Sorry, Mr. Wang.
This morning I went swimming, because a) I like swimming and b) I’d be a dope if I went to Qingdao and didn’t swim. On the beach I met and started chatting with this guy who works for the ministry of agriculture. He was nice, but he wanted to hang out with me for the rest of the day. I didn’t know about that, but it was hard to say no without being rude. We did hang around for a while together and visited the Catholic Church and this art nouveau-style German villa. The problem was, he kept wanting to take my photo and hold my hand! I’d just met him,and I didn’t like that. He asked me to have dinner with him, and also wanted to drive me to the airport tomorrow. I did consent to dinner, although I tried to find away to get out of the airport thing. The whole wanting to hold my hand just made me nervous. In the end, I started feeling jittery about the dinner thing too, and asked one of the workers at my hotel if he thought it would be a good idea to go. He said he wouldn’t do it if he were me, since I’m a woman, alone, and I don’t know Qingdao too well. I thought that was good advice, and coming from a guy gave it extra credence. So, I came down and apologized to the man, and told him I couldn’t go with him. It was embarrassing (probably for him, too), but I said that I wasn’t used to doing stuff like that with people I didn’t know well,since we don’t do that in America. I thought that was the most diplomatic way to explain it. I’m sorry if I hurt his pride or anything, but I don’t want to get into any upsetting or scary situations.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Good call.
I once got into a weird situation with an Albanian I met on the metro in Washington, DC. I kept marking up some of the strangeness to his cultural background. We ended up having dinner and talking about the ‘mother country.’ He tried to recruit me into some kind of strange pro-Albanina political activity. I was young, and intrigued, and happy to meet the one person who cared that I’d been to that country.
But I should have ended things a whole lot sooner that day. I drank too much. Somehow, this led to dancing.
I’m too embarrassed to even write the rest. But I did, finally, get home with my honor (barely) intact.
So I think you did the right thing. It’s tempting to try to be ‘nice,’ but, as Nixon said, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
In my case with the Albanian, I should have been more ‘paranoid’ at the outset….
September 11th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Hey! I was once approached by an Albanian near the Shanghai IKEA! His name was Igor!
I’m glad nothing bad ended up happening to you. I read this story in Student Travels magazine about this girl traveling in Czechoslovakia who had dinner with a strange Italian couple, and the next thing she knew, she woke up in a ditch in the Bulgarian countryside! She was okay but all her stuff had been stolen. The cops thought the couple drugged her and took her over the border in the trunk of their car!