Sat in the Kitchen, Brampton Ash

I really was impressed with the behaviour of the two Chinese men at Costa Coffee. In fact, so impressed am I, I’ve decided to write a letter to the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United Kingdom to say so.

 

Mr Zha Peixin
Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United Kingdom
49-51 Portland Place
London
W1B 1JL

Dear Sir

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on the recent order for travelling Chinese to watch their manners while abroad. This clearly seemed to be quite a problem as many of the world’s media picked up and reported the story, along with anecdotal evidence of a surge in complaints about the behaviour of your countrymen.

There’s really nothing that bothers us more in the UK than bad manners, and I personally am impressed that you have taken action to correct this. I stopped off the other day at the Tibshelf Services on the M1 for a latté and, after hearing the news, purposefully watched two Chinese men who entered Costa Coffee to see if they would misbehave.

I am pleased to tell you that their queuing was impeccable. At one point, one of the gentleman left the queue to take a closer look at the pastries and I thought that he may, as he was now closer to the front, try to push in. But his manners were without fault and he joined his compatriot at their original queuing position.

Really, you should be proud. This was only a couple of days after the Xinhua press release and already this was a vast improvement on their reported earlier behaviour. I would say that their manners were outstanding and much more advanced than those from the Mediterranean countries. I remember one Christmas in Sardinia when I went to a midnight mass, and when communion time came the locals were practically elbowing each other out of the way to get to the Jesus bread.

It was rather shocking and I had previously thought the Italians a moral lot, how wrong I was! And now, may I say, how I will have to quickly change my views on the Chinese. We can finally put aside all that Tibetan nonsense and that stuff about organ implants and welcome you as you take your first steps towards becoming a civilised country.

Well done indeed.

Yours faithfully