After my first trip to Peru in 1986, I was having a chat one day with an academic at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) about it. She'd been brought up in Taiwan, a soft-spoken, gentle-mannered person who had married an academic at SOAS.
I told her about how gentle and good-natured I'd found the Peruvians to be, in spite of their poverty, adding that it was evidence enough that poverty is not always the reason (nor should it be the justification) for people behaving badly. This was said keeping in mind my hearing some people say, "With life being so hard for them [whoever it is one's talking about that's behaving badly], you can't expect them to go about being good-natured and patient."
She said, "是人的素质 / shì rén de sùzhì / it's the people's disposition".
She went on to give an account of her experience in Beijing doing her pastoral duty visiting the SOAS Year Abroad students.
Having lived in London for a few years, where the practice at a restaurant is for the customer to stand just inside the door upon arrival, to wait to be allocated a table. Which was what she did in Beijing when she went out for her first dinner. She was ignored for a long time, then one of the waiters/waitresses noticed she was still hanging around by the door, and shouted at her, "What are you still standing there for? Go and get a table and sit down!!" Everyone looked up at the academic, who was so mortified and traumatised by this that she left immediately (in spite of having already waited for so long for a table).
She never ate out again for the rest of her pastoral visit, buying food to eat in her hotel room instead.
(Peru, 1986; China, 1986)
disposition: (from googling) a person's inherent qualities of mind and character.
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