Well, that's easy. If there are shoes littered at the front door it's a good bet that the occupants are Chinese. Acceptable variations on this are a shoe cabinet or a pile of shoes just inside the entrance. Point is, shoes are never worn in a Chinese person's house - period. No exceptions. Outside the house, do what you want. Inside the house, OFF WITH YOUR SHOES! When the shoes come off you will put on really ridiculous looking slippers like the ones in this image:
This is actually one of those rituals that you can pretty much assume all Chinese people follow almost religiously. "Why?", You may ask. Hell if I know. I'm friggin' ABC, what do I know about being Chinese?! But one thing I do know is how god damn annoying it is to be constantly taking off and putting on shoes when entering and exiting the house.
I put up with this when I go to other Chinese people's home because when in Rome, do as the Romans do or in this case the Chinese, err, you know what I mean, but one would expect that I don't have this ritual at my house since I hate it so much. Guess what? I do this even in my own house. Let me explain...
I met this lady severals years ago. She is a real Chinese person from Fujian China. Her name is Shi Tong Mi. Sparks flew immediately and before you can say Kung Pao Chicken we were happily married. She obviously took my last name, Yu, so now her name is Shi Tong Yu. We live in a house in the Sunset district of San Francisco, California with a really nice shoe cabinet just inside of our front door. Like I said earlier, she's a real Chinese person with real Chinese habits one of which is taking off her shoes before she enters our house and then putting it into our cherry wood built-in shoe cabinet. She expects the same from me. I put up with it and do this annoying ritual as part of the bigger picture of keeping her happy so that she's willing to put out.
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