Temper or temperance?

While cycling along my street today, I was cut up by a middle-aged woman on her overladen electric bike. The load on the back of her bike was at least three feet wide, and struck the front of my bike as she crossed my own unerringly straight path. I maintained control very easily, though the woman continued to cycle away as if nothing had happened, though it had been a noticeable impact. More eager to demonstrate my dire Chinese than anything else, I shouted “xiao xin” (careful) after her as she wobbled across the junction and up the road to my right. She immediately turned her head towards me (ignoring the oncoming stream of traffic that she was riding into) and launched into a tirade of what I assume was abuse, the potency of which demonstrated she knew exactly the reason why I was shouting at her, and knew she had hit me.

She cycled off still yelling, and though I was angered and slightly surprised by her reaction, it wasn't long before I started wondering what I had hoped to achieve by shouting at her, albeit a single and not impolite suggestion that she should watch where she was going.

It's not as if I was expecting her to stop and apologise, and I'm lucky that she carried on her way – a few weeks ago a friend of mine was struck in a similar situation, except the lady decided to fall over and try to claim damages, despite being undeniably in the wrong, resulting in a long and not exactly pleasant experience with the police. I have heard of other similar, and more harrowing, situations that foreigners find themselves in. If for some reason we had both stopped, we would have been completely incapable of carrying on any kind of argument, a throng of people would have inevitably gathered and I could quickly have found myself out of my depth. This later lead me to my usual violent revenge fantasies of being chased through the streets of Pudong by this mad fishy harridan until, cornered in an alleyway of her choosing, her trap is sprung, and I am advanced upon by her gang of drug-addled vagrant hags whom I have to beat to death with my saddle in a virtuoso display of my non-existent street-smarts and pit fighting skills.

Anyway, my own passive-aggressive pathology aside, was it anger that drove me to shout? I wasn't even that bothered by the incident, it was just her complete lack of acknowledgment, let alone a small sign of an apology on her part, that slightly annoyed me.

Similar situations happen to me and, I guess, everyone, all over the world. Sometimes it is better to let things go. Like with the guy in the supermarket queue yesterday who kept knocking his trolley into me, running over my foot at one point, no matter how close towards the checkout I moved. After putting up with this slight but annoying inconvenience three or four times, I was about to say something when I found myself at the front of the line. I'm glad I didn't as, when I looked back, instead of the vendetta-setting glare I expected to receive from him, he was unconcernedly staring into space. Obviously unaware that he had even impacted upon my consciousness, I could see that saying something would have just been counter-productive.

Most of the time we know this. But we still can't help ourselves. What is this drive to tell people what they should do, or point out people's errors, when we know it will probably only inflame a situation, and won't serve to make the world a better place at all?

I often find myself thinking about this when driving in the UK, wanting to teach the guy who is riding my rear bumper a lesson by slamming on my breaks, sacrificing myself and my no claims bonus to the greater glory of knowing I've taken at least one highway code-abusing dick out of comission; or fantasising that, when some sales and marketing dicklord speeds past me on a blind bend at 90mph, I'll turn the corner to see his hideously mutilated body trying to drag itself from the snarled wreckage of his SAAB, stretching his fractured arm out while gargling the word 'help' through his blood-filled mouth as I stand over him, laughing at his foolhardiness and the justice that centrifugal force and wet road surfacing have dealt him.

The point, if any, is that (especially in China) it is usually far more sensible to swallow your pride, or whatever force it is that drives us to tell people off when they infringe some unwritten law that we may consider to be universal, and only bother saying something if you've been seriously affected by their actions.

Though whether we can, or should do this, if we want the at least partially fictional and ethereal concept of society to be maintained, is another point.

And I know there's little more annoying than some interfering bastard pointing your minor infringements of the social contract out to you.

Xiao xin!