By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Peculiar things you've seen some natives do (due to lack of education or common sense)?
I know most of the time it is due to a lack of education or places getting rich so quickly, people adapt slowly etc, or even lack of common sense, but I'd like to read what fellow expats have seen. My observations:
Pressing the lift down button thinking it calls lift(elevator) down to your same floor, rather that up means you want to go up and down means you want to go down.
My wife's family are natives and they put wet dishes and bowls (literally with a pool of water) into the cupboard.
Using kettle water to rinse utensils, bowls, plates etc thinking it would sterilize it not knowing the water is no where near hot enough.
Pressing the open door buttons in the lift when arriving at a floor thinking doors would open quicker.
Turning on the hazard lights on a car means the car can park pretty much anywhere.
A guy fixing the hot water tank in my apartment got electricuted with 220 Volts. Wait a minute...that was me, never mind. Had a soar arm for a week.
This list could be endless:
A guy once came to fix a defective tap in my bathroom. He took the old tap off and put a new one on. Great I thought until he then proceeded to take the new one back off and replaced it with the old one again. Just don't ask why - I haven't got a clue either.
How about the company that own our office block fitting padlocks to all the emergency fire equipment units to stop people from stealing the extinguishers.
Another classic was a guy I saw that held a firework in his hand and lit it causing himself severe pain and a few nasty burns.
Several occasions of seeing locals touching bare live cables.
Locals trying to wash away ice and snow with hot water only to end up with exactly the same problem when the hot water cooled and started freezing again.
Sadly, I could go and on.
I may or may not have seen a fireworks seller smoking.
- People who let their children play near high-rises, alone, unattended. One died this way at our former complex. 
- People who let their children play on, and near the highways, while they watch and smile.
- People who let their children stand up on a motorcycle
- People who let their children walk unattended, by themselves, into crowds.
- Same as Kaiwan with the bare cables and fire extinguishers. *shudder*
- Thinking that running tap water without soap can actually make their hands clean after they just wiped their asses, and then proceed to go back into the kitchen to cook. This one is so common that I thank God my doctor recommended typhoid shots. I could understand if they were washing under a waterfall or something...
- People preparing food right next to the toilet. Zhangjiajie, I'm looking at you.
- People burning coal and wood inside their homes at night. The house turns into a black fog-fest since there's no ventilation. What the heck?
- Getting my visa's required medical examination done recently, only to have them... pour the blood into a vial. They literally took off the cap, and poured it into a vial next to lots of other different vials - all of which were open less than an inch from one another. There's no excuse for this. I'm not even trained in medicine, and I know this is utterly moronic.
- X-rays without any kind of shielding at all. Just continuous and random blasting of the entire body.
And yeah, like Kaiwen said... the list could be endless.
people having a streetside BBQ, it was on a VERY dusty road which would have stopped me, they had a couple of chicken or ducks spinning over a nice fire fueled by .... old car tires.
guy renovating an apartment, mixing cement directly on the floor, a floor that was not to be changed
construction crew digging a big hole, then filling it with remains of a building they had just torn down (on of them got really pissed by me recording their actions, after I had ting bu dong'ed him he signaled to his people to hurry up)
My brother-in-law (but he's not alone) eats (and slurps) his food with his mouth wide open, but covers his mouth when using a tooth pick. 
(One reason I always have him sit next to me not opposite).
Trying to tell me that the longer you boil water the hotter it gets. Do they do science at all in high school?
Trying to put self tapping screws directly into concrete walls or ceilings without drilling and using "spaghetti". Then wondering why the screws quickly fall out. I showed them how to do it properly so at least have got a small win on this one. Maybe , just maybe they are starting to think that I have some intelligence.
Laying paving without a solid foundation and then watching it sink and dismantle within a few months (only to repeat the same cycle all over again).
Scandinavian:
there is a bridge here in town that got a new layer of concrete as top surface. they closed the bridge one half at a time. when you have heavy loaded container trucks driving full speed on the other half of the bridge while the concrete sets, the results is kind of like a roller coaster. the bridge was pretty unsmooth before, but the "fix" is just useless
wagon:
Yeah, watching the construction practices here is amazing. 2 yrs in a brand new community and a different section of the sidewalk is torn up weekly. I think it's just to keep people in a job.
Actually hitting the wrong button on the elevator is done for a reason in some cases. If you hit both the up and down button the elevator does tend to come faster (if there are multiple elevators in operation). You then only need to open and close the two 2-3 times really quick and the direction of the elevator changes to what you want.
Of course this is only worthy if no one is in the elevator. I do this all the time late at night in my apartment building though.
Like hulk said already.... xrays with no protection.
Had this happen to me a few times, once the lady even looked at my like I was the crazy one when I told her to get me the protection vest.
A woman letting her kid pee all over the floor, in the entrance to the mall. right between the door posts so people had to walk around them.
diverdude1:
I also seen parents? having their maybe 2 year old kid peeing on the floor in the middle of a up-scale mall in SZ. kinda shocked me at first.....
