Thinking back a few years, I'm pretty sure I'd read a passage like this and feel annoyed. What arrogance! What silly short-sightedness! (The following applies in no less degree to China)
Rather than talking of a particular region or country, Japanese are notorious for asking "how do people do this abroad" or "what do foreigner think about that" or "if I go abroad, do they have this or that" ? My answer is invariably the same "but where ? in which country ? for whom ?" [Source]
But reading this today, I've realized the behavior is now thoroughly a part of the way I express myself in Mandarin. I haven't put the slightest bit of thought into it for ages, but yet I am sure I speak in this manner on regular basis. I tend to refer to the way anything is outside of China as merely being that way abroad (国外). It's also just dawned on me why I like it so much -- basically it gives me a free license to insult without causing offence! When I say "we do such and such" or something happens in "such and such way" abroad, I am telling the listener that his homeland is uniquely unconventional and bizarre and fails to do things in the "normal" way that the rest of the world does. What gives me the right to claim I know how the whole rest of the world does something? Well, nothing! But no one has called me on it yet, so it's my listener's problem if he lets me get away with this blatant bit of logical fraud.
