Monkey See, Monkey Do; Chinese Pick Nose in Public

choi

Alyssa Abkowitz, A Beijing Habit I’ve Picked up; An American abroad starts picking her nose in public. Wall Street Journal, Jan 3, 2015 (under the heading “Dispatch: China”)
blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/12/31/true-confessions-this-expat-in-china-picks-her-nose-in-public/
(in China, it’s [picking nose in public is] just a way of life. But I didn’t think it would become my way of life”)

Note:
(a) This article appears in print today.
(b) wedding announcement of Ms Alyssa Abkowitz 沈丽莎:

Alyssa Abkowitz, Scott Cendrowski. New York Times, Sept 30, 2012 (Sunday)
www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/fashi ... -weddings.html?_r=0
(wedding at Granby, Colorado; She and he were reporters for WSJ and Fortune, respectively)
(c) "But now that I have (as it were) picked up the habit myself, let me back up and explain."

as
dictionary.reference.com/browse/as+it+were
("as it were: Seemingly, in a way, as in He was living in a dream world, as it were. A shortening of 'as if it were so,' this idiom has been in use since Chaucer's time (he had it in his Nun's Priest's Tale, c. 1386). Also see  so to speak[.] The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin, 1995)
(d) monkey see, monkey do
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_see,_monkey_do
(appeared in American culture in the early 1920s;could originate from a story in the folklore of Mali, West Africa)