No, this isn’t about the south China sea. This is just a quick little shitpost to recount the seemingly amazing thing I witnessed in class the other day.

As I am sure I have complained about repeatedly, the Chinese are incredibly self-centered. They seem to function on the idea that no one else of any significance is ever around. It is some kind of strange solipsism wherein its not that they believe they are the only ones that exist, but are completly indifferent to the possibility that anyone else does. The justification of this is that it is a result of the failed one-child policy, and all these single children grew up with two parents and four grandparents doting on them like they were the last emperor, and I have in fact heard this phenomenon of self-centered behavior labeled as something to the effect of “little emperors”.

So the other day in class I was tasked with giving my students a reading assignment. It wasn’t terribly lengthy, but it was long enough that it would take them about five minutes to get through. Normally, I see the coming problem and remind the students to read silently. But on this day, I had forgotten. I gave the students the assignment and got busy readying the next part. Well, some of the students find it beneficial (I have absolutely no idea why) to read aloud instead of reading silently. And of course this makes it harder for other students to read, and so that they can better concentrate on their reading, these students bother by a student reading aloud begin now to read aloud. Very gradually, this escalates, each student reading not only reading out loud, but trying to out loud the student reading out loud next to them. Soon, the room is so ruckusing than no one is actually reading, but reciting the words on the paper as if in some kind of angry drama.

None of them thought to stop. None of them thought that, in a situation where someone is being too loud, the solution may not be to politely suggest to that person to maybe work quietly, but to amplify the volume yourself, until you are the one making the most noise.

So I would like to implement a new term: a Chinese standoff. While in a Mexican standoff no party can progress or retreat for fear of putting themselves in danger, in a Chinese standoff in potential harm to self or others is completly ignored while everyone heads towards the same cliff, lemming-like.