When I first landed on American land, I had two impressions. The air is clean and the sky is blue. Everywhere you look, it's almost completely covered by green. I know how people grow to neglect this, because after a while, I have been starting to take it for granted. From where I come from, China of course, this is better than most of the places and some might say it's better than the best of the places.

The reason why the land here is better even than the best of the places in China is because of my second impression—friendly American people. A land is meaningless without its people. I am Chinese. There is no way to make me think that the Chinese are inherent bad or inferior. I am not proud to be a Chinese but I do not think I should be embarrassed to be one. Yes, that’s on the moral or nature ground. Practically speaking, being a Chinese in China is embarrassing, especially when you can set your eyes beyond the borders of China.

The westerners are hugely impressed with the friendliness of the Chinese. This impression may be fading a little bit. But nonetheless it is TRUE, to the form and heart. Many thus conclude that the Chinese people are friendly people. This conclusion is simply wrong, again to the form and heart. The hundred-year colonial time had left the Chinese a birth mark. This mark says “respect the white men”. A Chinese leader will openly denounce everything associated with “the white men”, but if you are indeed white, you will ALWAYS underestimate the respect he shows you. The Chinese people may be the least friendly people on earth, toward their own kind.

I used to pay local folks to get directions to where I wanted to go. The direction might be simple as a left turn plus a right turn. You pay for service and there is some fairness in the exchange. The worst part comes when you drink or eat too much. You’ll need a restroom or a toilet to solve your problem. It is not too hard to find one in a big city because sometimes the signs for restroom or toilet might be the most prominent ones. You pay at the door and that’s why keeping changes on hand is so important. Chinese women on average carry bigger hand bags because they usually carry loads of tissue paper. In the majority of places, you should not expect toilet paper in restrooms. The restroom keepers readily supply them at a premium price—another reason to carry changes on hand.

In most of the places when you pay, you get better services. This is reversed in many occasions in China. In situations where you have to pay, such as going to a restroom, or seeing a doctor, or getting your visa from the American embassy, they charge you a premium price, non-negotiable of course and they can always lower the service quality to the bare minimum. There is nothing worse than going to a paid restroom in China. It’s absolutely horrible. There you know why people invented nose plug. On the other hand, the free ones such those at home or in hotels and airports are much better.

Well, why do I have to mention the U.S. embassy when I discuss the unfriendliness of Chinese people? I am in U.S., am I not? The Chinese people are smart, so are the Americans. The Chinese embassies charge U.S. citizens a lot of money for services they provide. It is a monopoly game and you pay whatever they charge. The American embassies charge the Chinese citizen back, pretending that they never heard of purchasing power parity or concepts like that. When they cite reciprocity as a fundamental diplomatic principle, fairness grows in your heart. The critical challenge comes when you realize that the American government is no different than the Chinese government if they are on Chinese land. The Chinese governmental agencies try hard to extract money from Chinese citizens. Any excuse that sounds like one will be one. The American embassies run in a similar fashion.

For a Chines-ized American embassy, you do business the Chinese way. You pay to call them to make appointments with them. Of course you cannot conduct business with them without the appointments. And you always have to buy more minutes than you actually need for the calls. When it’s time to line up for your appointments, you stand in line and wait in the street, for a long time. There are chairs, symbolically for a few people and never intended for even a significant proportion of all waiting in line. You pass the tightest security guards and wait again in a compact room. The best thing is that now you finally get a spot to sit down. The people who serve you are by nature friendly. But the setting is again threatening and embarrassing. The officers are well protected by shielded windows and you hand in materials through a curved crack under the shield. Now I have to remind you, diplomatic reciprocity no longer plays, either economically or service wise. Americans are treated completely differently on American soil by the Chinese government—they get the respect they deserve, there is no shielded windows, and they are never required to pay to call or even to call to start with.

OK. What’s the newest story of unfriendliness? Please look at the picture below. The sign on the window pane reads “This driver refuses to provide ANY help. Your having a baby, a car accident, a stroke, an electric shock, or a drowning, or especially a stomach ache, are of no concern to me.”



The Chinese government charge heavy taxes and fees for taxi licenses. As a result, many risk-takers choose to operate their taxi business underground. The government is trying to crack down on them. There are huge monetary benefits to the government agencies that oversee such operations. They hire undercover agents to seek out those unlicensed taxies. Those undercover agents are not trained and mostly hired on temporary basis. Many of the undercover agents pretend to be in an emergent situation as mentioned on the sign. Sympathetic drivers stop to provide help and offer to take them to desired locations without realizing the trap. They are to be stopped by police and accused of illegal taxi operation. The undercover agents make false accusations because of the reward and the police beat the drivers into admitting the crime and subsequently paying for the heavy penalty. The police, the agents, and anyone involved in this operation are to divide among themselves of the large profits extracted out of innocent and friendly Chinese. This has happened in one of the most advanced cities in China, Shanghai. Shanghai in recent season had declared a success in cracking down on illegal taxi operations and collected hundreds of millions of yuan in penalty—the matter is how much of this penalty is out of blackmailing the innocent citizens.

The Chinese are trapped into unfriendliness. No one with power can claim innocence, not the Chinese government, not the common Chinese people, and not even the U.S. government on Chinese soil.

I was meeting a group of friends at a fine restaurant. A small child approached me for money. Before I had the time to reach for my pocket, my friends, several of them, jumped to my protection. They shouted at and scolded the child and someone who came and escorted the child away.

China is the ugliest country in the world where being friendly is no longer possible.