I read with interest your article about audiences behaving badly in Singapore.
I am a Singaporean who has been living in Shanghai for a long time. Compared to the audiences in China, Singaporean audiences are of a gold standard.
More than half the time when I watch a movie at the cinema in the city, these disturbances occur:
Children playing near the screen while the movie is showing. Their parents just cannot be bothered to stop them. Other cinemagoers also do nothing to shush the kids;
Cinema staff switch off the air-conditioning to save electricity. I then locate the switch by the entrance and turn it on.
Chinese people do not mind stuffy rooms, as air-conditioning became widespread in China only a decade ago;
Once, in a high-end cinema, a patron was smoking in the back row;
Body odour or smelly feet, which prompts me to change seats;
Instant messaging or talking softly on smartphones is so common, it will be weird if no one does this during a show.
Rudy Chen
This article was first published on December 6, 2014.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.