Race Relations in Shanghai?

I just read a Chinese traveller's diary on the web. This guy walked through USA on foot from the west to the east, he was stared in small towns in the deep South as if he was coming from the Mars.

I just read a Chinese traveller's diary on the web. This guy walked through USA on foot from the west to the east, he was stared in small towns in the deep South as if he was coming from the Mars.

Yeah,probably it was becuase he was walking and must have been lookign weird after da long walk. 

Yeah, interesting, we have always debated whether it is curiosity, ignorance, or racist feeling that our chinese friends have in the stares they give us. I want to share two touching experiences I was an eye witness to.

There is this unique experience I had in Beijing. It was my first year there and I wanted to go to the Tian 'amen square so badly for that is the heart of China. Then the day I picked to go there was October 4th (the national holiday). The strange thing is, a lot of Beijingners don't go to the Tian'amen square, so the huge crowd you see is made up of Chinese from other provinces and foreigners. I was admiring the flowers (they are exaggerated during such holidays) but hadn't noticed the crowd that was following me. Then I found a good spot for a picture with the famous Mao's picture in the background, so I asked my colleague (Chinese) to give me a shot. That's when I became world number one award winner at least for the two minutes I stood there with hundreds of people taking several shots of me. At first thought I wanted to run away but looking at the horse-shoe shaped limited space I had in front of me I thought may be a smile would do. I smiled and raised my two fingers (the victory sign commonly found on pictures in China). Shots were repeated again and someone threw me a small chinese flag stuck to a splint to complete the portrait they were trying to make of me. Jeez! I always look at that picture till date and laugh but my greatest wish is to have had someone take a picture of that huge crowd shooting me.
Now, you can call that 'happy stares' or 'stares that make one feel good and proud of being' but there is another kind of stare someone refered to in this thread. I can again present that through another experience lived in the same city.

Here we are on the subway going back home after a busy day teaching, my friend Chris (from New York / black) and I. We are talking bla bla bla. There is this Chinese parent with his kid (about 7years old) standing not very far from us. The little girl is crying and pulling the dad's shirt: Apparently he had denied the child something so the child was angry. After trying in vain to stop her from crying the man said in chinese: 'ok look over there! you see those two people standing there, if you don't stop crying I will tell them to come and catch you.' As others gave us renewed stares it had the desired effect on the kid. The kid immediately stopped crying and grabbed the man's pants in fright. Well, I hadn't understood it but Chris had, since his chinese is pretty good. My friend Chris is the kind of guy who doesn't take that kind of shit. Amidst the stares he walked right over to the man and said to him in chinese that we were not animals or monsters but human beings and asked him what lesson he was teachiing the little girl to grow up with. The man was as shocked as you won't imagine and got off at the next stop. I could swear that was not his stop.
Now that's the other kind of stare I am talking about, that which makes you sick and want to leave as soon as possible.
So, folks, the stares may not be as empty as you think.
Cheers!

I had the same experience when I went to Beijing for the first time, Bridge.  Another thing that surprised me was when I was at the top of the Great wall at Ba Da Ling that people coming up there looked at me as if they thought all along Black people were at the top of the Great Wall.  The look was like "so that's what's up here"  it made me laugh.

I have also had people point me out to their kids...I hate that. 

The stares are never empty , though some people in here try to back it up and so on..but we all know it's bullshit an fake back ups

You know what, if they stare we call them racists.  If they didn't stare, we'd think there was something wrong with us and call them a bunch of racists anyway.  The whole staring thing is overrated.

I wonder if someone out there would dare to say Chinese are non-racists! As to whether the stares have a racist meaning, it just depends. There are many kinds of stares. Some stare with hate, some stare with curiousity, some stare with doubt, some stare with admiration. If you are sensitive, you will easily know what kind of stare they are giving you.
Back in Africa 30years ago, I couldn't help staring at the first white man I met in our village parish. But my friends and I were staring out of curiosity and doubt. We had a thousand questions in our little minds then about the white man. We had stories like 'the white man might have had a fire accident that turned his skin into that color.' My cousins who were older than me confirmed that Ghosts looked exactly like whites. (In most African societies Ghosts are thought to be white). So staring in itself is not as bad as we say. It's a human reflex. Human eyes widen up and fix on anything that looks strange or different from what is seen on a daily basis. But since the chinese practise discrimination based on skin color in fields like employment, love, etc, people (Blacks) therefore relate (rightly or wrongly) the stares they receive to racism.
Peace folks.