the dancer and the detractor

When I lived in Hong Kong, I noticed that there was a high number of crazy people compared to what I was used to. They seemed especially attracted to us missionaries, so we had lots of run-ins. I personally dealt with several mentally ill people, including one guy that seemed like a deranged homosexual (strange late-night phone calls, mumbling and moaning and lack of responsiveness to conversation, etc.) and another that behaved as though he was possessed by demons (eyes rolling in the back of his head, foaming at the mouth, etc.). As creepy as this stuff was, I always wished I had a tape recorder or camera handy to document some of these experiences. In my experience, you just don't get this sort of thing in the good ol' US of A.

One other interesting phenomenon that you're a lot more likely to see in China than the US is strange, seemingly unprovoked outbursts. OK, sometimes they are provoked, but the response seems extreme compared to whatever provoked it in the first place. For example, when we flew here to find a place to live, we had a delayed flight from Guangzhou to Nanjing. One of the other passengers started screaming at the guy working the counter...and then kept going and going and going and going. It seemed like it went on for at least half an hour, with everyone around staring at the floor, giggling, or putting on headphones in vain attempts to drown out the noise. She didn't stop until another passenger started yelling at her from across the room to shut up. Strange, and yet incredibly entertaining.

I don't know if it's a cultural difference that leads to these kinds of outbursts, and while there may be, I actually think it has more to do with the high population density and the general environment: high pressure for work and school, competitiveness, high cost of living in the cities, pollution, etc. All of these things can add up to a lot of pressure and misery. A few years ago, someone recorded one of these outbursts on a bus in Hong Kong, and the guy who was screaming kept saying as much: "Society gives me a lot of pressure!", "This isn't resolved!", etc. Where usually you might think this is crazy, a lot of people actually agreed with the guy, and these outbursts quickly became a popular meme in Cantonese-speaking China. My favorites were the techno songs that had these phrases randomly spliced into them.

Yesterday, I finally had my camera handy to document one of these strange outbursts. The little lady and I were walking around the lake across from our apartment and stumbled on a guy yelling at a lady who was dancing with a streamer kind of thing--I don't know how to explain it, but you'll understand by looking at the photos. Since the yelling was already going on when we got there, we don't know what provoked it. Here's what we saw when we arrived on the scene:





After a minute or so, he walked off and she went back to her dancing:





















After another minute or so, provoked guy is provoked again, and this time I was able to hear why: she apparently looked at him. Not bumped into him. Not yelled at him. Looked at him. So, this was most of the yelling ("I saw you looking at me--don't look at me!")