Authority in China is rolling of a slew of measures to restrain the seemingly uncivilized behaviors of hundreds of millions of China tourists both at home and abroad as reported in global medias. Indeed, high profile incidents of Chinese tourists violating guidelines in tourist hot spots across the globe has risen after years of strong demand of recreational needs spurred complaints on social media about congestion and infrastructure strains at a time of ballooning spending powers never before experienced by the sheer massive numbers of Chinese holiday makers leaving their footprints behind.
As a matter of fact, 80 millions of Chinese visited abroad in 2013 alone and with 400 millions of Chinese all go on domestic vacation following the same calendar during the lunar new year extended holidays, they usually top the list of the world worst tourists for conducts but on the contrary the most welcome one for their wallets which resulted in significant local economic growth. Although, more often than not, it’s usually just take a handful of holiday makers to have decided to take a plunge and disobey the rules and the sheep crowd effects will take over, resulted in uncivilized conducts of jumping queue, littering, speaking loudly in public and so on and it’s not uncommon for Chinese tourists exhibiting their new found interest of recreational holidays which was put on hold for decades due to the relatively authoritarian communist states from 40s to 70s, orderly has no doubt inevitably taken a hit in the wake of insatiable demands for relaxation and enjoyment straining the limited resources simply due to the 30 years delayed effect.
One can never make the same mistake twice, because the second time is a conscious choice. Many held the popular opinions that Chinese tourist’s misconducts were associated with their lack of knowledge of civic mindedness and proper behaviors will follow once one understands it. However, the facts told us otherwise, guidelines were often disregarded on purpose despite knowing it’s inappropriate, the main contributing factor was arguably due to the lack of the necessary self-respects one should had as a moral navigator for decent behaviors both in private and public.
As Morris Rosenberg emphasized, self-esteem is relevant to behavior as a self-perception, it’s a self-actualizing psychological well-being directional proportional to self-respects. Someone who truly regarded highly of himself is incapable of carrying out undesirable conducts. The authoritative John P. Hewitt’s Self and Society also highlighted self respect often reflected itself in complex range of emotions which includes one’s pride and shame, distorted self esteem will often ended up as someone who is excessively proud, arrogant and ignorant and who simply didn’t care of what others thought of their unaccommodating deeds. Some had twisted sense of self-pride without boundary liberated from decades of social suppression, from an individual to a congregation sharing identical demographic profile, many were overly sensitive to constructive suggestions, treating all comments as hostile, refusing any forms mutual respects and understandings.
In fact, Self-esteem is a fundamental social necessity guiding our moral thinking and behaviors. It’s not inherited or genetic but an acquired asset one grooms, from the way parent bring up their off-springs with mutual respects, the way teacher interact with students with dignity, State managing their citizen’s affairs in a fairly manners and so on all had crucial influences on proper shaping of healthy self-respects and self-esteem. The more an individual was respected in their daily life; given room for unrestricted thinking, allowance for rational decision making, capacity of forming an independent judgment, the higher the values of self-dignity one can possess, the more decent behaviors will emerge even without supervision and external constraints.
However, the rapid economic progress in China for the past 30 years had shattered many Chinese’s Confucius faith in personal and institutions; tainted dairy products, large scale land reclaiming, brutally enforced one child policy, mandatory labor reform without trials, widening gap between prosperous city dwellers and village folks, reported unthinkable ways of official corruptions, relationship based rather than merit for social mobility, unreachable escalated property prices in cities, authoritative state virtually without any alternative rivalry political party for balancing and check and so on had built a nation of self-centered and of aggressive nature simply for the sake of survivals in the increasingly competitive and unjust society.
Maslow had defined self-esteem as one of the important hierarchy of needs, a true self-respect requires inner strength of moral compass, it had two stream of supporting pillars, one from external values such as one’s reputation, materialistic success, appearance and so on and one from within which had greater holding powers; faith, moral values and self-disciplines. Only through one’s unshakable faith one can truly believes in; I am good person, good citizen and draw significant sense of proud, pride and well-being, and only through these inner navigational forces and given appropriate time, proper conducts in both public and private can be achieved not unlike good feedback received on hundred of thousand of silver hair Japanese tourists roamed globally in the 80s.
Charlie Brown Cafe Wishes You A Happy Chinese Lunar New Year 2014!
Charlie Brown Cafe Wishes You A Merry Christmas 2013!!
Unclegarfield 