Look, I get it, I'm foreign. Can you please stop staring at me now?
Random Chinese people staring at me when I'm in public is nothing new to me. I've been in China for a long time now and every single time I've wandered out of my apartment, various street-walkers and store-shoppers have made a point to stare at me like I've got a dick growing out of my forehead. It's not just a glance, either. It's not the same stare I'd make if I saw a freak or weirdo, or, say, some massive cleavage. I take a glance, absorb the freakness as quickly as possible (in the case of cleavage, I might take a bit longer to absorb the image for later use), and look away. These people stare, hard.
I don't know if it's just that it's summer time and more people are out roaming the streets or if I've just become so dashingly handsome that people feel like they're looking at a living god and can't bear to look way; but the local Chinese people have been staring at me hardcore for the past few months. Like I'm-going-to-drop-what-I'm-doing and stare-at-this-dude-and-when-he-walks-away-I'm-going-to-continue-staring-until-I-can't-see-him-anymore" type staring.
Most of the time I just shrug it off, I realize that I'm different and this is not America where everyone looks distinctly different from one another. But it can be aggravating in the supermarket when people accidently ram my shopping cart with their's because they're looking at me and not where they're going. And it also can be a little ridiculous. Last time I was in Harbin, a midget stared me down like I was the one that looked odd. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was like three feet tall and his head was huge, so he probably gets the stare-down all the time too.
Today, the staring became a liability. As I walked to Frigga, the local supermarket (frigga please!), an old man came out of one of the shops and started heading toward me while looking at his phone. When he looked up and saw me, he actually stopped walking. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his head following me as I walked passed him. This kind of annoyed me, as it was the first stop-and-stare since my return from vacation. I kept walking. Ahead of me, a boy, probably around 12 years old was riding his bike in my direction. There was no one else on the sidewalk around him so he was weaving his bike back and forth from curb to curb. When his eyes caught me, he too started staring as he continued to maneuver his bike in a zig-zag as if he was trying to escape a crocodile attack (or was that debunked on Mythbusters?). Somehow, he was so engrossed in staring at me that his brain failed to realize that my body actually exists in the physical world and was in fact directly in front of him. At the last second, he swerved, scraping his handlebars across my arm and causing me to drop my bag. He, virtually unfazed, kept riding, still staring back at me. As I reached to pick up my bag, I looked back down the sidewalk at him and we locked eyes. That's when he slammed into the old man, who was also STILL STARING AT ME. The old guy fell to the ground, the kid flew off his bike and skidded on the ground. I briefly thought about going over to them but I realized I don't know Chinese for "Serves you right, you douchebags."
On my walk back home from Frigga, I noticed some blood on the ground from where the kid bounced across the pavement.
That'll learn 'em.
