Foreigners

Last week I was in the US on a business trip, in Colorado more precisely. I had to go to Denver to run an errand, and passed a Chinese restaurant, in a blue collar neighborhood.  I was missing Chinese food, and I thought I might even practice some Chinese. So, I went in, talked to the owner, who seemed a little disoriented, perhaps hearing a white person speaking Chinese.

 But, the interesting thing was the customers.  A group of Hispanics sat in one corner.  An African American man, who I guess was from the Caribbean was ordering. And a couple of average looking white men sat in the booth beside me.

And it struck me, how this is one thing that's very different from my experience in China. In China, I am the foreigner, and it's obvious, because I look really different from 99.9% of the population. But in America, the concept of foreigner is very different - nearly all of us, or our ancestors were once foreigners.