From the China Rises blog by Tim Johnson (via HaoHao)

Here is what you don’t see in China: You don’t see enraged passengers reaching across airline counters and shaking fingers at quivering airline employees. You don’t see people drinking way too much on flights and making scenes. In other words, you don’t see behavior that goes beyond boorish to the realms of freakish and even dangerous.

In China, I never look around and hope there’s an air marshal nearby.

I got an email from a reader in Massachusetts recently voicing surprise at the lack of road rage in China. It’s true. There’s plenty of muttering among drivers, and an occasional shout. But I never see drivers, pedestrians or cyclists really lose it. Just about everywhere else outside of Asia, I’ve seen that.

First things first, in China I have seen an enraged passenger of an airline yell at an airline employee at a check in counter, step up onto the conveyor belt that pulls luggage into the the metal detector and pick up and slam on the floor some piece of machinery from the desk (possibly the credit card swiper?). I have seen people screaming at each other from their cars, and was in a cab for an epic shouting match between a man on a bike and our female cab driver. Of course, these incidents are relatively rare, and Tim Johnson’s not seeing it and my witnessing of it proves nothing. But that is my point; to say that there is no road rage in China is a ridiculous statement for many reasons. He cites no studies, articles, or other opinion pieces that support his findings. Johnson also makes no attempt to explain his theory, or to give reason as to why there is this lack of the phenomenon.

However, my own personal experiences, my discussions with others, articles I have read (Road Rage, Chinese Style), and even the comments for that post on his blog directly contradict his point that these public outbursts of anger are non existent. I find China Rises to generally be a good blog, but this post just seemed so wrong I needed to address it.

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