Regular readers know I volunteer once or twice a week to deliver food from stores that were going to throw it away to community fridges, shelters, and other places for people to get it for free.

I wasn’t scheduled to volunteer yesterday (Christmas Eve day), but the person who was reported so much overstock that we needed three people to clear it all. Not many other volunteers were around so I was one of them. Here’s the load I picked up:

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So far so good.

For better or worse, the usual place I deliver to had this sign on its door:

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Darn! Now I had to find a place to donate around 3pm on Christmas Eve day, pulling a big load of food. You can’t see from the picture, but there was a lot of milk. Liquids are dense, which makes pulling them harder.

No problem, I contacted a friend on the volunteer list. The Essex Market community fridge is outdoors and therefore open 24/7.

I’d never delivered to it and it was the closest place I knew I could drop off. I headed over. I thought it was closer from his directions, so while walking there got increasingly annoyed at how much farther I was walking than usual. I wanted to spend the afternoon writing.

Still, volunteering is rewarding. I wasn’t that annoyed. And it was a cardio day. I had already planned to row when I got home. I decided to count all the walking and pulling as exercise and cut my rowing target from 400 calories to 200.

So still, so far so good.

For the next part, I want to remind everyone that while I’m 54, I’ve never been old. I’ve never been a woman. I’ve never been any nationality other than American. I can also share that when I start telling what happened next, before I specify any detail, several people have anticipated what happened next.

I’m sharing what happened next because it brought me down. I mean, it damaged my faith in humanity and ruined the rest of my day and is continuing today. I’m no newbie to delivering food to groups of people who know that if they don’t try to get some, they might get nothing. I have years of experience.

I know the answer isn’t based in any innate or inborn properties of the people involved. China is a nation with many cultures, not a race. I lived in Shanghai for most of a year, but I don’t know much about the cultures there. I want to learn what about the culture explains what happened to me and that others immediately recognize from their experiences. Or maybe it has to do with being female or old. I don’t know.

It might be tempting to say they behavior I saw came from some part of their identity, but I don’t think the explanation lies in ageism, sexism, ethnocentrism, or racism. Hence I ask the questions after describing the behavior. I’m not judging. I’m describing what I saw and seeking to understand what I don’t.

When I started unloading the contents of the wagon into the community fridge, no one was there. Within a minute of my starting, an older Chinese woman approached. Since after I unloaded, anyone could take anything, I said to feel free to take something from the cart.

Within seconds, another five or ten old Chinese women appeared and started grabbing everything they could. One grabbed food that was in my hand that I wanted to save. She wouldn’t let go. I didn’t tell the others they could take the food.

They threw elbows. They grabbed food and stuck it in their bags, apparently hiding it. They didn’t look hungry or poor.

Other people walking by who weren’t old, Chinese, or women stood aghast, complaining that these women were boxing everyone else out, clearly taking more than their shares—in fact, as much as each could carry—and hiding it. They left almost nothing for anyone else, just a few apples.

As soon as they emptied the cart, they disappeared. They walked away. Not one said a word of thanks or expressed gratitude or appreciation in any way. I had just walked over a mile in the cold, pulling about a hundred pounds of food on a day I wasn’t scheduled to and they just took, took, and took, grabbing even from my hands. That mile was after walking nearly a mile to the store to pick up the food and having to walk nearly two miles back home afterward.

In fact, the people who weren’t old Chinese women did thank me, despite having gotten nothing and being distraught at what looked like gross unfairness, greed, and rudeness. They recognized that I had gotten swamped by them. They looked like they just witnessed in these old Chinese women a tragic loss of dignity. That is, they looked like they felt pity, as well as treated unfairly.

As I mentioned, when I told this story to others, on mentioning the first old Chinese woman, they finished the main points of my story for me. That is, they guessed at the grabbing, taking, concealing, and lack of gratitude. Then they told me comparable stories of their experience, in particular such people cutting in lines, apparently rudely, without remorse, acting like they weren’t doing anything wrong.

Please help me understand

I know that different cultures have different values, leading what is normal and polite in one culture to appear rude and greedy in another. I’m sharing this post to learn what cultural values I don’t know that, from its perspective, would make that behavior seem normal or polite.

I don’t like feeling so taken for granted, unappreciated, disrespected, and taken. I also like learning about other cultures. I don’t want to feel bad about delivering food to people who need it. It saddens me to think that if I ever deliver to that fridge, people who don’t need the food will take all they can.

Since others observed similar behavior correlating with similar groups and no others, but correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation, I’m inclined to expect a reason to make sense of it based in culture, not age or sex.

Can someone help me understand a view from which this behavior doesn’t seem as it appeared to my middle-aged male American perspective?

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