Standing in line at Carrefour

When standing in line with Chinese people you really get a chance to experience the total lack of respect for others they can demonstrate sometimes. Today I went to Carrefour to buy some webcams for a project at work. It took me 10min to choose the webcams and 1 hour to pay. This Saturday is the day before Chinese New Year so all the people are getting ready, including doing their shopping. Going to Carrefour over a week-end reminds you that there are more than 1 billion Chinese people around. I have never seen so many people in a supermarket. Now what you need to know is that Chinese people keep on doing their grocery shopping daily or every 2-3 days. Therefore when they go to a supermarket they buy few things only which they put of course in a cart. Thus making the line longer and reducing the space available for you to move around. Like in Italy the whole family goes along which means even more people around (sometimes they even take 2 carts: 1 for the food, 1 for the kid). Assuming you manage to get all you wanted to buy (which is not a given as many aisles are partially empty) you then have to queue. Queuing in China is a fight for death. It is a very serious business. 1st of all you'd better have a cart with you as it is your weapon against the others and help you maintain some distance between you and the person before you (the one behind has her cart stuck to your legs already). No free centimeter in the line is tolerated. If you leave some space between you and the person before, you can be sure someone will come in between. Of course every 5 minutes someone is trying to sneak his way up in the line so you need to keep being focused on what you do (reading a book like me while waiting is not a good idea). Should you not move or indicate your disagreement, you can be sure to be yelled at.
Today, a man came and tried to move forward while we had reached a point were no one could move anywhere. He started to yell at me. Have no clue why, as it was in Chinese. I ignored him and gestured that no one could move. He yelled stronger. I still don't know why but I yelled back, in English of course. The louder he was screaming, the louder I was going in response. Believe it or not, it was fun. I was laughing and screaming at him at the same time. After 1-2 minutes the people around realized I was laughing and started to laugh as well. The man backed off and worked is way back. I guess this was my victory of the day :)
Next time I feel like screaming, I'll go to Carrefour :)