I am never going to win a pissing contest without the hardware, but I would like to point out that if I stop arguing with an idiot it's not because he's right, it's because he's a damned fool and I would sincerely rather address my cuticles and chew on my plastic straw than waste my breath on him.

Let's just keep this in mind: An appeal to a [false] authority is a logical fallacy. Therefore, when you say something erroneous, but insist that it's true because a) that has been your experience in your 25 long years of life, b) your mom was an English teacher, or c) you studied three or four languages, you aren't correct. You haven't advanced your argument a bit. You have shut me up because I don't cast my pearls at the bar and you have established yourself as a moron in my mind. Now, it would be unreasonable of me to assume you would lose sleep over that, but bar-moron, I would just like the point that out.



And, for your further elucidation:

The difference between "Can you buy me a car?" and "Could you buy me a car?" is the difference between a first- and second-class conditional, which means it is the difference between a possible situation and a hypothetical situation. And grammar rules are prescriptive, dummy. English teachers are not tasked with describing colloquial English to their students but with teaching them how to speak correct English. And while it was probably just heart wrenching to find out that there was more than one way to ask a question when you arrived on Chinese shores after a year of studying the language in the States, your teachers did not introduce you to a dozen grammar patterns every lesson because, in a classroom setting, learning a language is accumulative. You care enough about your job to have an opinion about it but not enough to learn how to do it. If you were smart, I would only have to say this once, because I am not giving you my opinion but the fact of the matter. Your mother may have been an English teacher but it's curious that she neglected to teach you any grammar.

The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle
The roots of education are bitter but the fruits are sweet. -Aristotle



The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson. -Unknown

Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can -- there will always come a time when you will grateful you did. -Sarah Caldwell

Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul. -Charles Buxton

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. -James Russell Miller

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones. -Unknown











Man -- a being in search of meaning. -Plato

(Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female -- whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male. -Simone de Beauvoir)

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it. -Anais Nin



Human beings cling to their delicious tyrannies and to their exquisite nonsense, till death stares them in the face. -Sydney Smith

Look at this nastiness that I got in my junk mail the other day:

Stop Obama's Crossdresser Protection Bill‏
From: Tony Perkins (reply@frc.org)
Sent: Wed 1/06/10 11:08 PM
To: ---------------

Family Research Council


Sign our petition to tell our elected leaders we oppose the so-called "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" (ENDA)

Stop Obama's Crossdresser Protection Bill
January 06, 2010 | Share with Friends

Dear ------,

On New Year's Eve, when most Americans were waiting for the ball to drop in Times Square, the Obama Administration dropped another bombshell in its agenda to radicalize America by appointing its first openly "transgender" person to a high federal post. "Transgender" is an umbrella term for anyone who "expresses" a "gender identity" contrary to their biological sex at birth-in other words, men who claim to be (and dress as) women, and vice versa.

Mitchell Simpson, a man who had sex-change surgery and now calls himself a woman (named "Amanda"), was appointed as Senior Technical Advisor to the Commerce Department. Simpson announced that "as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds."

The day after Simpson began work, The New York Times reported that the main website advertising jobs with the federal government now says there will be no "discrimination" based on "gender identity"-even though Congress has never passed a law saying that.

This new policy applies only to the federal government. But there is a bill being considered in Congress, the so-called "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" (ENDA), which would require every employer in America to open every position to homosexuals (by making "sexual orientation" a protected category) and "transgenders" (by protecting "gender identity").

All American employers including Christian owned businesses and potentially Christian ministries would be affected.

"Gender identity disorder" is a recognized mental illness that should be treated-not affirmed and protected. And the right of employers to set "dress and grooming standards" for their employees should include the most basic standard of all-that people dress in a way appropriate for their biological sex.

Don't let Congress and President Obama force American employers to hire homosexuals, transsexuals, and cross-dressers.

Sign our petition to tell our elected leaders we oppose the so-called "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" (ENDA)

Sincerely,

Tony Perkins
President

P.S. Please forward this email to at least one friend.

I actually yelped when I read this in the office on Friday. I was so disgusted. Let's be honest here: I did sign up for this mailing list in college when I was more vocally anti-abortion than I am now. Since then, my thoughts on that particular human problem have become more nuanced. And since then, I have tried repeatedly to remove myself from this mailing list, but with no luck. The subject line of this particular message was so incredible that I had to open it up and see what they were ranting about, yet again.

Can you fucking believe these people? From their tone, you would think our dear leader just promulgated legislation requiring men to dress as women!

And there's a special circle of hell reserved for Bible-thumpers who rely on science to buttress their moral stances. Depression is a medicable disorder, you fucks. So is ADD. How many of your kids are on Prozac or Ritalin? How many people in your collective employ are mentally ill by the standards of that oh-so-finicky goliath, the American Psychological Institute?

And as for your fucking standards, how many women, Christian or otherwise, rock up to their office jobs in a tasteful pant suit? Nobody in their right mind is telling women they have to wear skirts and dresses to work, and if they do, most professional places require that they aren't indecently short. Why shouldn't the penised among us enjoy the same spectrum of wardrobe options? Who the fuck cares as long as they are doing their jobs?

And what about poor Richard Curtis? That poor slob. Actually, my pity is misplaced given his record of voting AGAINST legislation that would have protected the rights of gays and lesbians in the US. But the sentiment could not be more simply, beautifully and aptly expressed than "People like Curtis are forced to live in the closet because of people like Curtis." And Tony Perkins. Fucking Wikipedia is more nuanced.

FAMILY FUCKING VALUES! Lord have mercy, I am glad I have no chair at that Tony Perkins Christmas dinner table. Can you imagine the secrets, the lies? The pretending?

I used to date a guy in a family like that, and on informal nights out the girls talked about the most recent transgressions of their husbands, their father, the lies at work, their private Christian school, and church. And then on big holidays, I would join them for dinner and they would all link hands and pray to God and make a big show of respect for the adulterous, licentious head of the family. And as confusing and nauseating as that was for me, it occurs to me now it was probably at least one step closer to God than Tony Perkins. They were trying to be close, trying to include the lost sheep, trying to be a family full of imperfect people.

That's a family. That's family values. Families are SUPPOSED to be a safe place where individuals can express themselves. Families are SUPPOSED to provide unconditional love. Home is the place to which the prodigal son returns, where the father welcomes him back with open arms.

I am gonna start my own Family Values platform. Then I am gonna stand on my soapbox and talk about real family values. Family values is not only for straight, evangelical Protestant men and women in nuclear families. People fuck up, and your God allows for that, Tony Perkins. I have read the Bible, you fuck. And what about the fact that this world is fallen? At the very least, you can give the transgendered among us the benefit of the doubt — God created the world, human sin brought about the Fall, now we are living in an imperfect place. No amount of legislation or APA literature-thumping is going to redeem it. Family values are about inclusion and you're trying to institute a national dress code.

Read your manual, you shithead.

Luke 12:
[22] And he said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on.
[23] For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.
[24] Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!
[25] And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life?
[26] If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?
[27] Consider the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
[28] But if God so clothes the grass which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O men of little faith!


Stupid. You should be glad you even have clothes considering how many people in developing countries are worried about wearing anything at all, let alone dealing with existential/superficial questions like whether or not their outfit reflects their gender identity. Maybe you should look into that, you fuck.

Beau asked me if I was going to wake up and I said no. Another alarm went off at 5 and I hit snooze. It went off again at 5:10 and I got out of bed. I took a shower while Beau slept. I finished the shower and got dressed. I woke up Beau. I straightened my hair and Beau packed his clothes. I was finished so I sat on the bed. It was 5:30 and I was angry because Beau was not ready. “Let’s go,” I said. “We are very late.”
Beau packed one more pair of shoes and one more jacket. I was angry because he had two pairs of shoes and three jackets. “I only have one pair of shoes and one jacket,” I said. “You should not have more clothes than your girlfriend.” Beau smiled at me and I stared at the clock.

As I spend more free time writing, I have also devoted more time to studying contemporary writing.

(This is all cutting into my special TV time with Beau when I come home from the office emotionally, physically and sometimes even morally drained to stare at a TV showing any one of the following three programs: Californication, Sons of Anarchy or Big Bang Theory. But I digress.)

I am definitely a reader, but I tend to buy my own books, and I don't ever let myself buy new fiction. Not only do I suspect anything very popular and easily obtained of being poorly written, but also a college classmates and self-appointed intellectual superior (JD, you know who you are) once told me that I shouldn't read anything contemporary until I have read the rest of the Western canon. I started following his advice but at some point I must have lost my way as I ended up with a lot of Henry Miller, some Proust, a collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, a secondhand copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, some political non-fiction, and a slew of textbooks for learning Chinese and French. All in all, it's a pretty shameful disarray of a collection for someone who likes reading and wants to write.

I did come across a number of online literary journals that have been very stimulating in the past few days. I won't go into it because if you are into it, you already know the most well-known, such as McSweeney's. Muumuuhouse.com was a really fun find for me, thanks to the interview on bookslut.com with Brandon Scott Gorrell. I couldn't stop reading the stories, poems and excerpts posted there, although I found many of them pretentious:

They were the kind of writers that appeared in McSweeney's and collections edited by Dave Eggers. They weren't my kind of writers. They were sitting in their nice apartments or dorm rooms reading the latest Haruki Murakami story while I was sitting in a shitty little ramshackle house reading a used copy of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre.

When I read that I am not sure if I am hearing the author or the narrator, but I am not sure that it matters. I don't know any of these people and it makes me wonder if these categories of people exist. And then it makes me wonder what category of person I am, and what categories all the people I know would fit into. I think it was less descriptive than taking an unfair opportunity to name drop and possibly slight McSweeney's and Dave Eggers and I think it would have been useful to actually tell me what kind of people he has at this party, unless this is a technical piece written by a writer for other writers only - I have heard of McSweeney's before but not Dave Eggers. Writing should speak to something in the human experience, and I get liking and not liking types of people, but I am not sure if the category of "writers who appear in McSweeney's" is a large enough category to be valid, or if it even exists beyond a very small group of writers who try to get their stuff published online.

I also took issue with the end of this story:

On the street I thought, "My life is sort of like that smelly guy's life in that there is something definitely wrong with me but I don’t know how to fix it and people are moving away from me so I am just going to keep moving towards them until I figure out what is wrong, hopefully I get fixed soon."

The thing is, I actually like the piece and initially I even liked this parallel drawn at the end. But it was stated so bluntly that I felt like he punched me in the face. And then I was offended on behalf of the homeless man that this budding wordsmith thought he could compare his emotional insecurities with what I imagine must be the real trials and tribulations of being homeless and mentally ill.

And I also found it sometimes ungrammatical, which I thought was amusing and strange. I think we can afford to be flexible on grammar when it comes to genius, but I'm not sure that anything I read at Muumuu House really registered on the genius scale. Sentences like "the Thai person who I had been communicating with beckoned me" need 'whom,' not 'who." There are a few places, like "Sometimes I glanced at people and felt annoyed about a pressure I detected to be sociable," where the meaning can be misconstrued, like the pressure was sociable and it was annoying him? But actually, I know exactly what he means, when there are people around who seem open to talking, or worse yet, actually come and talk to you, when the last thing you want is to get trapped in a conversation with another person.

And I would have preferred the subjunctive for - "It felt as if I was on 'E'" - and a few other places but I know better than to argue about that. But kudos for using Oxford commas.

I did, however, find reading story after story in their signature choppy, dry and detached style to be something like eating some lemon sorbet between courses. I'm overstuffed on Henry Miller lately as I've been trying to get through the Rosy Crucifixion and everything I've been writing privately has been soppy and sappy and I was getting stuck in long scenes and long conversations that couldn't resolve themselves. However, a refreshing bit of alarmingly simple and detached prose has given me some new ideas about how to keep moving. It all reminds me of this blog I once read (and man have I just wasted a huge chunk of time trying to find it again) that was called something like "The World's Most Boring Blog." The blog that currently holds this title is not the one I am thinking of and is boring in a very mundane way.That other blog was just fantastic - entry upon entry about sharpening pencils and lining them up on the top of the desk, closing the door that was ajar, etc. It was fantastic. And that's another thing that bothered me about what I read - it was freakishly detached sometimes, to the point of being disturbing, and I really just hate disturbing stories/movies/music/graphic t-shirts/plush toys, etc. I hate Quentin Tarantino, for example. I have seen anything associated with him since I saw Reservoir Dogs for the first time a few years ago, and I think my life is better for it. I am all for being prodded out of complacency by an intellectual gadfly, but I have been so underexposed to popular culture that I really don't need a gory bloodbath (i.e., a crazy psycho that tortures people).

And I've digressed again. What I would like to point out is that when Mr. Gorrell writes:

I looked at the toilet paper holder and saw that there was no toilet paper. There was a hose next to the toilet that had a spray nozzle attached to the end of it. I felt very bad. I tested the hose by pressing its lever. I stood a little and put the sprayer behind my ass and sprayed my asshole with it. It seemed to work, my asshole felt clean. I stood and got my notebook out of my bag and ripped a quarter of a page out and wiped my ass with it. It had traces of shit.

I think it's very funny. This kind of objective, value-free perspective is really suitable and really amusing. But when he bums a cigarette from a French woman and then later writes:

There were many different places to sit at the pier and I switched between them a lot. The French woman had a problem with her ticket and her voice rose to a yelling tone. She said, "Please, I have a child." There were chickens walking around the pier.

it makes me a little nauseous. I thought the piece was amusing and it really made me want to give it a shot, just try to write something like them because I think the results would be funny. But I spent a lot of time last night and this morning wondering what happened to that poor French woman with her child. I've traveled with a tight budget before and it's really scary, and I keep wondering if that was her problem, if she had no money to change the ticket, or if she had to stay there until the next ferry left the next day or something, and whether or not she could afford a hotel room, and if she had to sleep outside, did anything bad happen to her? Because Bangkok is a pretty damn unsavory place and bad things happen to women and little children in Thailand. I think talking about your shit in a squatty potty in a monotone, staccato voice is pretty fun. Mentioning that a woman with a child was distressed at the ticket counter in Bangkok between talking about where you sat and talking about the damned chickens is, in a word, disturbing. I don't like disturbing.

Ultimately, muumuuhouse.com was only one of the sites that I found, and while I wouldn't actually want to write in that style, I thought it was pretty effective at creating a sense of humor and when everything is flattened to the same saltine-high level, it can be very revealing (when it's not disturbing).

I have been spending my Sunday mornings the past few weekends at the cafe closest to my house. It gets me away from my loony ayi and forces me to work on some of the stuff that I really want to do. It's starting to feel like I am myself on these weekends where I can hide out in the cafe and play at being a writer, and then I have to wriggle back into some suit of responsibility and a deep interest in the Chinese business world on Monday mornings. I can tell already that is only going to be harder and harder, so I am going to have to work harder and harder on the weekends if there's any hope for me to actually lead the life that I want to lead.

I don't love this cafe. Lately, it's been ridiculously cold, which is no fault of theirs, but it's also filled with people, which I hate. Like this woman sitting across from me who keeps raising her hand and then slapping her thigh in defeat. Over and over again. She's trying to get the attention of the wait staff, despite the fact that there is a sign, in English and Chinese, explaining that customers should order their food at the counter and pay for it first. It's just a special streak of stupid. This morning, I got to watch a foreigner, a man in his mid-40s, have a conniption because his orange juice was too big. That's right--he paid good money for a glass of orange juice and there was just too much of it. "This is enough for a whole family," he snorted in anger. I fucking hate places full of people, because then you have to listen to stupid shit like that and it rots your brain.

Last weekend, the weather was quite nice, and lots of people started showing up for lunch around two. It got so crowded that there was no more room at one point. I had an extra empty chair at my table, and there was no end of customers complaining that I should not be allowed to sit there and read and drink the coffee I paid for when they were waiting for a table. This was all done in Chinese, so I assume they thought I didn't understand how awful they were being, or else they were just that obnoxious. I had a meal and three cups of overpriced, not entirely pleasant coffee - served, I will add, in glasses that would have been perfect for iced tea, but as containers for hot coffee with only a stupid paper napkin tied around them, they are trendy, idiotic, and really, really frustrating. Hot coffee is conventionally served in a mug with a handle for a reason: so you don't burn your fucking fingers. Now, I just sit here and stare at my coffee until it's cool enough for me to actually touch.

I wanted to ask those irate would-be patrons the other day if it would make any difference to them if I were Chinese. I have certainly seen on many occasions Chinese patrons taking up four-tops and reading the newspaper while we got seated at the bar or took our order to go. What are you gonna do? They got their first and they are paying for the coffee and cake, so it's not like you can ask them to leave. But that's exactly what those nasty folks wanted to do to me, as though me drinking my overpriced coffee at a two-top was not a reason to leave me in peace. How about the charming woman I just saw literally taking up two tables just now while a white dude and his Chinese girlfriend looked for a table? She had her laptop on one table and her tea on the other, and was staring at her shoes until the dude had the gumption to ask her if she wouldn't mind if they sat down. "Oh, sorry! Yes, here you go!" like she didn't see them eyeing the prime real estate she was squatting on until that moment.

And now a mother has just advised her young son to take out his guitar and have a practice here in the cafe. Right here, in the middle of the cafe. Right over the obnoxious Christmas music, like sitting and having a normal chat over lunch would be too much to fucking ask.

Yet somehow being inadvertently annoyed by strangers in an icy, cold cafe is preferable to being shouted at by the housekeeper in warm intimacy of my own living room.

We hired an ayi in October. I was a bit ambivalent about it first; the thought of hiring someone else to do my cooking and cleaning made me feel like a pretentious bourgeois prat. However, it's not very expensive to take on a housekeeper here, and I was tired after working late everyday at work. And if the difference between fighting with Beau over who needs to clean the bathroom or having someone else do it so we can both spend our time doing the things we enjoy is only a few hundred RMB, then springing for an ayi was totally worth it.

Only we managed to take on a lunatic. She was recommended by a co-worker who is apparently never home when the maid is there. I miss her on Tuesdays and Fridays because I'm at work, but on Sunday mornings, she comes into the house and starts shouting to find out who's home. Of course, if I've been out the night before, I'm still in bed, and if I'm in bed, I'm nekkid. This does not bother her in the least. She comes in, wrenches open the curtains, and shouts at me while I lay in bed wondering if my ass is hanging out the back of the blankets. Then she sweeps and chatters nonsense and I can't stand up because as humiliating as it is, I really don't want to show her my naked flesh. Last time, Beau tried to be clever and lock the door, only he didn't quite manage it and she walked in on him in his birthday suit. She closed the door and start cackling heartily; I confess, I giggled, too. But I definitely jumped out of bed and got dressed as quickly as I could as well.

She has me, Beau, and the roommate all under her thumb. Poor Roommate heard her as soon as she came in the other day, and had to jump out of bed, get his clothes out of the wash and hang them on the line before she took off her coat because he knew he would get an earful otherwise. I made the mistake of being in the house when she arrived last weekend, and got scolded for going to the coffee shop to read in peace instead of staying home to eat the food she cooked for us. She likes to cook special meals on Sundays. I tried to leave early this morning but Beau was scared that if I didn't pick up the laundry on the floor of our bedroom, we would get yelled at. "I'm paying here to pick up the laundry I leave on the floor!" I snapped at him. But then I picked it up and made sure to leave before she arrived and tried to make me stay for lunch again.

Her accent is terribly thick, and she accuses Beau and I of speaking Taiwanese because she can't understand us, so we don't converse as much as hold mutually incomprehensible shouting matches. Last time she came in when I was in bed, I had to shout at her that I was sick (meaning hungover) so she would not open the drapes and shout at me as I tried to sleep away my Sunday. I feel like I hurt her feelings and then I felt like a total ass on top of feeling like death warmed over. She really is this adorable grandmotherly type and I am certain it would bring her great joy to mop the floor as she watched us eat the meal she prepared, but I am emotionally claustrophobic so if anyone really, really wants me to do anything I balk and flee. I've already considered seeing if we can upgrade to someone with a sense of volume and decorum, but I think it would be too cruel to let her go and I am not sure I am up to the task. She is already convinced that she has some special insight into working for foreigners because she works for three or four other foreign couples, but I imagine that like me, none of them are home when she arrives, and maybe they have more sense than to invite her in on the weekends. I also think it's a good incentive for me to go to the cafe on Sunday mornings and read, write, and journal, but I also hate feeling like it's necessary to run away from the housekeeper.

After that special experience yesterday, I was confused and full of goodwill towards everybody. My heart brimming with bonhomie, I stopped at the department store on the way home from work to find some cologne for Beau's Christmas gift. I'd done the homework and knew they were supposed to carry his brand, but I hadn't had any luck finding it the night before. I queued up at the information desk - I have no idea why there was a queue at the information desk - and a man jumped in line just ahead of me. That familiar cyclone of fury started whirling inside of me and when somebody's mom wearing a velour sweatsuit and too much makeup slid in front of me, I was ready to go off. "Do you mind?!" I snapped at her in English. She got the hint and moved behind me, but then proceeded to dry hump my ass while using her eight arms to try to get the clerk's attention. I ignored her antics but as soon as the clerk was free, she thrust her slip of paper between us and started barking at the clerk. In my first fully Chinese outburst, I shouted at her, "Do you see me here? I was here first! Do you have eyes?!" She looked positively wounded and pouty while the clerk snorted and covered her mouth. I just wanted to know if they carried Jean-Paul Gaultier, which they didn't, despite the information I found online.
I really think living here, living in Asia, maybe just living overseas can make you go crazy after a while. I have met some really lovely people over coffee or dinner only to take a walk with them outside and see them snap on the dumbass chirping "Hello! How are you!" at the passing foreigners or the oblivious jackass who plows into them without so much as a grunt. I have seen perfectly lovely people pound their fists on cars plowing through crosswalks or dig their shoulders into folks trying to force their way onto the train before others had disembarked. Foreigners lose their shit here after a while. Back home, we're taught to hold the door for people behind us, keep the elevator door open until everyone has gotten inside, stand to the side on the escalators if we aren't going to walk, wait until everyone has gotten off the train before we try to get on and stand in line when ordering food or making a purchase. And I'm all for cultural diversity, but if you're the minority in a people that are engaging in behavior that your mother beat your ass for because it was rude, you can't help but take it personally after a while.
I just read in Where East Eats West, a guide to doing business in China by Sam Goodman, the guy who started Beijing Sammi's, that if you're coming out here to start a business, you should factor in the cost of a vacation every two months as part of your start-up costs, because living and working here is just going to get to you and you are going to need an escape. It confirmed the experience of Mark Kitto, author of China Cuckoo, who recounted spontaneously sobbing in the streets of Shanghai because all the pressure was getting to him. Shortly thereafter, he retreated for a little R&R in England. I'm not a business mogul, but I've been in Asia for a long time, and it does something to you after a while. Only now I'm gonna go home and scream at someone who inadvertently runs into me with a shopping cart and it's going to result in an ugly throw down, not just a staring contest.

I read a blog post yesterday that raised the question of the existence of racism in China, specifically the variety that requires foreigners receive better treatment than local residents. Coincidentally, I found myself placed in just that position last night. The subway train accident that shut down Line 1 of the Shanghai Metro resulted in the morning’s commuters being herded out of the People’s Square station without swiping our Shanghai public transportation cards to register that we had already left the station. I got back on the subway in the evening without any trouble, but when I tried to get out of the station at the stop nearest my home, the turnstile beeped at me and flashed an error message. I flagged down the station attendant immediately to my right and asked him in Chinese why I couldn’t go through. As I asked, I realized it probably had something to do with the morning’s trouble in the train station and that lots of other people would be having the same trouble. Sure enough, I looked up and throngs of people were surrounding the help kiosk. The attendant grabbed my card from me, ran to the kiosk, pushed it under the glass and started barking at the woman on the other side, “Lao wai! Lao wai! Quickly! There’s a foreigner!” They swiped my card across their scanner with a quickness and hustled me very helpfully through the gate. Of course, I was pleased to be on my way, but I felt like a jerk as it dawned on me what had happened. There was still a long line of bored and frustrated commuters trying to get their own issues resolved.

Except for being a foreigner, I don’t think I did anything to demand special attention. I approached the man and spoke to him in Chinese. I wasn’t angry or pushy. I am not sure why they would help me before they helped all the other Chinese people waiting in line, except that I have seen other foreigners get extremely loud, angry and aggressive when they feel like they aren’t getting enough attention. (The other night at McDonald’s at 1am, I watched a French guy throw a temper tantrum because he couldn’t get two free orange juices with his coupon. By the time I got to the counter, the clerk was shooting daggers at me, too. Score one point for Team America, though: I can order an extra-value meal in Chinese.) I know from first-hand experience that it’s really unpleasant to have someone yelling at you in a language you don’t understand, and it’s even worse when you aren’t able to say anything to diffuse the situation. A lot of Chinese people I know are also very apologetic about their level of English if it isn’t very high, which is ironic and pitiable because we are the guests in their country. Moreover, most people here will do anything to avoid an embarrassing scene, especially if it makes them look or feel stupid. Altogether, it ends up being a lot easier to a give a foreigner VIP treatment than to risk tending to them while they spew fire and brimstone because you asked them to stand in line with the masses.

I do feel bad about being singled out like that, without any merit. There have been countless times in the past, though, where Chinese customers have cut in front of me in line at stores and restaurants, either because they are rude or because they think being stuck in line behind a bumbling foreigner who probably can’t speak Chinese will result in an interminable wait, and jumping the queue will get them out of there faster. That makes me insanely angry, but pushing me to the front just because I'm a foreigner isn't what I am looking for, either.