point, finally, the angry man left, continuing to yell at her all the way to the door.

This is an argumentative culture. I'd heard that before, and I've already seen it for myself. Old men stand in the park and have recreational disputes. So far, that doesn't describe anything I haven't seen in France or Italy, but here, it goes farther. For example, for the last two weeks, the police have been out in force at the nearest intersection trying to establish some traffic order (see Lee's latest post about traffic at http://resolutelee.blogspot.com/2008/09/amazing-race-to-church.html). This police effort is being met with serious resistance. More than once, I have seen people, especially women, get in the faces of the officers and scream at them. It goes to an extreme that would get a person arrested in the U.S., but here the officers just stand there and take it. Sometimes they even seem to cower, and spectators stand around and enjoy the sport. Obviously there is a deeply rooted cultural aspect to this. As a side note, over the years I have known several cops back in the States. More than once I have heard stories from them about having Asian women screaming in their faces, tearing up tickets, etc.

The problem with last night's incident is that it wasn't an argument. The man was aggressive and threatening, the woman was tiny and looked terrified and humiliated. This scene would not have happened in the U.S., and for more than one reason. First of all, a manager would have been on it, and someone would have called 911. But also, it would not have been socially accepted. Americans are sometimes said to be rude, but we are mostly only rude in the talk too loud in public places and wear inappropriate clothes kind of ways. We are less rude than we are boorish. Rudeness of the type I am describing is very rare, back home the man would have been surrounded by a disapproving crowd, and he would have felt that condemnation even if they said nothing. Add to it the factor that the poor girl was clearly so outmatched and traumatized, and Americans, with our "root for the underdog" ethic, wouldn't have stood for it. Sane people can't take that kind of peer disapproval, which is why you almost only see things like that in the U.S. if someone is genuinely crazy (you can't include road rage situations in this, because the entire dynamic there is that people aren't thinking of others as people, but as de-personified cars).

Finally, the reason I am so upset about this incident is that I didn't know what to do about it. I have, in my life, on rare occasions stepped in and intervened in such situations. If you count all the times I've had to do it with teenagers at school, I've done it a lot. But here, I couldn't do anything for the poor little girl. I can't talk to anyone, I'm a fish out of water culturally, and all I could do was stand by and watch.

I decided part of the way through that I did have a limit. If he put his hands on her, I was going to take care of business. I had him well sized-up and measured, and if he touched her, he was either going to the door or the floor.

Whether or not that would have committed me to fighting his friends was a risk I decided to take. I'm not entertaining any macho cowboy illusions about my capacity to beat up five men, although I can at least say they wouldn't have had any illusions about how they felt in the morning. I don't know if taking action would have landed me in a Chinese jail. I have not been in a physical fight for 25 years or more, and I'm not enjoying the fact that my own words sound like a teenage boy's chest-thumping bravado. I would be sheepishly embarrassed, except that this was all real. He was obviously humilating her, seemed poised to attack her, and no one was doing anything about it. If he had attacked her, would it really have fallen on me, the bystanding foreigner, to stop it?

I talked to some friends for perspective today. All have lived here for a while, speak Chinese, or are Chinese (Taiwanese). They all told me not to worry so much about it, that people here "just like to argue", and that it never was going to turn into a physical attack because "they just don't do that".

I know, I get it. Maybe I'm just another American too far out of his own culture. But then, they didn't see him pounding his fist, they didn't see her whimpering on the floor, and they didn't see everyone just standing around watching.

Maybe we Americans do mind everyone's business too much. Perhaps we don't respect other cultures enough. But there are a lot of things in the world worse than American cowboy chivalry. This was one of them.