Picture this with me…

You are enjoying a quiet, peaceful morning at McDonald’s with two steaming hot pancakes and a beautiful cup of burnt coffee.  You’ve got the iPod in and you’re reading a book you’ve been looking forward to for weeks.  Then, out of nowhere, the guy who chose to sit three feet from you when the whole restaurant is empty decides that NOW is the perfect time to groom his fingernails.  In my world, this process takes about two minutes and it takes place in the comfort of my own bathroom.  Not in China.  Here, they clip those nails anywhere and everywhere and on this particular day at McDonald’s it took him 30 minutes.  Maybe i’m too American.  Maybe i’m too soft.  Maybe i’m just weird.  But i was so grossed out that i took one more sip of coffee and then i had to leave.

Then three days later it happened again, but at a different place.  What is with people clipping their nails in public?  Someone please, please, please explain to me what the deal is.  I’m a culturally sensitive person and i show a lot of patience when stuff happens that i don’t understand.  But come on, 30 minutes to clip your fingernails while sitting in a public restaurant?

Responses?

My Chinese is not great by any stretch, but i know how to get around a city and i have a decent vocabulary.  But when i get in a taxi in Beijing they look at me like i’m making up my own language.  They don’t even want to try to understand.  And when we do get going in the right direction it is awkwardly silent the whole way.  My questions are quickly answered with short grunts that scream, “LEAVE ME ALONE!”  

Today, after asking a driver to take me to the “dong men” (the east gate) of a particular location he looked at me like i was an idiot and literally begged me to get out of his taxi and find another one.  People who have been in China for one day know how to say “dong men.”  What was this guy’s deal?

I blame it on the olympics and all the dumb foreigners who yelled at taxi drivers with stupid crap like, “TAKE ME TO THE BIRD’S NEST”…. “TTTHHHEEE BBBBIIIRRRRDDDDSSSS NNNNEEESSSSTTTT”

So now, when innocent “locals” like me want to go somewhere we get treated like garbage because the drivers are fed up with dealing with arrogant foreigners.  I think this is terrible, i want the nice drivers who like to ask me what i think of Beijing, if i can use chopsticks and if i have a wife.  To which i promptly answer, “Beijing is great. Yes, chopsticks rock. And No, i don’t have a wife… Do you?”