Raising awareness of civic mindedness

Further thoughts here, as a side shoot to my blog about the 94-year-old woman giving way to people on the pavement and on station steps:

    There should be more publicity to raise awareness of the issue of civic mindedness / 公德心 / gōng dé xīn / "public virtue heart".  

    It is true that I have a soft spot for old people (have been since a child), but the bigger issue is that people cannot help getting old and becoming frail, so they (old people) need extra help.  Not just help in giving them a walking stick, a zimmer frame, a wheelchair, or a carer who comes to their homes to feed and wash them.

    The culture over here is (/ seems to be, to me) not to come across as being too "controlling" of people (or one's own children), so all the things I'd been taught as a child in Singapore (under the civic mindedness umbrella of being respectful, considerate, caring, supportive and unselfish) do not seem to be actively filtered down that much to the younger generation, from my own observations.  

    To be fair, I have seen some parents teaching their children to be considerate and all that, on public transport, but it is a very small percentage of the population, I'm afraid, from what I've seen.  

    I do whizz around London quite a bit on my Freedom Pass, zooming from allotment (in east London) to soup kitchen meals in west London (eating as a diner, and helping out as a volunteer at one of them).  So, I do get quite a lot of exposure to human behaviour, including parenting (good or non-existent).

    The current buzz focus seems to be on old age and the situations that come with it, e.g., dementia.  I think there should also be more focus on instilling in the younger generation over here the kind of civic mindedness that I'd been brought up on in Singapore in the 1960s.

(London, 2026)

https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2026/11/good-practices-14-asking-people-to-make.html 

Good practices: 14 (Asking people to make way)

The 94-year-old woman I've taken under my wings since I met her two months ago uses a stick, which is common for her age group.

    She can only hold on to her walking stick or handrails with her right hand, as a car accident a while back had hit her on the left side, leaving her not only with pain in her left shoulder and arm, but also no strength in that hand to grip handrails for support.  So, she has to have the handrails on her right side when she goes up or down steps (at Tube stations, e.g.).  

    I've been telling her over the last eight weeks to make people walk around her, rather than her walking around / giving way to people, because just one tiny little trip-up, especially on a flight of steps, can be disastrous.

    The injury itself will be bad enough, but for a 94-year-old especially, it might have nasty consequences, such as injuries to her eyes or teeth.  (As it is, she already has precious few teeth left.  She's been telling everyone about her being unable to eat all sorts of things, with so few teeth left.)

    It is through looking after her the last two months that I've learned to walk behind or ahead of her when going up / down steps (e.g., at Tube stations), to catch her or break her fall should she trip up, something I'd never had to do before, as I'd never looked after someone so old.

    It is also through looking after her (accompanying her home on the Tube after the soup kitchen meals at various sites, carrying her takeaway boxes of surplus cooked food and the goodies bags handed out) that I've become assertive on her behalf, actively asking people to give up their seats.  (To their credit, a lot of them do, without having to be approached.  One positive outcome of looking obviously old...)

    At her station, we would wait until the disgorged passengers had all gone down the steps to the ticket turnstiles, before venturing down ourselves.  

    However, there are often also crowds of people coming up the steps to the platform to catch the train.  This is when she then leaves the handrail to avoid the upstream flow, which gives me kittens every time.  

    Whenever I issue yet another reminder, her answer is, now, "Old habit."  

    Her answer used to be that her stopping mid-path and standing still (on the pavement, say) didn't make people walk around her.  She said they simply barged into her -- not deliberately, I'm sure, just not being more mindful of old people.

(London, 2026)

Batting it back: 02 (London)

At a soup kitchen meal run by a group of Mother Teresa nuns, I sat next to a chap in his 70s(?) with an Irish accent(?).

    There's always a mad rush for the second helpings -- even before the nuns give the green light for people to go up to the serving counter, so when he came back with a piled-up plate of food, I said, "So, you've managed to get something."

    He said, "I don't like to talk when I'm eating." (He hadn't started eating at this point.)  I didn't like his tone of voice, so when he next spoke to me, I said, "I don't like to talk when I'm not eating."

    He said, "You're sharp, you're sharp."

    I didn't bother asking him if it was meant to be a compliment or not.

(London, 2026)

"Huh??!!" conversations: 11 (I didn't see them)

After leaving the soup kitchen meal, I was walking along the pavement with the 94-year-old woman I've been looking after over the past two months, heading for the Tube station.

    A middle-aged couple coming from the opposite direction started to walk around her (on her left), to make way for her.  

    She, on her part, also started to walk around them on the same side (on her left), to make way for them, so she ended up blocking their way (not deliberately, of course), almost bumping into them in the process.

    Over the last eight weeks since I first met her, I've been trying to teach her to make people give way to her, rather than her giving way to them and walking around them.

    Apart from the fact that her age means she has the right of way (out of respect, based on standard behaviour "rules"), I'm also trying to help her avoid a fall, because she's 94 and not always steady on her feet.

    By walking around people, she needs to take more steps.  Taking extra steps might increase the risk of falling, as she has two bad knees and frequent leg cramps.  A fall at that age might have serious consequences, not just inconvenience mobility-wise.

    After the encounter on the pavement with the couple, I said to her, "Why did you walk around them, giving way to them, when they were already trying to give way to you by walking around you?"

    Her answer:  "I didn't see them."

    Huh??!!  If she hadn't seen them, then why was she walking around them to give way to them (instead of walking straight on like she'd been doing up to that point)???!!!

    I pointed out the illogicality of her reply, and got silence back.

(London, 2026) 

Out of one's depth: 04 (Chinese person eating pita/pide bread as a first course)

I've been watching a mainland Chinese drama series set in China in the 1930s and 1940s (before, during and after the Japanese Invasion).  

    There is a scene with three of the men in the story eating a Western meal at a restaurant in Qingdao city (Shandong province, east China).

    On each one's plate are two slices of bread, a slice of spam, one fried egg, two cross-sections of carrot and some unidentifiable brown thing.

    One of the men, who is very successful at running a dyeing factory but who had started life as a beggar and is illiterate, can't handle the Western cutlery provided, and asks for chopsticks.

    This reminds me of something in reverse of sorts that I'd witnessed at a soup kitchen meal provided by a charity.

    The first course was half a pouch of pita/pide flatbread, with dips (tzatziki, hummus and taramasalata) and some salad on the side.

(AI says)

Quote

East Mediterranean flatbreads (like Greek pita, Turkish lavash, pide, and yufka) are traditionally eaten with your hands, not cutlery.  In Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dining cultures, flatbread serves as both the food and the "utensil" itself.

Unquote

    I vaguely saw, out of the corner of my eye, a young Chinese man (from mainland China or Hong Kong, going by his body language, in his mid-/late-20s or early 30s, at the next table from mine) using his knife to spread the dips on his flatbread, like what one would do with jam or honey.  

    He then proceeded to cut up the flatbread into smaller pieces with his knife and fork, like what one would do with a piece of steak, after which he delivered each piece to his mouth with his fork, the way one would do it at a Western meal.

(London, 2026)

PS.1:  For those who might be interested, Qingdao city is famous for its Tsingtao beer, with the factory set up in 1903 by the Germans still there.  

    Tsingtao is the Wade-Giles romanisation system version of 青島 / 青岛 / “green island". 

    Qingdao is the post-1949 mainland Chinese romanisation system version (called 拼音 pīnyīn / "put-together sounds").

PS.2:  Spam = spiced ham, a tinned food made of shoulder of pork and ham. The generic name is luncheon meat. Spam is a specific brand of luncheon meat. Tinned luncheon meat is fairly commonly consumed by the Chinese, and is one of the items in a Chinese New Year gift hamper in my childhood days in Singapore.

Out of one's depth: 03 (Malaysian Chinese person at a Japanese shabu shabu meal)

This story was related to me by a then-professor (now emeritus professor) of UCL (University College of London).

    He'd gone out with a group of people for a Japanese shabu shabu meal.  One of them was his computer programmer on his medical physics projects.

    Since the programmer was the only Oriental (from Malaysia) amongst them, the group decided to let him guide them for the meal.  

    I am personally of the opinion that it doesn't necessarily follow that a Chinese person (Malaysian or not) would automatically know anything/much about Japanese food, just because they're both Asian.  Same logic for not expecting a French person to know what Finnish or Norwegian dining entails just because they're all European.  

    Under the circumstances at this meal, however, with all the diners (except the programmer) being British (non-Chinese), a Malaysian Chinese person would, therefore, be more likely to know about Japanese food, I guess.

    Shabu shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ) is Japanese hot pot.

    For those who might not know what a hot pot meal entails: 

(AI says)

Quote

A traditional hot pot meal is a highly interactive, communal dining experience that centers around a simmering pot of broth kept boiling at the center of the table.  Rather than being served a pre-cooked dish, diners cook raw ingredients themselves, piece by piece, right in the pot.

What sets shabu-shabu apart from other Asian or regional hot pots (like Chinese hot pot) is its cooking method: instead of putting all the food in the pot to simmer for a while, you submerge a single piece of paper-thin meat into the boiling broth and gently swish it back and forth for just a few seconds to cook it instantly.

Unquote

    The first thing brought to the table was the broth (for cooking the raw ingredients).  The Malaysian programmer dished out bowlfuls of the broth to the diners to drink.

    By the time the waiter arrived with the raw ingredients, there was no broth left in the pot in the middle of the table...  Oops.

(London, late 1980s)

Good practices: 13 (Storing fresh veg for longer)

This is a good practice I'd picked up from an old woman from Hong Kong.  I later discovered from talking to a few more Chinese people that it's a common practice among them.  Not in my family, though -- I don't know why we didn't do it, although it should be a good practice in the humid tropics, I'd think.

    I was looking after this old woman at the time (some 15[?] years ago now):  visiting her weekly to deliver the fresh veg I'd buy en route for her from a stall in north London that she said was the best value for money; cooking lunch and eating it with her; then giving her massages for her aches and pains; cooking dinner and eating it with her, to keep her company.  A day dedicated to her as a self-volunteered occasional carer.

    Her four children didn't seem to want to spend time with her, let alone have her under their roof, leaving her to live on her own (in her 80s at the time I met her) in a sheltered housing block of flats that costs an arm and a leg in maintenance and service charges, taking her out only very occasionally for a meal, like once or twice a year, according to her.

    The first thing she'd do as soon as I arrived was to whip out newspapers and wrap up the veg -- leafy or root veg.  She didn't even need to put them in the fridge.  They'll stay fresh for longer.

    My analysis:  the newspaper absorbs excess moisture which prevents (or slows down) rotting, yet at the same time keeps enough moisture in, which slows down the drying out.  Storing the veg in a plastic bag keeps the moisture in, which will result in the veg rotting, I'd found from my own mistakes of doing this.