Shanghai Street View: Promoting Privacy

I had to smile to myself when I read a report this week on a mini-scandal at a local H&M clothing store, involving an overeager security guard who pulled open a fitting room curtain without checking first to see if anyone was inside. The guard quickly discovered there was a woman trying on clothes in the small space, prompting the woman to complain about the intrusion.

The woman’s age in this case was quite revealing. At just 22 years old, she was clearly quite a bit younger than many Chinese who grew up with an entirely different concept of privacy. That was what prompted my smile, since people from that older generation probably would have considered the guard’s behavior quite ordinary and hardly cause for complaint.
The case shines a spotlight on the broader issue of privacy, and how the Chinese concepts of privacy and personal space have changed radically with the country’s rapid modernization. But since an individual’s concept of privacy is usually formed at youth and doesn’t really change much after that, this kind of clash between the woman and guard is almost inevitable.

Many westerners often struggle with the huge differences between their own concepts of privacy and those of some people in China. The difference is especially pronounced when it involves people from the generation that grew up in extremely crowded conditions, where the concept of personal space was nearly non-existent.

To those people, pretty much anything you did was considered a public affair. Anyone from that era probably kept their feelings to themselves if they had any qualms about others who did things like asking personal questions about their love life or performing personal acts like urinating in public. But more likely everyone just learned to ignore such behavior because it was relatively common back then, and persists today even in big cities like Shanghai.

The case that got me thinking about changing concepts of privacy occurred last week, and didn’t seem all that unusual. The H&M guard, whose age wasn’t specified, probably thought he was just doing his job when he opened a fitting room curtain without checking first to see if someone was inside. He later said he was simply checking for discarded hangers for reuse in the store.

If I was the person inside that room I would have probably been mildly surprised, and then politely asked the guard to leave and come back when I was finished. But this woman who was born in the 1990s was obviously more offended by the guard’s intrusion and complained to the store, which said it would suggest changes to the fitting room design to avoid such future conflicts.

The story reminded me of an unpleasant encounter I had while staying at a downscale but relatively ordinary hotel in the Guangdong city of Shaoguan in 1989. The case involved a particularly persistent floor attendant who woke me up one morning at around 7 with a series of rapid knocks on my door. I didn’t get out of bed, and simply yelled for her to go away before going back to sleep.

But when she came back a half hour later and started pounding on the door again, I decided enough was enough. I dragged myself out of bed wearing only my underwear, and opened the door to confront her directly. The sight of my nearly naked body must have startled her, and she quietly left and never bothered me again during my stay.

Fast forward to the present, where that kind of behavior is thankfully mostly a relic of the past, even in smaller cities. But similar types of behavior still persist, such as the time one of my older nosy neighbors wandered into my apartment uninvited and nearly scared me to death when I left the front door open one day after coming home from work.

Then there are the people who walk up and stand just an inch or two in front of you when you’re waiting for a subway or the traffic light to change on a street corner, oblivious to the fact that they’ve just blocked out your entire field of vision and intruded strongly into what many westerners would consider their personal space.

While the H&M scandal was somewhat amusing and also revealing, it was also quite encouraging to me. That’s because it showed that many younger people are beginning to take their privacy more seriously and complain when they feel violated by inappropriate intrusions.

If I were advising H&M, I would suggest they tackle this kind of problem through education of store employees and not just suggest mechanical changes like changing the fitting room’s design. Such an approach would not only prevent similar intrusions in the future, but would also create a more comfortable living place for everyone in a crowded city like Shanghai.