How many smiles do you see on a typical Shanghai day.
Does the 24 hours shop assistant smile at you when you buy your late night milk. Does your apartment complex guard curl his lips when you greet him in the morning.
(One of the 3 guards in our building actually always smiles and waves friendly, the other two have mastered the “You nod at me but I can stare through you anytime as you are completely non-existent to me” skill.)
In general smiling is not a standard practice but it’s about to change, at least if you can believe the [tag]China[/tag] Daily.
China seems to be in the middle of a smiling deficit, but one group in [tag]Shanghai [/tag]is doing what it can to turn those frowns upside down.
According to a recent online survey by Extrawhite, a maker of chewing gum, a quarter of the people in China never smile or smile less than five times a day. The survey found that only 2 per cent of Chinese people are willing to smile at strangers.
To reverse this situation, a group of 40 students from the Humanities and Communications College of Shanghai Normal University launched a team of “smiling volunteers” last month. Their technique is simple enough: they smile at people.
Triggered by a chewing gum maker….we’ll all smile in the near future when we fight our way into the subway, handle elevators that are closed in front of us, bump into cyclists that are color blind and pick up the small change from the counter when your hand is still hanging in the air to collect the money.
If you like to become a volunteer, it’s not that hard,
The only requirement is that they have sincere smiles and helping hearts, and are always ready to assist other people.
All you have to do actually is being a human being. And now go outside and just do it, SMILE.
From the Daily Prop.
She was not there to sell rolexes though, she tried to get eye contact and I knew what was coming. “You want massage”. 
