Saturday, April 7, 2012

An Incident at McDonald's

Another day, another incident.  Some days, I have nothing to blog about.  But I impatiently try to blog anyway.  I should just wait.  Yesterday for instance, I had the incident at the bakery.  This morning, I had another strange occurrence, about which I could blog, while eating breakfast at McDonald's.

I bought my egg sausage sandwich, hash-brown patty and coffee, and sat down.  There I was minding my own business when these two Chinese kids sat right beside me and basically poked their faces into mine.  One of them asked "shi Waiguoren?" ( "是 外国人?" "Are you a foreigner?").  Thinking "WTF?", I responded  "bu shi Waiguoren!" ("不是 外国人!" "I am not a foreigner!")  It took a few seconds for it to register into their little brains that I was joking.  They then just continued to stare at me and I became very annoyed.  I would have loved to have grabbed their heads and banged them together.  As it was, I ate quickly and left in a huff.

You have to learn to expect to be stared at if you are going to spend more than a fortnight in China, but what those children was beyond the pale.  I would even say that their attitude to me was racist.  But they are children and they just don't know any better.


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