All of the scams involved either tea, art, or taxis, all of which I had read about prior to going there (thank God!), and so I was lucky to have avoided being scammed at all (though I’m sure I got ripped off at the market, though that’s another story).

My last day there, I was tired of people with fake smiles coming up to me to “practice their English,” so when it happened again I responded in French saying I didn’t speak English, and the girl started speaking in French! She said she also spoke Spanish. It’s a shame these people can’t get better work using those language skills…

So, don’t feel stupid for falling for the scam and keep quite. Go back, preferably with a chinese friend, threaten them and get your money back.

White men in the US are still mortally afraid of the Black man’s sexuality.

That is why you will very rarely see a Black man and a White woman paired in a sexual relationship in an American movie, despite Black male/White female parings being extremely commonplace in American society.

Even Denzel Washington, who is considered a sex-symbol by many Americans, very rarely has any type of sexual relations with White women on screen, for fear of upsetting White sensibilities. The screenplay for the movie “The Pelican Brief” was actually changed from a love story to a non-love story to allow Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts to be paired opposite each other. This article explains a little more. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/skingame.html

It obviously just doesn’t extend to Black men. The closest Zhou Runfa got to Jodie Foster in the movie Anna and the King was kissing her hand at the very end of the movie. Think about it, an American movie where on screen sexuality is so prevalent, and the the closest a male lead gets to his female partner in a love story is a kiss on the hand.

On the other hand, White males being paired with woman of other races is hugely popular in American cinema, eg. “The Bodyguard”, any movie with Lucy Liu or almost any other Asian actress for that matter.

I would almost go as far as to say the reason the US cannot solve many of it’s racial problems is because of the White man’s fear of the Black man’s sexuality. I believe the White man fears that once Blacks have economic equality with White men in America, the White man will lose even more of their women to Black men.

The history of America suggests that this may be true. It has been argued that Jim Crow laws around the turn of the 20th Century were formulated out of a fear of the Black man’s sexuality. Emmett Till, a young boy, was brutally murdered in the 1950’s for merely whistling at a white girl and American sensibilities with regard to Black men in cinema that I have briefly touched upon above suggest that the the fear of Black sexuality is still very much alive in America today.