These are the worst type of stories. The. Worst. What we have is a foreigner and Chinese person arguing at Sanya Airport in Hainan province. (What is it with Sanya? We saw another foreigner and Chinese person tussle earlier.) The foreigner, wearing a fannypack, accuses the Chinese of cursing and “beating” him. The Chinese — or whoever is the one filming — later posts this nationalistic tripe on Youku (a video that’s been viewed 225,000 times in the last 12 hours):
Laowai is “beaten” at Sanya Airport: look at the laowai’s logic, he absolutely loses it after being lightly touched, doesn’t reflect on his own mistake, critically examine himself — wake a little, laowai, China is strong now!
The story, if you believe the laowai speaking mangled Mandarin, is that he was “beaten” and laughed at (“laughed at,” in this case, rendered as “ha ha ha ha ha”). He admits to smoking — “I was wrong” — but then claims that the other guy cursed him first, which was enough to set off this firestorm.
He says Ni you ha ha ha wo – “you laughed at me” — three times. The first time, I thought it was the worst line of Chinese I’ve ever heard.
By the third time, I was laughing. Andy Kauffman would be proud of this guy.
Some Chinese dude, falling so, so hard for the laowai’s real-life trolling, begins snapping, “China’s already strong now! China’s alreay strong now!” Meanwhile, the laowai chirps that he doesn’t want to listen.
A police officer politely informs the man that they can look at surveillance footage. “Very good,” the foreigner says. “You can watch him beat me.”
“Don’t get agitated,” the officer says, reasonably.
“Everyone ha ha ha me…”
It goes on like this for another half-minute before the video mercifully stops. The. Worst.
(H/T Reddit)
The foreigner is using his phone to record the incident as well, but looks like he started it later so we probably still won’t see what set the whole thing off if his version gets released. Not sure what “China is strong” has to do with any of it, though.
Although I couldn’t bring myself to watch the video, what gives me hope for the future is that there are way more comments blasting the “China is strong!” guy than bashing foreigners other than this one. One guy even suggests stopping the use of “laowai” because lumping them all together makes Chinese look provincial! I would’ve expected Youku comments to be on par with Youtube comments, not a virtual bastion of enlightenment compared to most places I torture myself with.
Also, “the American imperialists have deceived us again, Saddam Hussein isn’t dead at all” made me laugh.
Wo yo hahaha!