Maybe you haven’t heard: Chinese people love taking pictures of Laowai - foreigners in China. So basically I’ve been living the life of an undercover celeb for the past two months.
I’m impressed by the boldness strangers have, asking for my photo. But I love when guys try to be sneaky about it. Like they just happen to be using their phone at that angle directed straight at me, and that darn light won’t stop flashing.
So that’s when I strike my signature sexy pose. And they're caught. They blush. Then they ask me to pose again, this time with their girlfriend/spouse/child/infant/grandma/smoking buddy, and then of course with them.
We started a game called “take pictures of people taking pictures of you.” Like this bus driver for example. No, not our bus driver. He’s driving a bus next to ours.
But this, THIS is when you know it’s bad.
One rainy morning in Yangshuo I walked into a bakery. While browsing the sweet delectables, I noticed a table of middle-aged Chinese people watching me. “Excuse me,” said a woman at the table holding a large camera. She motioned me over.
Here we go again.
Right as I was about to say, “Sure I can take a photo with you,” she asked, “Is this you?”
I looked at the camera screen and saw a picture of me from a few days earlier. I was doing my signature sexy pose while hiking in Longji, a mountain village in the middle of nowhere. They have not one, but oodles of pictures of me on their camera. For REAL?!
“You make me feel like a celebrity!” I said.
“Yes!” they agreed, “We really like you!”
A similar experience happened in here in Changzhou, when a girl showed me pics of me she had on her phone from weeks ago. Creepy? or Awesome? I say awesome.
I just wonder…what do they do with these pictures? “Hey dude, check out this white girl I saw at the grocery store.” “Ahhh…Ni Hao Ma.” [in a sultry Chinese voice]
Is it really that exciting? Maybe I’ll start asking for photos with every Asian person I run across in America and see how it goes.
