Member-only story
CULTURE
Men Across Cultures All Care About Their ‘Size’
A Beijing taxi driver talked dirty to me
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This is a funny story that I didn’t find funny when it happened.
After having lived in the U.S. and Europe, I thought I was more sexually open compared to people living in Mainland China until I moved to Beijing in 2001.
I was communications director for a French-Chinese joint venture business in Beijing from October 2001 to March 2003. Most of my friends were expats during that time, unlike when I worked in Shanghai, where I had expat friends and friends from different Chinese provinces.
Discrimination happens
Beijing people, like many people from the capital of their countries, tend to look down on their compatriots from other cities, especially if they are from the south. People who don’t roll their tongue when speaking Mandarin are discriminated against. I had to learn to sound like them for a while.
During my time in Beijing, whenever expats got together, a large part of their conversation was their complaints about Beijing taxi drivers because it was hard to give them directions. Most of them were amateurs who didn’t know the roads…
