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Q: Spitting - which action is ok if somebody spits incidentally on your shoe?
I suppose this question is relevant 365 days a year...
You always lose if you get physical: Spitting is too widely accepted here, and mistakes are considered understandable if someone is 'innocently' ejecting saliva from their orifice and misses. The best thing is to voice your displeasure, but keeping the moral high ground by retaining a measure of composur. If it's a suede leather shoe or something else that needs cleaning, you can try to ask for dry-cleaning compensation. But that's more situational: it relies on the spitter being in a weak position. You need supporting witnesses, and you should balance your demand. Foreigners are always in a disadvantage, whether it's language barrier, being poorly connected, or just prejudices.
Robk:
Good advice.
Chinese will come up with the weirdest excuses like... well, if your shoes are so expensive, why don't you drive a Benz instead?
Then you have to retract with something like... because it is in the shop.. now pay for cleaning my shoes, or I will call the police and all my back-up and have you buy new ones!
Chinese really like debates but they don't follow logic really (I guess slightly sometimes). But if you are clever and use tact, the crowd will be on your side. If you don't speak Chinese... you are kind of screwed... they will think of you are the crazy foreigner and play that card to the others that didn't see.
"Crazy foreigner spit on his own shoe and blames us Chinese... why must they always bully us!"
coineineagh:
in China, logic, objectivity and fairness are not valued. only the relationships and influence of the people involved matter. in your example, the idiot is probably too busy thinking of consumer posturing, so it didn't matter whether his brain oozed out brand names instead of a careful response to the issue at hand.
Wipe it off on their legs whilst smiling at them and say "xie xie".
I would probably respond as coineineagh suggests and respond in a loud, firm but polite manner, pointing out the error.
However, in Changsha, where i encountered most spitters, they tended to pointedly avoid standing near enough to allow anything landing on me. someone must have warned them how i would respond 
Thankfully now, Tianjin is a city of few spitters in comparison
If someone spat on me, I would like to think I wouldn't go nuts and bash them.
Instead, I would try to stay calm. Demand compensation (the Chinese way) and if they don't... then embarrass the hell out of them (with witty Chinese) until they wished they were dead.
I would try not to throw a bunch or I would automatically be the villiain regardless.
Well, I make sure I step out of the way of a trajectory of mucous and spittle flung in my direction. I am usually afforded some advance notice - an audio cue, as it were - of a spit missile: there's that pre-ejaculatory roto-rooter cleansing of the upper respiratory tract which sounds like the perp-to-be is choking on a live frog. Lasts for no more than a second or two - enough time for me to recce the source with my eyes and dodge accordingly.
I have never been spat upon. Came close once or twice, a near-miss or two, but my bio-radar caught it in time.
If it were ever to happen, it wouldn't be cause for alarm, retribution or reparations. (I don't wear Crockett & Jones. Li Ning is my footwear of choice in China.) An apology offered up by the perp would suffice. A minor accident - like that dude on the subway who was "accosted" by somebody's cookie crumbs a few months back...
royceH:
Harrrr...yes, Red, I remember that. A minor incident, properly dealt with. Umm...If my memory serves me correctly, he shot him.
royceH:
Hard to say. I mean, shooting someone for leaking crumbs on you might appear a drastic action, granted. But perhaps, as with so many things, it really is hard to know unless you've been in that situation yourself.
Still...excessive? Yes, I suppose so.
I have noticed 'extra' spitting around me if I am in company of Chinese females though.
And so have some of my foreign mates.
Red_Fox:
Where do you live? Sounds more like village rather than big-city behavior. I mean, mixed couples are pretty common in 1-tier cities. (Not to mention the world over. But China is a world unto its own...) Maybe not so common in smaller burgs. Anyway, doesn't matter. It's the ignorance and simplemindedness that irks and slowly wears away at us.
Mostly people spit when they have space for it. I don't recall seeing anyone being close to being hit. People usually spit in bushes and stuff, or on the ground when there is plenty of space around them.
Despite the fact I would find it massively disgusting getting hit, then the shoe is a grey area, just think of what is underneath the shoe, it's not just gum that sticks to a shoe. Maybe just ask for a napkin to make sure they know I am interested in getting the spit off my shoe
Accidentally once happen to me and got a tissue with the word thebucchi.
I just cleaned and left the place.
I think it depends if the person says sorry or not. If they really don't care, I think you are justified in saying something.
