Opinion on Asian Customs

[LSLGuy]

@Mijin

In public spaces, Chinese people have a kind of tunnel vision where they are just focused on their own goals and their own, very close, physical proximity.
e.g. in terms of the cutting in line thing, you have to appreciate it’s not the same as someone cutting in line in the West. If someone pushes in line in the US, it’s because they’ve decided to be a jerk today and know they are pissing off the other people. In China, many times people didn’t even see that there was a queue.
Note also that having got to the front of a queue, you still need to “impose yourself” on the cashier; they are not looking for who to serve next.
Once you appreciate everyone’s “attention bubble” is much smaller than the West, a lot of things make much more sense.

I know just about zero about Asian culture. But what you describe here is also very much NYC culture. At least compared to the culture in the other US good-sized cities.

I suggest it’s simply a reaction to population density. Both at the individual and at the cultural level.