By Luisa Tam
“Don’t take our butter,” a French friend told me jokingly last week at breakfast.
I am visiting Normandy, one of two historically famous butter-producing regions in France; the other is Brittany.
China has been blamed for France’s butter shortage, with the average retail price of the spread going up by at least 35 per cent so far this year – in the country with the highest per capita rate of butter consumption.
I’m feeling the crisis first-hand as my host no longer serves butter lavishly along with bread.
Now I only get foil-wrapped mini portions.
With insufficient European dairy production, worsened by some unscrupulous producers hoarding supply, as well as growing Chinese demand, the butter shortage in France is not expected to end any time soon.
China seems to get blamed for many things.
Not only is it accused of depleting the global supply of all types of products – including butter – goods and even luxury items, it is also blamed for exporting droves of loud, rude and brash tourists.
With insufficient European dairy production, worsened by some unscrupulous producers hoarding supply, as well as growing Chinese demand, the butter shortage in France is not expected to end any time soon.
China seems to get blamed for many things.
Not only is it accused of depleting the global supply of all types of products – including butter – goods and even luxury items, it is also blamed for exporting droves of loud, rude and brash tourists.
China may be a mega economic and political power, but its soft power doesn’t seem to grow in parallel with its increasing hard power.
Money and political brawn has not helped China buy love on the world stage.
The fundamental issue here is China has a serious image problem overseas that cannot be resolved by exporting a few cute pandas.
As a result, I have become quite self-aware of what I say and do because different cultures have different customs and Chinese parents often try to instill in their children yup heung chui juk which is the Cantonese equivalent to “When in Rome”.
We all know that “manners maketh man”, which means our mannerisms and characteristics make us who we are and people often judge us by our conduct because without these standards, we would lose our civility.
The fundamental issue here is China has a serious image problem overseas that cannot be resolved by exporting a few cute pandas.
The solution lies in its citizens gripped by wanderlust.
As a regular visitor to the small town of Avranches in Normandy that has a population of around 9,000 – about a quarter of the population in Taikoo Shing, a middle-class residential complex in the eastern part of Hong Kong – I have found myself becoming an unlikely unofficial ambassador of Hong Kong and China, due to my presence as, possibly, the only Chinese visitor here.
As a regular visitor to the small town of Avranches in Normandy that has a population of around 9,000 – about a quarter of the population in Taikoo Shing, a middle-class residential complex in the eastern part of Hong Kong – I have found myself becoming an unlikely unofficial ambassador of Hong Kong and China, due to my presence as, possibly, the only Chinese visitor here.
As a result, I have become quite self-aware of what I say and do because different cultures have different customs and Chinese parents often try to instill in their children yup heung chui juk which is the Cantonese equivalent to “When in Rome”.
We all know that “manners maketh man”, which means our mannerisms and characteristics make us who we are and people often judge us by our conduct because without these standards, we would lose our civility.
But we also need to understand that good manners and etiquette take time to develop and require lots of practice and reinforcement.
Self-awareness, like good manners, comes with time.
One of the main reasons mainland Chinese tourists behave the way they do is because they lack self-awareness.
They don’t understand how other people perceive their behaviour because they are not used to dealing with people from outside their country for an extended period of time.
Our fellow Hong Kong citizens didn’t turn into well-behaved tourists overnight.
It has taken them decades.
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