Who stole the road?

Shifting back to "collectivism" and "individualism," we turn now to a Western interpreter of China from over a century ago: A.H. Smith, American missionary who spent decades in China, and whose 1896 tome Chinese Characteristics became a classic. In Chapter 13, "The absence of public spirit," he wrote:

Not only do the Chinese feel no interest in that which belongs to the "public," but all such property, if unprotected and available, is a mark for theft. Paving-stones are carried off for private use, and square rods of the brick facing to city walls gradually disappear. A wall enclosing a foreign cemetery in one of the ports of China was carried away till not a brick remained, as soon as it was discovered that the place was in charge of no one in particular. It is not many years since an extraordinary sensation was caused in the Imperial palace in Peking by the discovery that extensive robberies had been committed on the copper roofs of some of the buildings within the forbidden city. (Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics, New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1896, p. 111)

What could be more "collective" than "the public"? What could be more "individualist" than neglecting "the public" in favor of "the self"? The complexity of culture can boggle the mind. We just need to be sure we minimize the bad decisions we make as a result.