During a conversation with a mainland Chinese chap, he referred to the Brits as 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person” / foreigner. I said, “Actually, in Britain, you and I are the foreigners, not the Brits. You should at least use the neutral term 西方人 xīfāngrén / “west direction person” / Westerner.”
The next time this chap talked about the Brits, his mouth started to make the ‘w’ shape (for wàiguórén / foreigner), but he stopped himself in time and changed it to ‘x’ (for xīfāngrén / Westerner).
As they say, a teacher is never off-duty…
(London, 1987)
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