What is it with me and pick-pockets. I seem to attract them! This time I was on a very crowded number 65 bus going to buy some expensive cheese ready for the beginning of my diet. I get on near the Presidential Palace and when we turned into ZhuJiang Lu I looked in front of me to see a man sticking his hand into the pocket of a woman’s coat.
I grabbed his hand and held it up and shouted…. can’t really remember what… and mimed to the other passengers what he was doing. The woman thanked me but the thief just stood and smiled at me. He remained grinning at me until he left a couple of stops later.
This is a very annoying habit that I have noticed about the Chinese. If they do anything wrong at all and you shout at them they either apologise profusely or just stand there and smile at you. I was thinking “Why are you smiling at me like a Cheshire cat?”. He said nothing and although the rest of the passengers were left in no doubt about what he had done, nobody remonstrated with him or looked horrified. They just moved a little away from him.
What is it about these communists? Why is such bad behaviour tolerated? Why isn’t anyone (who isn’t a foreigner) willing to do something about it.
Poor Rama had her brand new laptop stolen from her backpack on the metro only two days after she had bought it. Don’t tell me that nobody else saw the thief take it. It would be impossible to do it without being seen, But nobody did anything and nobody continues to do anything. And it will happen forever in China because people tolerate it.