[quote=“Vannyel”]acearle -
Sorry to hear about your darkroom…good luck with the negatives…
As for not knowing anything about the south, I spent the better part of 45 years in the south - I might even guess that I know more southerners than you do but this isn’t a pissing contest. 
As for people mixing and mingling - you discarded the qualifying ‘whatsoever’ in my statement. 
Very funny! :bravo:[/quote]
Doh! I was wading and typing and reading all at the same time…I guess then you know how complex and fascinating the south can be then (45 years here, 45 years there, pretty soon you’ll have spent some REAL time there
). Funny thing is that the south has a lot in common with Taiwan in many ways (errr, are we all living in the Ozarks of China?). I think you have about 3% more jackasses per 1,000 people than…err…in the North? Wait a minute, I just thought about that, nix that. In any case, maybe the jackasses are more agrressive in being jackasses. You also have the nice folks…the ones that you (or maybe I should just say “I”) don’t notice because I am too busy being pissed off at the jackass (who has just gone WAY out of his way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mr. Darwin was WRONG). Odd thing about Southern politics/families (is there a difference, lol) is that my dad’s family split into two distinct and seperate lines in 1965/6ish over civil rights. The first time the two sides met after that was 1985 and everyone was on their best behavior (except the crazy aunt that was trying to marry me off to my second cousin, cute girl, “relatively” speaking…you get my point).
So, what does this have to do with the topic at hand (and, by the way, negatives are now blow dried, books are sitting in a room with a AC on full and a dehumidifier…wierd thing is that the darkroom is on the second floor, the water was seeping through the concrete)…the incessant calling of non Chinese (even non-Chinese Asians are waiguoren) definitely, as Flicka (did I get that right? too lazy to go look at the spelling) shows a twisted world view of having our beloved host culture as the center of the known universe. I’m nearing 40, with well over a quarter of my life spent here, and a total of 1/3+ spent outside the U.S… After as long as I have been here, you’d THINK that some of my neighbors (been in this location 2 years now) would have gotten tired of “waiguoren” but it hasn’t happened. In the U.S., my Chinese wife also found the refering to Americans as waiguoren to be comical in its stupidity. Now, the people who do the pointing and catcalling are, in a word, the hicks of the area (which in my case explains the behavior of 60=70% of my neighbors). I don’t get it as much in cities or other places where people have actually figured out that it is the 20th century (we’ll worry about the 21st later, one step at a time).
I went up to Yeh Liu and had my eyes opened a touch (as if I really needed it) at the dolphin show. It was a great show, and I HIGHLY recommend it to ANYONE (especially if you speak Chinese, it was one of the funniest shows I’ve seen anywhere). It opened with a brilliant dolphin act (people were as funny as the critters), then went on to a delightful show with two seals. What do you follow a couple of great animal acts with? Well, a foreigner act, of course
. It struck me that people were watching the foreigners in the same way they had been watching the seals, as a zoo exhibit (not everyone, but enough of a percentage that the observation made by some that foreigners are tantamount to some strange critter that managed to get loose seemed true).
I think when I am back in the U.S., I’ll point to someone from Taiwan and scream at the top of my lungs “ALIEN!” Gee…I wonder what the reaction would be? Better make sure my insurance is paid up
).
Now (I’m rambling, I know)…as to different people not being able to get along, my wife and I have managed to survive 12 years of marriage with no fatalities. For the most part, I let her be her, and she lets me be me. I say nothing when she goes to the local shrine and makes offerings for good business (I think it is a waste of time in reality, but important because it gives her a sense of well being). Her father decided when the new business should open for luck, I don’t think the time has anything to do with it, but it makes him happy. I do all sorts of things that they think are nuts, such as keeping a business open that is not profitable longer than 3-6 months. It took a year or so for our school to become profitable, and for 6 months they scratched their heads and wondered why I was throwing money down a deep hole. We all get along fine. My American family looks at some of what I do, and shake their heads in wonder, we still get along. The trick to two people of differing backgrounds getting along is not getting caught up in the right/wrong thing. More often than not, both people are right and wrong and ALSO right and wrong at the same time. I’m VERY easy to get along with until someone takes a poke at me or someone I know (but people who have known me a long time know not to do this).
So, my sister in law asked me “When will your photography business turn a profit?” I responded “2-4 years.” She responded “Crazy foreigner likes to waste money.” To which I responded “Crazy Chinese doesn’t know how to be patient.” She laughed and went home. We are different, we get along. The differences are entertaining.