Asians are a funny race, Frans. Take Japan for example, on the one hand you have an incredibly sensitive side...flower arrangement, zen, the tea ceremony, the incredible depth of beauty of the morning dew on a leaf, kind of thing, some layers of perception that I can only poke a stick at after many years....then you have the slaughtering thing that you mention, and the jokers stopping their cars and dumping out their filthy ashtrays along the side of the road. I've nearly gotten into fights when seeing that happen. It really is strange.
A lot of it comes down to the form of education, where thinking for yourself is not encouraged. People who've had formal training in the arts or traditional skills, raised in the more aware households, often tend to be of the better "realized" variety. The more common man generally, meh.... not a whole hell of a lot of common sense. Basically, complex cultures.