China Hand writes,

even after 21 years as a family member they will still talk me about in the third person as �the gweilo' in Cantonese during meals....Once when I told my brother-in-law off for the �third person� thing � my wife was angry with me for losing his face. Gweilo are not expected to have any face.

Funny, I wonder if it's a Cantonese thing or what. In my experience, with Taiwanese people, speaking Mandarin (and not even Taiwanese), I'm considered practically Chinese. Only on those occasions when I do something un-Chinese do my wife's relatives give me the benefit of the doubt as a waiguoren.


Also from China Hand: His teacher told him

that anyone in MacArthur's China monitoring unit would have seen the clear change in the propaganda line as MacArthur approached the 39th parallel. From the early fiercely anti-US imperialism line, China then began to make clear, albeit subtly, that China would not intervene if MacArthur halted at the 39th parallel.

Yow! So we should have wiped out the North Korean Commies when we had a chance! On the other hand, I've heard some sinologists claim that it was the Korean war that radicalized the Chinese Communists. I wonder what the truth is.