Western kids: antagonism and being touched by strangers

Not relevant to this post. In another
I'll describe Maddie's paparazzi

There are many cultural differences between China and the US with regards to children. For me there are two behaviors that really stand out. One is touching the faces and hands of kids you don't even know, and the second is antagonizing them as a way of interacting with them. I probably notice these behaviors mostly because I don't really understand why people would do these things and they sometimes upset my girl. There's lots of other kid related details that I think are interesting and if I have room I'll include some here.

Before Maddie was in pre-school it was a lot harder to take care of the mundane errands associated with living. It's because I didn't always have a choice of wether or not to drag her out in public because something had to get done. It got to the point where sometimes she would just shutdown under all the attention and touching she was experiencing; and that was easily the worst part of being here. It's awful to not feel like I'm protecting her enough. Over time I got better at protecting her, but there's only so much you can do to prevent these behaviors. I am one person in a dense city surrounded by people. I think at this point she's gotten more used to it all. Since she's in preschool, she's simply not in public nearly as much as she used to be also.

The first is the way complete strangers will touch Maddie's cheek or grab her hands. Sometimes it's almost as if they're checking to see if she's real. She gets called baby doll in Chinese pretty often. People will do this that aren't even in her line of sight. Think of how strange it would be to have somebody reach over and touch your cheek as you're walking down the street. Now think about it if you didn't see them coming but only felt it. This is how it is with Maddie; often. Everybody loves to touch her and some people will repeatedly do it, like if we're on the train. Some people are at least only grabbing her hands. But even with that there were times she would yank her hands away and get upset. Who would want their person to be touched by strangers all the time? Certainly not me.

The other behavior I wanted to mention is the way people seem to antagonize children here as a way of playing. We had a friend from Dylan's work come over and he spent the entire 4 hours he was here occasionally taking something of Maddie's and saying it was his now. He'd grab her favorite doll and then say to her "Maddie, this is mine now, not yours anymore." It was really strange. She, of course, would get upset because she really believed that he was stealing her toys; not sharing nicely as we're trying to teach her, but fully taking them away from her to be his now. I've met people in our courtyard who have done the same thing. One took her tricycle helmet. All this does is upset her. Is this treatment unique to Western kids, or is this also how people interact with their friend's kids in China?

UPDATE: I've seen many, many other situations (now that I've been here 6 months and this post was actually written months before it was published) where people antagonize kids as a way to play. Most of these situations don't involve Maddie, so it's not specific to western kids or me as a Mom.