我有个非洲来的同学很有意思。他读过毛选五卷，还有个“红宝书”。
起先，他看我趾高气扬的，以为我是个日本人，没理我。后来一起做项目，才知道我是中国人。我立马成了他关于中国“十万个为什么”的专家了。
他对毛泽东的一生佩服的五体投地。对于他来说，毛泽东一农民的孩子成了全世界劳苦大众的精神领袖，那就是耶稣再世，上帝下凡了。
有一次，这个非洲同学问我，中国的奴隶制度是什么样的。黑人在中国会是什么样？
这个其实问题太大，太难回答。
我因为出国前工作性质的原因，受过这方面的训练，说大道理那是琅琅上口。就跟他说些中国过去是多么黑暗，现在新中国了，我们中国人同黑人是同志加兄弟，如此云云。
他信以为真，说既然如此，将来我一定要给他介绍一个中国MM。
我先是一愣，又不好拒绝，就跟他说，毛主席说了，要知道梨子的滋味，就要亲口尝一尝。言下之意，您还是自己找吧，我这还有事儿，忙着呐。
“WHERE CAN I FIND A CHINESE WOMEN？” 他觉得有道理，还认真上了。
“CHINA TOWN。“ 我说。
他还真去了。
后来听他说，去了CHINA TOWN， 发现老中们都不爱搭理他。
我知道会是这个结果，就跟他说，也许在美国的华人都白人化了, 真正了解中国和中国人，要到中国去一次才行。
他听了觉得有道理，决定去中国一次。
到了中国，他发EMAIL给我，说中国实在太大，太复杂了。他说中国比他想象的更西方化，而不是他心中第三世界人民的圣地。
我说，你太古董了，毛泽东早死了，他代表的哪个时代早结束了。时代在前进，社会在发展，人民在变化了。你没有经历毛泽东的时代，不知道什么是精神折磨和物质贫乏，你只是看他的书，崇拜他的人，觉得他是你的神。你所追求的那些都是空的。同第三世界国家的结合，对于今天的中国来说，经济利益大慨要多于政治利益吧。
他说，难到中国要变成象美国这样的霸权主义和资本主义的国家吗？那第三世界的人民什么时候才能翻身，中国只管自己富起来，不要穷兄弟了吗。
我说你这问题太大，你还是找找看，有没有自己喜欢的中国MM吧。
他说，中国人都不喜欢黑人，我看他们的眼神和对我说话的态度就知道了，中国的女孩子不喜欢黑人。我在美国没有经历的歧视，在中国到经历了。
我说，你太敏感了，没人知道你是谁，有什么理想，对毛泽东如何崇拜，如何热爱中国。中国人民是好客的，了解到你以后，会喜欢你的。
他不同意，说，其实从陌生人对陌生人之间的关系，才能显示出一个民族的素质。没想到中国人这么不喜欢黑人。
我真是无言以对。在美国，黑人没少抢劫中餐馆和打华人的劫。美国的黑人对亚裔也没少歧视。反过头来老说别人歧视他们的还是黑人。不过，美国的黑人也是有差别的，美国的黑人同非洲的黑人是有很多区别的。我有几个美国的黑人朋友，也认识的很多非洲来的黑人。我很想知道他们，特别是非洲黑人对中国和中国人的看法，就记录下我这个非洲同学的看法。
无独有偶，有个朋友推荐了一篇一个据说是黑人写的自己在中国的经历。我把它转贴到这里。
文章写的非常好，其中对中国普通老百姓的描述可以说是入骨三分。最精彩的是对他自己复杂心里的描述和同一个退伍军人的对话。
用这位退伍军人的话说，现在的国人，钱是多了，但缺乏为人的好素质，这点还不如非洲的黑人。中国老百姓对外面的世界的了解，都是借助于官方的媒体，没有比较，过于自信。作为一个热爱中国学过中文美国人，作者所表达的思想和感受，值得我们好好读一读。
The loneliest man in China
In a nondescript rural restaurant, an expat is humbled by a local's worldly honesty.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Paolo Bacigalupi
The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province.
We were both in a restaurant, looking out at the Yangtze. It was night. I was waiting for a boat to get me out of Wushan town, and out of the Gorges in general. When I had planned my trip, I had imagined how cool it would be to go up the Gorges slowly, taking river taxis between towns and savoring the scenery. Now, many towns later, I was sick of the idea and ready to get out of the countryside and on to Chengdu, a big city with good food, relaxed teahouses and a populace that had grown bored with foreigners and so left them alone.
I kept looking out into the darkness and watching the searchlights on the ships as they came up the river, sweeps of light on blackness, waiting for the one that would get me out of this place.
The woman who ran the restaurant kept telling me that the boat wouldn't come for a while and that I should fangxin, relax (literally, set down my heart); she would warn me when the boat was coming. I didn't see how she could tell one ship from the next any better than I could, and because I'd made the mistake of depending on others to take care of my problems before, I agreed with her that I could relax, and then kept on watching anyway.
The man sitting at the table next to mine had come in earlier and was fed by the woman without his asking or ordering. He had listened with some half interest when the woman's husband came into the restaurant, a little boy howling in tow, and shouted at me all the questions that his wife had asked before when she found out I could speak some Chinese: Where are you from? How old are you? How much money do you earn in America? Your Chinese is very good, he yelled.
Then came The Topics.
Everyone in China knows The Topics. The television stations and newspapers run the same state-generated stories all across the country, and the Chinese form their opinions based on these somewhat controlled sources. This time, the hot topics were how racist Americans were and what imperialist bastards we were for bombing Kosovo. It didn't matter whom I talked to, the conversation inevitably turned to those topics, and the opinions were always the same. It gave me a real respect for the power of state-run media.
The husband finished up the how-shitty-
The man at the next table offered me a cigarette. When I declined, he lit one for himself and put the pack away. He asked quietly, "What do you think of China?"
I thought about possible answers. I thought of the touts who had trailed me that day, trying to convince me to book into a hotel -- and when that failed, vying to sell me a boat ticket out. Their insistence and trailing tactics annoyed me enough that I finally threatened to lead them to the Public Security Bureau and let them do their pitch in front of the cops.
I thought of the confidence scam that had targeted me on a bus, and of the Chinese who had silently watched its progress. When the scam failed and the thieves got off, my fellow bus riders said that the thieves weren't local, but that they were afraid to warn me because they didn't know if the strangers carried knives.
I thought of the businessman, riding on my latest river taxi, who had vigorously pursued the Racist American and Kosovo Topics, getting red in the face and talking loudly and so fast that I only understood half of what he said, even though I could guess the rest from his expression. Undoubtedly, he would have been even angrier if we had met two weeks later, after we bombed his embassy. Then again, two weeks later, I would have lied and told him I was Canadian.
I thought about those experiences and another fistful like them and then said enthusiastically, "China's great!"
In the end, it's what I always say to Chinese people in China. It's what they want to hear: an affirmation of country and culture and a stroke for their nascent sense of superiority, which these days they're nursing into a full-blown complex. "China's great," I said again. "I'm so glad to have a chance to come back here and travel. See new scenery. The Three Gorges are great. Very beautiful."
I'm such a liar.
I'm not proud of it, but I'm a great liar when I travel. I smile and lie and things are smooth. Every once in a while I don't just lie to smooth the way, I lie for fun. Once, I told a taxi driver in Beijing that I'd been studying Chinese for a week. This, after having painfully studied the language for four years and lived and worked (and lied) in Beijing for another year. I think I even told him that Chinese was an easy language to learn. Perhaps most people wouldn't think that's funny, but it was the only time a Chinese person ever told me my Chinese was very good and really meant it.
My restaurant companion looked at me more closely and asked, "And what do you think of the Chinese people?"
Cold and heartless, but nice if you're in their clique of friends. "They're great, too," I said.
"Really?"
Well ... I hedged and said that there were good people and bad people everywhere, and China was no different, but still overall, I liked them. This was actually true, at least on my good days. Then, because I was bored and tired of having the same conversations over and over, I asked about his own opinion of the Chinese people.
He looked at me, and then he looked away. I waited. He wasn't a rich man. Not poor like the transient laborers pouring into China's cities, but also not one of the new rich stomping around China courtesy of the economic reforms. He was wearing green army pants, and a turtleneck, and a leather jacket. Looking at him made me think laobaixing, "old hundred names": China's average man, backbone of the nation.
He said, "I think that we Chinese are lacking in quality."
I managed to say, "Oh," and then sat there feeling like an asshole for lying through the earlier part of our conversation.
I finally got my voice back and asked why he would say such a thing.
He shrugged. "I used to drive trucks. For the army, over in Africa. We were over there building dams, projects like that for the Africans. Water and electricity projects, mostly. The Africans had black hair and black skin, very black skin, and they were poor."
He shook his head thoughtfully, "Qiong de hen." Really poor. "But they were very good to us. We Chinese couldn't compare to them. They were better people. We were richer, but they had more quality. Bi bu shang tamen." We can't beat them.
I've stood on buses in Beijing and watched Chinese people refuse to sit next to an African student no matter how crowded the bus got, and I've talked to people in Kunming who, after accusing me of being a racist American, cheerfully went on to explain how black people were the stupidest people on earth. Of all the foreign devils in China, blacks get the hardest treatment. And now I was sitting with a guy who looked like a peasant, dressed in green cotton army pants and wearing a dirty leather jacket, and who had just said that the Chinese couldn't compare with the Africans. I wondered what it cost a Chinese person to say that anyone, let alone a black African, was better than his own kind.
I finally said, "I've never heard anyone in China say that."
"They haven't gone out of the country," he said. "When you're always in your own country, you don't know what's out there. You can't compare. But after you go, you see clearly. Economically, we Chinese are doing OK. But as people, we lack quality. Nobody here sees it that way. But they haven't gone away. They don't know what it's like on the outside. They can't compare." He shook his head.
I didn't have any answer, but his experience reminded me of going home to America and trying to tell people what I had seen abroad. It made me sad. Sad for his experience, and sad that I had spent so much time blithely lying my way across China, always well-shielded from the Chinese, and now that I was leaving, I had finally found a Chinese person I wanted to know.
We sat together for a while longer while he smoked, and then my boat came, and I left.
Now that I'm back home in America and feel like an alien, I think about him. I think about him sitting in that one-room restaurant, watching the darkness and smoking, surrounded by his countrymen, and all alone.
