Nureddin Ha, Tom, you're playing soltbafl here. The daily conversation in the English teacher's office where I worked was worse than the one you wrote about (I used to hang my head when our head teacher would talk to the Chinese staff I even went in after and apologized a few times). While you're example is totally representative that behaviour is ubiquitous among laowais in China there's plenty of other too-common behaviour that surely leaves an even worse impression. When I saw the title and that this was about Americans making negative impressions, my mind immediately when to English teacher coworkers who slept with or tried to sleep with every moderately-attractive Chinese coworker or former student they could. The girls one by one eventually left the school, but the foreigners never had to. I watched students transform their image over just a couple short weeks from schoolgirl to bar trash. it was so bad several of us tried hard and repeatedly to intervene in one particular situation, but the girl was unbelievably naive and willfully blind. And of course all the staff and most of the students know exactly what's going on. Even our landlord criticized the former American tenant for bringing home his Chinese girlfriends. As you know, it's not just our movies and TV shows that give Chinese the impression we're all w****-mongers. And, as a Canadian, I'm doing you all a public service my informing you that the whole stereotype of Canadians being polite doesn't apply to Canadians under 50. Canadians can be total jerks (Vancouver summer riot, anyone?).