Ai Weiwei in Berlin

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Lockdown in China

"‘The Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has just moved from Germany to the UK. I met him years ago when he was living on the dusty edges of Beijing, where he'd been relocated by the authorities. Then later he was under house arrest. He was released in 2015 and arrived to much fanfare in Berlin. And Ai Weiwei said he loved Germany. Berliners were thrilled to give refuge to a global star. But since then the mutual admiration has faded. He said he was leaving, in part because Germans are rude, racist and authoritarian. It sparked outrage and some soul searching. And Damien McGinnis wonders if the Germans really are impolite or simply misunderstood.’

‘There's some graffiti I saw recently that sums up Berlin humor. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. None of the encouraging optimism of Frank Sinatra's New York. No Berlin is a city of proud slackers not impressed by wealth, career or fame. Here you can embrace failure and relish your flaws. And just in case you forget those flaws, there's always someone ready to remind you of them. Berlin is not a city for the faint hearted. As the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has discovered. He's just moved from Berlin to Cambridge, saying it's partly because Germans are ill mannered. In Britain they are polite, he said in one interview last week, but in Germany, they don't have this politeness. They would say in Germany, you have to speak German. They have been very rude he says. Commentators in Germany have pointed out that interactions can be easier if you speak the language of a country. But the outbursts have also sparked a bit of a debate here about whether Germans really are rude and unwelcoming...

[Ai Weiwei] citing Berlin taxi drivers as evidence that the whole of Germany is ill mannered is clearly problematic. Each region or city in Germany has its own behavior stereotypes. In Hamburg people are often reserved and polite. In Cologne, they tend to be more jolly and gregarious, but Berliners have a reputation for certain kinds of particularly blunt gruffness. After all, this is a city with a history of war, division and destruction. That's not something you survived with niceties. It's called the Berliner Schnauzer or the Berlin snouts. It's sometimes funny and nearly always insulting and being able to cope with it is a badge of pride for people who live here. A breathtaking level of rudeness is also a speciality for anyone involved in Berlin transport. In Germany this is well known. German tourists from elsewhere will chuckle as bus drivers argue with passengers, as if it's a local color organized by the Berlin Tourist Board. The city's public transport system even plays on this famed indifference to customer service in its ad campaigns. One hilarious film shows how technicians work day and night on making train announcements completely incomprehensible, and how bus drivers are specially trained to know exactly the right moment to slam the doors in the face of someone who's just run for the bus. Given all that it's possibly a bit naive to judge this country's manners by the taxi drivers of its toughest city.

Ai Weiwei also says Germans are authoritarian and even brings up the inevitable reference to the Nazi era. That's something I often hear as an explanation for why people here obey rules such as waiting for the lights to change before crossing the roads. It's basically how Hitler happens, says one American friend. In fact, this respect for rules is more about respect for others. German society generally works well, precisely because rules are kept. The bus won't necessarily wait for you as you're running up the street, because that means the whole schedule gets messed up for everyone. Bus drivers might be a bit nicer in the UK. But then buses there don't always run on time.

In one sense, though, [he] is right. In Germany, there isn't the same sort of veneer of surface politeness that you find elsewhere. It's simply a different sorts of etiquette. And I've often seen outsiders struggling with this. Germany is a country where traditionally workers rights are just as important as the demands of the customer. That's why much to the bafflement of tourists, most shops still close on Sundays and for days at a time during some public holidays... In Germany, the customer is not always King. Rather, an interaction with someone working in a cafe or a taxi or a shop is between two equals...

One final tip for [Ai] now living in England. Don't be fooled by those polite words. I suspect after a bit of time in the UK, You will soon learn that in British English an icy thank you, or excuse me, can also be pretty aggressive."