Molson Hart

I wasn't a patriotic American until I went and lived in China. It also taught me a lot about racism. There were times that my mind, if I let it, would wrongly blame my problems on racism. There were also times were racism was the problem. https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1179770029887410176 …

One time I went to register at the local police station in a tier 3 city (foreigners must do this). My chinese was quite poor at the time (still kinda is, but is better now) and there were 4 cops smoking cigarettes playing majiang. The first thing I heard was "Laowai"

, which is a semi-impolite term in China for white foreigner. That set off a very interesting set of events requiring me to flee the country the next day. I learned a lot about life that day.

I'll explain briefly what happened. 1. I didn't get about being called Laowai. That doesn't bother me. 2. I ended up getting shaken down by corrupt cops for a very significant amount of money. 3. I also lost my lease. https://twitter.com/JohnMoneySucks/status/1179782225757446145 …

4. The cops attempted to shake down my landlord. Who used connections to make the problem go away. The landlord with the cops then invalidated my lease and kept my 3 months of security deposit 5. I got interrogated for about 4 hours in the police station. Then I was made to wait.

7. Anyways, the cops finally let me go home after I paid them 4000 RMB for "not registering with the local police bureau on time". I had 24 hours to vacate my apartment. 8. I thought about it and I realized that I was in a bit of trouble so I took a black car to Shenyang.

9. I bought a plain ticket in cash to the first country I could that would take Americans without a visa. That was South Korea and I proceeded to spend 2 weeks in Incheon. In summary, I could definitely have handled it better, but I never got pissed about being called laowai.