More on Chinese people

The good news is that I know enough Chinese now to be scammed in Chinese. But it's just not quite the same as back home, they just don't put the same effort into it.

I was approached by somebody yesterday claiming to come from Anhui, which is kind of far away from here. He showed my his drivers' license - they always do stuff like that, I don't know what that was supposed to prove - but I guess I had been thinking I could have looked to see if his story backed up. In any case, he said he needed to get to Hangzhou, so could I "lend" him 100 quai. He didn't think I'd ever been to Hanghzou; I told him it takes 20 quai to get to Hangzhou. Then he was like, he needs to eat dinner (another 5 quai) and all that. I gave him pocket change out of habit, though really he gets some points deducted for poor form...

Anyway, besides the obvious do-badders, as I've been getting to know more Chinese people I've been getting more accustomed to their sometimes Borat-level sensibilities on things. Like I was sitting at a visa office for foreigners with a girl from Nova, and we noticed some people practicing the Chinese tones. She made a comment about Americans learning Chinese, and I looked around the corner and saw that they were Asians, not Americans. As they walked past, she confirmed they were Japanese, and noted, out of the blue, "I hate Japanese people." I'm not quite sure what to say when people do that...

(As an aside, I'm still convinced Japan could brainwash the entire country with its little Doraemon and Monokuro boo cartoons that all the schoolkids here adore, if it really put its mind to it.)

Anyway, besides the Japanese issue, even relatively intelligent people just don't have any sense of personal values. I was with Julie, who I know from back in Haining, and she asked me if I had heard of the brand of her jeans, which was "Only." I told her I hadn't heard of that brand, so she told be she wouldn't buy it again. I asked her if they were good jeans, and she said they were, and I asked how much she paid for them, and she said, two, maybe three hundred. After all my times showing my friends Chinese friends the little doo-dads I had bought at the tourist market, and having them say "you paid how much for that?" this was my turn. I told her she could buy perfectly good pants at the Carrefour in Hangzhou for sixty. She told me, "Oh, yes, I didn't really pay much attention to that, I just found these and they fit pretty well, so I bought them." She was only concerned about whether it was an American brand name, didn't care about anything else.

But if you go a little bit deeper there does seem to be some nascent sense of political belief. We were talking about a mutual (American) friend who is thinking about joining the Air Force, and she said she hoped he didn't join any army. I told her the Air Force isn't really that dangerous, but she still instisted that he still shouldn't join, because armies "don't always make good decisions." So I guess we're somewhere inbetween there and individual rights...