"Coffee, milk, tea" for the Laowai

Laowai = Lao3 wai4 = 老外＝ old outsider = foreigner

I was taking my usual metro ride from Longyang Rd. out in Pudong back to the Shanghai Indoor Stadium in Puxi. This requires me to get on metro line 2 and transfer to metro line 4 at Century Avenue. That’s the logistics of it all and is not the point of this story.

The time that I spend on line 2 is not that long since it is a quick transfer over to line 4. Line 4 is where all standing and waiting takes place. I had brought along reading [“The Return of the God of Wealth”] for Dr. Kim’s class so that I can at least be somewhat productive during an otherwise very unproductive time (unless you count NOT toppling over being productive. But I believe I have perfected the “Shanghai Metro Stand”). I step onto the metro 4 car, find a spot (standing of course), make it my own and pull out my book. This is where the story starts.

So there’s a guy, I would say probably mid 20s, early 30s, standing near me. Initially he is standing with his side to me, but he somehow turned so that he was facing me directly because he noticed my book. I am reading, but he makes his movements kind of obvious that he was taking something out of his backpack. I pause to look up because I am a naturally curious person. It was a stack of papers ... written in English. I thought maybe he was an ABC or some sort of business person (I’m always on the look out for those because I want to make contacts). Then I quickly realized he wanted to make sure that I knew that he was also doing something with English words.

He makes it a point to make sure that I saw that he was holding ENGLISH papers. Papers with ENGLISH printed on it. I do not think that it’s that big of a deal so I go back to reading my book. So I’m standing there reading and occasionally taking notes (all while standing on a moving metro I must add) and he is flipping through his papers and holding it up at such an angle so that it is quite noticeable. At one point he stops to roll up his sleeves and extends one of his arms to the point where the papers are knocking into my hands for a few seconds. I guess he wanted to informally compete to see who knew more English. I’m sorry fella, but I think I would pwn you. Quite easily too.

I am still reading but at the same time find this situation creepily funny. I was ignoring him but I could feel his eyes on me. Because I have to look up occasionally when people step on and off the metro, I noticed that he had taken his cell phone out. He might have been text messaging, but the way he was holding it kind of looked like he was using the camera phone ... on me. I just pretended to “sway” to the side and tried to hide behind a girl who was now standing somewhat between us. Next comes the best part where everyone that I had told the story to started laughing because of the pure hilarity and randomness of it all.

My stop is announced so I put my book and notes away in my backpack. In the back of my mind I’m wondering whether he would also get off at the same stop. Lo and behold, he does. I see him walk across the platform to look at the map of the metro going in the opposite direction. By now, I had joined the massive crowd of people funneling onto the escalator to get to the main floor. I’m squishing and squashing and as soon as I step onto the first step of the escalator, I hear from behind a low voice right above my right ear ...

“coffee, milk, tea...”

omgosh! it was the same guy! He was not whispering sweet nothings to me, he was whispering “coffee, milk, tea” to me! I did not know whether to laugh, run, or turn around and ask him what the deal was. I was stuck on the escalator so I kept facing forward. Inside, I was laughing and creeped out at the same time. I was also very confused. Did he really want to prove to me that he knew English? Was he practicing his English on me? And then I started laughing inside because I found it amusing that someone had made the discovery that I was a foreigner and was trying so hard to impress the foreigner. In the words of Karol N, “I guess that’s what white people get all the time, huh?”

p.s. Originally I heard him say “coffee, milk, cheese” but Sina said he was probably saying “coffee, milk, tea” ... which makes more sense. Though “cheese” would have made this story even funnier. I guess he needs to work on his pronunciation.