I’m talking about after going through borders and I put away the US Passport…
And the average everyday people ask me “where are you from?”
Like if the place has anti-American sentinments, could I just pretend to be… not American…
cuz you know… the US has been getting a bad rap recently due to ahem a certain person in Capitol Hill…
Like most people in the world falsely assume “American” = “White” anyways…
They’d never suspect a thing… would they?
I can speak Cantonese and Mandarin… I can try faking a Chinese person’s accent when speaking English. Or pretend to be a Hong Konger (via the Cantonese). Or pretend to be Taiwanese (most people can’t tell the difference between the sound of Mainland Mandarin vs Taiwan Mandarin).
I heard that there are people who hate Chinese tourists… so is this actually gonna backfire?
But then again, I might also get hit with the double-whammy of “looking Chinese” while “acting like an American”.
So this is basically like code switching… but with national identity…
Is this morally okay? Or am I like crossing some ethical line here? Is this like the “cultural appropriation” thing where it’s inappropriate to do?
Americans tend to lean to one side or lean onto things, they’re a lot louder than other cultures, they are usually a lot nicer, they LOOOVE to talk, kinda silly when it comes to international things esp when it’s their first time, their obvious accent and even their phrases/metaphors, honestly the list goes on.
If you’re from one country or another then they’re going to know, but as an American born person 99% of the time people are chill and actually prefer you to be an American since we’re apparently nicer than Canadians. You’ll get asked “oh are you Canadian?” More than American because Canadians would be mad if you called/thought of them American and Americans would be flattered to be thought as a Canadian.
That’s from our experience living in Spain at-least. People won’t pin you as a typical red republican just because you’re from America, they already know republicans never leave USA anywho haha
This is an interesting take haha. I’m Canadian and have never once heard of Americans being nicer than Canadians - it is part of our national identity that we’re"oddly nice". I’ve heard more of the “Americans are big and take up space” commentary from above, and have even heard it in Canada (and we share a lot of cultural similarity). Not saying you’re wrong, I just found this such a reversal of my experience I had to comment. Overall, I love my siblings to the south :)