White skin can be missleading.

I'm working on getting internet access at the house so I can upload a few articles I've put allot of time into writing lately. I haven't been able to put the time into uploading and formatting from the office lately. The internet guys only work from 10 to 4 and won't come out if it's raining as I learned at lunch today (it's raining).

A funny 1st: I stopped in Ningbo Saturday night to hang out with a friend; I was on the way back from a meeting in Shanghai on Saturday. We went to another supermarket in Ningbo in my quest for a western style filing cabinet, you know, the ubiquitous cabinets that let you keep paperwork oriented vertically in thin folders. I've gone through that description a dozen times just after someone has led me to the cabinets they use here. Clamping binders or stacks of thin plastic drawers are most common. In my opinion it is a very inefficient use of space, and based on looking at even the most organized desks in the company, I can tell they don't work very well.

So I was in the office section of Achuan (pronounced allot like Ocean) supermarket and saw a couple of white guys, so guessing they were European or American I asked in English if they knew where I could get a filing cabinet. The guy I asked turned to his friends, one a Chinese guy and asked him in Chinese what I was asking him for. It quickly occurred to me that their Chinese was much better than their English. My Chinese friend, Ray, who accompanied me, who speaks excellent mid-western sounding English, was also taken by surprise. So when I again asked the white guys, this time in Chinese, if he knew new where I could get a filing cabinet both the whity and Ray answered. It was a friendly surprise, the guys spoke a little English but were from Turkey and spoke very good Chinese. They told me about a big office supply store I plan on looking at next weekend. Occasionally I am asked if I am from the Xinjian Province or other provinces where there is a large indigenous Russian or Caucasian presence.

Later that evening I met some Russians who didn't speak any English. It's still kinda odd to me when I speak to someone who looks like they could be my neighbor in Arkansas and we have to use Chinese.