Ezequiel Living in a country like China, stoemimes you unintentionally lower your standards of courtesy:So I am getting ready to go back to the US, and I decide to go to silk market (beijing) because as far as finding shoddy merchandise perfect for gifting, it has one of the largest selections. I go to the third floor electronics section, and see mini-led flashlights perfect for my father. I go to a few stalls inquiring about prices, mostly sky-high, and finally arrive at one stall with a very nice, 3 inch long mini-led light. The girl at the stall quotes me 700 RMB (110 USD). I say, in very polite Chinese, I am buying this product in China, and it wouldn't cost 1/4 of that price in the US . So the girl flips out, and 3 inches from my face begins yelling, Whats wrong with China? Whats wrong with China? Why do you foreigners think you are so much better than Chinese? I am a relatively mild-tempered person, but when someone screams in my face enough to make me feel threatened, I bite back. So I take the flashlight, and bounce it off the tabletop so it knocks down her little tower of LED lights stacked on top of each other (bad decision) and tell her that I will not be spoken to like that. It was all I could do to restrain myself from saying, If you are really that tired of your life in Beijing, go back to your village where you can be with your family and not be pimped by these silk-market stall owners. But knowing that 90% of the people working there were from a similar background, I decided on account of my personal safety I had better watch what I say. Anyways, the girl is slapping me and pushing me, I am telling her that she has no right to talk to customers in that way, and the mob of nationalist sheep starts growing larger and larger. At this point my options are scram, or wait for something worse to happen, so I pull a Barry Sanders spin move and quickly make my way to the exit.Its really unfortunate that this girl has had such terrible experiences with foreigners that she felt it was necessary to treat me in such a way. I am generally quite courteous, however I won't stand for that kind of treatment. Lets all close up shop and move to Taiwan, where people respect each other.

griff I totally agree. I'm from the US and living in Nanchang. Some of my university students just took a trip to Wugong and it was an absolutely hidden gem. I was amazed at how beautiful it was up there. It took a lot of energy to get to the top but it was actually worth it after about 5.5 hours. Our group took a cable car for the first leg and then walked the rest of the way. I was carrying two tents, two sleeping bags, and my clothes and it was all I could do to keep going. My bag was somewhere between 55-65 lbs. Having the extra tent for the girls on our trip totally trashed me. So we were slow but it was so scenic the entire time that it was a lot of fun to just be out there. Every corner revealed new beauty.

Deena Thank you for some other wonderful post. Where else may aynobdy get that type of information in such a perfect means of writing? I've a presentation subsequent week, and I'm on the search for such info.

Puteri Anyone coming to China or any other conruty where English is not spoken should prepare for such incidents. You're in somebody else's conruty, idiot (not to mention dealing with a server who gets verbally abused all day long by the locals!) This is a no brainer incident (literally). The harder situations are when you are almost hit while walking in a cross walk with the right of way and the driver honks at you with a loud and sustained (get out of my way) honk. Most Chinese pedestrians have mastered the art of passively ignoring the obnoxious driver. My American friends visiting Beijing have trouble with this. They ask who has the right of way? I telll them, legally, you do but in reality, you don't. Beijing has 24 million people and 4 million plus cars. If cars obeyed the laws on the books, traffic would not move. So the system has evolved to this. The real law is Newton's law: Whoever is more massive has the right of way! I do everything I can to keep them from pounding on the hood of passing cars.The hardest thing for an American to understand is that in China what people write, say and legislate is frequently not what they do, regardless of the typical blather of strict compliance .

Angie what are you actually trniyg to say? that is OK to quote 700RMB for crappy LED light which cost in west 170RMB and in China is real price maybe 40RMB (dunno really what are we talking exactly about, but to have general idea about prices is no problem to check dealextreme.com or Taobao) and when you say to her that abroad it's much cheaper than here she will attack you with “Whats wrong with China? Whats wrong with China? Why do you foreigners think you are so much better than Chinese?” which is completely off topic, because nobody was saying anything bad about china or that foreigners are better than chinese, he was just pointing out that in west he can buy it for 1/4 of her BS price and she tried to change subject to some nationalist BSif these sellers are acting like this, then they really should find some other work and not be in business, go home to their village and work on field, when they can't even react calmly to logical argument about 4 times bigger price in USA, not even started bargaining. girl probably thinks that all westerners are stupid walking ATMs and she can charge them anything and they will quote it and when she suddenly realized that she was wrong she tried to play on nationalist topic about wrong china and chinese with her little brain

Renald Sep20Chris from Munich Sweet!Congratulations on your wedding. I wish you both all the best: may your pviitsoe wishes come true.My favourite is this Beautiful pix. Kudos to the pixer.Cheers!chris

Ahmed Far as I'm concerned, your uatpde schedule is totally up to you. Just because you're doing something awesome on the internet, doesn't give the internet any right to tell you how.I will say, though, that there's something uniquely thrilling about regular uatpdes in serialized fiction. Having a whole book in front of you is one thing but having a good book produced and made available on a faithful schedule is something really special. It seems that even the best can't keep this up for very long, not while maintaining quality, [cf. life, etc.] but you did for quite awhile, and I really appreciated that.Since you mentioned it, though, why is strong moderation censorship? You wouldn't be denying folks the right to express their views, just the ability to do so right here in the comment thread that you pay to maintain. If you want to scrub your readers' fouler effluvia, isn't that up to you?