Beijing begins Olympic decency drive
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-07 10:38

"I'm trying to wake up a sense of decency," Mischke said. "I know it's there."

She said hundreds of people sometimes crowd the talks at community centers, schools and businesses.

"I saw our beautiful scenery covered with plastic bags," she said. "Sometimes I think I'm the first one to see this littering and say, 'Why do you treat our country like a garbage can?'"

"Many of them never really thought of it that way," she said.

The nearing of the Olympics is starting to raise awareness of the problem, she said.

"Chinese feel it's an acknowledgment by the world," she said. "They feel like it's not a backwater any more. It's on the world stage."

China has always been sensitive about foreign — especially Western — criticism of its ways. But Mischke said what she's trying to teach is universal.

"It's not like I'm inventing any problems for China," she said. "Most people hate these things, this bad behavior. I'm just trying to wake them up and show them they can stop."

"All of China is looking forward to the Olympics," noted Zhang Hui, head of training at the Beijing Courtesy College, a finishing school for young adults who want to study decorum, usually before taking their first major jobs.

"It's really important to improve courtesy" ahead of the Games, Zhang said.

She believes in doing this the old-fashioned way.

"Everyone knows how to walk, stand and sit," she said. "But we teach them how to do it in a standard way."

That means sitting, back straight, on the "front one-third" of a chair, she said, primly demonstrating. "Women sit with their knees and feet together. Men may sit with their feet slightly apart. If you cross your legs, you keep the toe of your raised foot pointing downward."

"Every day we teach the students about Confucius and Laozi," Zhang said, referring to the Chinese philosophers who lived some 2,500 years ago and are credited with shaping values associated with China — discipline and not rocking the boat.

"Every country has a basis for its culture," she said. "Confucius and Laozi are our country's basis."