Breakup Walkway

This is a picture of the walkway outside our kitchen window, right next to the heart-shaped sandbox, shot at about 9pm.

We get a lot of noise in the evenings because of the string of booths/restaurants set up just to the right of where this picture is shot. On most nights, you'll hear men doing some weird back-and-forth yelling game, which it turns out is some sort of drinking game involving the counting of numbers. Anyways, we're thankful that our bedroom is on the other side, of our unit, away from this noise.

Aside from the people eating and laughing and yelling and playing drinking games... once in awhile, you will hear the sound of a couple in the middle of a breakup. Ok, I don't know for sure that it's a breakup - it might just be a fight, or the confession or some terrible wrongdoing, or some other thing - but whatever it is, it is dramatic. What clues me in? It's the yelling, which is not, "Hey, we're having a good time on a weekend hanging out" kind of yelling. It's more like (even though it's in Chinese) "I can't believe you're telling me this today, how could you do this to me?" kind of yelling. Followed, often times, by loud wailing from the girl. Really... loud... wailing.

I have seen at least a handful of breakups happen on this walkway. Most at night, sometime between 9pm and 1am. Sometimes in the middle of the day. And I learn things about cultural differences as I watch. Usually, the setup of people looks pretty similar to the picture above:

You have the girl standing off to the side in shock, wondering and crying. You have the guy who just broke up with her - he's the one in the stripes down center - and a friend who is trying to talk to him, maybe asking him to change his mind or to go about it differently. This friend is crucial, because he often goes back and forth as the intermediary between the guy and the girl. And then (no joke), you have the other friend who is sitting off to the distance smoking. He's not so involved; he's just wondering when things will settle down and they can get back to their lamb skewers and beer.

I've noticed that these scenarios usually involve lots of guys but only one girl. My guess is that the guy invited his girlfriend to come and hang out with him and his buddies, but then he took her aside to lay down the difficult news.

I saw a similar scenario a few months ago, late at night, on the street outside our window. Guy and girl in breakup. Girl walking down the street. Guy chasing after her. Girl hitting him and wailing, then continuing to walk. Guy continues to chase. Eventually the friend comes and talks to the girl as an intermediary. Lots of other guy friends standing off to the side, looking at their cell phones or smoking.

It is interesting to me how often these scenarios happen outside in public. And - now, I don't mean to downplay the emotional stress that people in breakup may be under - I also notice that I don't feel like I see people sit down and talk these things out in a healthy way... in a way that makes people feel listened to and understood. I think that the Western approach to conflict resolution is very different from what I often see here.

Well, the wailing has stopped. I can only guess that the guy and girl have gone their separate ways and a few of the friends remained just to finish up the remainders of the food that they ordered. I'm hearing the yelling from the drinking games start up again...