How America is just like China…

James Fallows has a very interesting post about what it’s like to be a foreigner in China, in which he writes:

I think I now can explain why, despite the pollution and congestion and overall ceaseless hassle of big-city life in China, I always tell friends or visitors that I “like” Chinese people in general.

The reason is that, most of the time, people in China treat me as … a person.

Not always and in every circumstance as a foreigner, though I obviously am that. I hear the Chinese words for “look, a foreigner!” and feel the general ripple of outsiderness much less often than I hear or sense the counterparts in (richer and more sophisticated) Japan. In some rural areas, my wife and I have been the first foreigners that locals had ever seen in person. They were interested but got over it.

What I find interesting about this is that it’s pretty much how I felt about being a foreigner in the United States.(Obviously