BEIJING — Barely a week after this city won the right to host the 2008 Olympics, the civic navel-gazing began--and officials weren't too pleased with the lint they saw there.
In a candid assessment last month of his constituents' faults, Beijing Mayor Liu Qi listed a dozen bad habits that would make New Yorkers seem the very paragons of couth and culture.
Beijingers, Liu griped, spit in public way too much (No. 1 nasty habit). They jostle (No. 2). Like defensive linemen, they block passengers desperate to get off the subway (No. 3). The cabbies are aggressively surly (No. 5), and people on the street can swear like sailors (No. 6). Nobody ever smiles or says "Excuse me" (Nos. 7 and 9). And can no one in this town shut up for even a New York minute (No. 11)?
Such a sloppy civic image doesn't befit this ancient capital, Liu declared--and so began another in a string of government efforts to foster public virtue.
China is a country obsessed with how it looks in the eyes of the world, and the 2008 Summer Games, locals say, will give Beijing a chance to shine in the spotlight.
But along with new stadiums and new traffic patterns, city officials are stressing the need for a new sense of "spiritual civilization," China's lofty term for good manners. Don't jostle. Just say no to jaywalking. Hold the spit--but keep the polish.
The effort targets everyone, young and old. From the 18 spiritual civilization training centers set up across Beijing to primary-school classes where kids memorize the rules of good conduct, the emphasis is on how to be gracious and considerate.
It might seem a strange campaign in a land where intricate codes of politeness governed behavior for thousands of years, the legacy of Confucian ideals and complex social hierarchies. In imperial days, there were rules and rituals for everything, from the proper way of addressing a superior to the appropriate hairdo for one's social status.
But a population explosion and the rapid development of the last two decades, including the advent of cars and cabs and cell phones, have left etiquette struggling to catch up.
Your average Zhou, who may exhibit impeccable manners in private relationships, is unfamiliar with the rules for impersonal public situations.
"They're just not used to it," said Yue-Sai Kan, a cosmetics maven and the author of a best-selling manual on etiquette. "They never had to know how to behave in a supermarket, because it wasn't until 10 years ago that they had supermarkets. What about cell phones? Ten years ago, they'd be surprised if you had a phone in your home."
