I think about 23 years ago in Beijing, me and two German friends arranged to have a chauffeur to drive us to our teachers(Yiquan) house for the morning practice and teachings,
The chauffeur greeted us every morning with āheil hitlerā and an outstretched in salute arm, he was a good driver and the car was spacious, my German friends were just staying for a week, so we endured, after I continued as usual to go by bus and subway.
Chinese(in China) can say and act in the most blunt ways - youāre fat!, youāre bald, or just point toward a foreigner -ā look !ā - loudly enough to alert friend and surroundings the anyway obvious that āthereās a foreigner ā.
-āYou have hairy legsā, and then putting a hand on my leg, a Taxi driver once did, nothing about some of those words the other guys in this thread discussing, just a factual
sincere statement as Chinese(in China)often tend to do.
Ok, the hitler thing is a bit to much, especially directed at Germans. Frankness and rudeness are not the same to me.
Last time in Beijing , at the forbidden city, 3 young guys walking next to me where talking about my nose. After a bit i turned and looked at them and said , i speak Mandarin. They were shocked and thrilled, now they wanted to talk to me. My mandarin is not that great for a full speed Beijing conversation so I refused, mostly based on they were young and disrespectful.
But on a bus, the first time in Beijing, with my wife, a little girl, sitting next to her mother asked her mother, āhow can she speak to a guy with yellow hairā that was cute and funny
My mother-in-law said to me, and my parents, after my wife and I were married. I never thought my daughter would marry someone with yellow hair, but it ok, i like him.
My sister-in-laws sister-in-law, diring a duck dinner that the extended Chinese family gave fir my wife and myself, after about 20 minutes of sitting there listening to all the voices around me, looked at me and said ā you donāt understand a thing weāre saying, do you.ā I knew that was targeted at ne because she was looking directly at me, and talked slowly. I was able to basically say, I understood very little. She laughed and the conversation went on without me. But i did learn how to better pronounce Beijing Mandarin that day
I get stared at quite a lot in Beijing, it is entertaining to me. Iām generally wearing sunglasses so they canāt see that i see then. But take the sunglasses off, all of a sudden they are looking anywhere but at me.
But get rude in Beijing, or anywhere in China, in Mandarin, with my wife there, she will feed back. Beijingren are good at that.
However the frankness i like are things like my Shifu once did. Guy comes to class with a small glass skull, showing it to everybody and talking about how it sat for 24 hours near the famous crystal skull. And how much energy you could feel. He handed it to my shifu, who then said āfeels like cold stoneā then handed it to meā¦. He was right. I guess it is the brutal honesty I appreciate.
