u/ChR1sVI

First of all, this isn't meant to be xenophobic or racist. I'm not Shanghainese myself. But the whole experience was just way too bizarre not to share.

I was at Jing'an Temple Station this morning, changing from Line 2 to Line 7. There was this laowai walking in front of me who had pretty strong BO, so naturally I wanted to get past him. But it was morning rush hour thus very crowded. I eventually managed to squeeze past him while covering my nose. He gave me the look, but there wasn't any interaction. I genuinely wasn't trying to be offensive, so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Fast forward, we somehow ended up in the same carriage on Line 7. I had a seat, and one stop later he sat down right next to me. The smell was still pretty intense, so I simply got up and started moving to another part of the carriage.

Apparently, this really pissed him off. He poked me on the arm when I was getting up and gestured for me to take out my AirPods. I did, and he immediately started lecturing me about racism and how my behavior was xenophobic, etc.

I was honestly baffled. I pride myself to be very welcoming to laowais. So the accusation did not sit well with me. But I didn't want to escalate the situation so I just put my AirPods and walked away.

The whole interaction was surreal.

Edit: Ops, this got a lot more attention than I expected. So I want to clarify a few things.

"Laowai" Apologises for using it. I saw quite a few posts/videos on social media recently where the word was used unsarcastically when foreigners referring to themselves. I just assumed it was Okay. Now I know that some see it as impolite and/or offensive. Sorry again.

When I say I was covering my nose when rushed past him, I wasn't pinching my nose with two fingers while throwing side eyes at him. i.e I wasn't going out of my way to show my discomfort. It was the most casual "cover your face when you're about to sneeze" type of thing. This is also why I was surprised by his stare.