A jarring video starring a young girl being harshly scolded by an old man for not giving up her bus seat has gone viral online, sparking yet another debate about proper seat etiquette.
In the video, shot by a fellow passenger on a Fuzhou bus, the girl nonchalantly listens to music, paying no attention to the old man laying down the insults behind her back. “You’re such a wicked girl!” he shouts, and “You don’t deserve to be a human being!”
After a while, the girl gets fed up with being insulted. “Do I need to write ‘I’m on my period’ all over my face?” she finally fires back.
Totally neglecting what the girl had just said, he continues his profanity-laced tirade for five minutes, pointing an accusing finger at the young lady and shouting, “You get out of the bus now.” Eventually, fellow passengers grew tired of all the back and forth and told them that “you both are disturbing the whole bus.” The man then shifts the focus of his verbal wrath to the complaining passengers. Finally, at the end of the video, he exits the bus, presumably to catch the next one and do it all over again.
Netizens on Weibo are decidedly on the young woman’s side on this side, though there may be some age bias:
“I hate this old man’s condescending attitude the most,” one web user commented.
“I hope old people can realize that no one owes you anything, everyone is equal. If you want people to respect you, you have to earn that respect first,” another wrote.
“There’s an empty seat right behind him, is he sick or something? Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you own everything,” one Weibo user agreed.
Watch the video below:
And so, the war for precious seats on Chinese public transportation rages on. Young people landed a big blow in 2014 when a woman jump-kicked an old man who wanted her seat on a Xiamen bus. A few months later, old people took their revenge, with five of them beating up one guy who refused to give up his seat on a Hubei bus.
By Katie Ngai
[Images via Weibo // Video via Youku]