A white Danish friend and her Indian partner are both fluent speakers of Chinese. The Indian partner is a naturalised Dane.
Back in the late 70s or early 80s, this Indian man went travelling around China. In those days, foreigners were restricted to certain areas only (e.g., the big cities), outside of which they’d need to have special travel permits for, to be applied for beforehand.
He arrived in a smaller town one day and was walking along the road when a Chinese chap in the street asked him, in Chinese, 你是丹麦来的吗？nǐ shì Dānmài lái de ma? / Are you from Denmark?
Now, this Indian man is very dark-skinned, so how on earth did the man conclude, spot-on, that he was from Denmark? And Denmark of all places, too, rather than, say, a more likely country like Brazil, where they have dark-skinned citizens. Also, how did the man know this Indian man could speak Chinese? I shall leave the reader to draw his/her own conclusions on both counts.
(China, late-1970s / early-1980s)
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