Foreigners have been making headlines in the Chinese media a lot, with the most recent star being a foreigner deported for stealing from a tobacconist in Shandong Province.
According to reports, a foreign man walked into the shop and pulled out two 50 RMB notes, he asked the woman, Mrs. Zhao, behind the counter if she could exchange them for a 100 RMB bill. She said she could. She pulled out a 100 RMB note, but then the man said he wanted a bill with an M in the top corner. Mrs. Zhao looked for a long time but couldn’t find one. He then said he would look himself, and shockingly he found one. He then left.
Mrs. Zhao soon realized she’d been bamboozled when she found 20,000 RMB missing from the drawer. Luckily the police were able to track down the man through the GPS on his car, which was a rental from Beijing. The police caught up with the man in a Nanjing hotel, where they found him with two accomplices. All three men are Iranian nationals and are soon to be deported.
Mrs. Zhao was very happy when she reunited with her 20,000 RMB, and will probably keep a watchful eye out for people trying to play mind games on her in the future.
Source: sina
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Keywords: foreigner deported for stealing
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What is a tabacconist? How on Earth do you take 20,000 RMB from someone without them noticing? An RMB note with a what in the corner?...shop keeper should've refused that request from the beginning. And why on Earth would you let a customer get up in your cash drawer?
Dec 21, 2013 22:27 Report Abuse
For the smarter ones among them, they should see that the fraudulent foreigners are mostly from undeveloped countries. With luck, it probably takes a decade or two for the rest to catch up.
Dec 21, 2013 09:26 Report Abuse
I really don't know why you guys are freaking out over the use of "foreigner" I'm pretty sure thats the correct term here when the person obviously isn't chinese and you don't know their exact nationality... Also, you do realize this site basically only translates articles that have something to do with foreigners right? Stop pretending like it headline news because you wouldn't even be able to find the article if you went to the homepage of the source and searched all over. Most the time Echinacities is translating from unreliable sources that shouldn't even be called news websites. BTW this is called "Weird China News" which is basically like odd news section of our paper back home so I don't know why these comments are making it so political or racial.
Dec 21, 2013 07:34 Report Abuse
The correct term is thief. A thief stole the money. The thief was a person. It wouldn't even have made the news if the accolade FOREIGNER wasn't linked to it, because locals steal 20,000 yuan from each other all the time. The state media is cherrypicking news stories and using divisive language to influence people's opinions for the worse. It keeps Chinese insular, culture-centric and ignorant, without even the semblance of cultural sensitivity or politeness.
Dec 21, 2013 08:49 Report Abuse
@Coineineagh Stop crying over an odd news article on a website that doesn't even report news but just translates from random sources. No shit a theif stole the money that's what "steal" means, at least it's more specific to say "foreigner" than be redundant and say a "theif stole"... On actual chinese news websites,they do report it even if it theif wasn't chinese, so stop trying to play victim on every article. Look who's talking about ignorance, cultural sensivity or politeness, you bash the Chinese on like every single article even when the fault is clearly a foreigner's. If you hate it so much here why don't you just GTFO.
Dec 21, 2013 17:45 Report Abuse
holland won't let my wife in, and i have a young baby here. strangely i get lots of "stop complaining or leave" comments by people thinking it's a valid point to make. but since you don't know what you're talking about, why don't you STFU?
Dec 22, 2013 11:41 Report Abuse
I made my point and you can't even make a counterpoint to what I said so the best you can come up with is STFU? Why do you find it strange you get lots of those comments when all you do complain and write something negative on basically every single article? People probably think it's a valid point since you turn every single article into a way to bash China which shows how much you hate it and tell you to GTFO.
Dec 22, 2013 20:03 Report Abuse
No one is freaking out. People are calling out xenophobia when they see it. The Chinese "Us vs Them" attitude would be unacceptable in a (more) civilized country. If the Chinese national who tried to bribe his way through a British college was referred to as "foreigner" in the newspaper headline, people would be outraged at the racism. What other country points out crimes committed by "foreigners" the way China does?
Dec 24, 2013 07:02 Report Abuse
Ok, alright guys, interesting points, I'll give you all that. Vyborg, I have been here through those incidents as well and I had no such problems, though in my mind I was conscious of the current events as they unfolded. I worked hard, got myself deeply rooted into the community with honor and made sure that enough people would vouch for me in case of any issues. This doesn't mean I would just waltz into a Carrefour during the torch nonsense, nor would I drive a Honda Accord on a bad coastal fishing day, I know what is what. This also does not mean I agree with everything locals say and do, in accordance to my personal upbringing and environmental surroundings. The Yang Rui comments, for example, total rubbish from a man who'd have been sacked were he to have said such things in my homeland. But let's be realistic here, if you are in your homeland and your neighbor invites you over for dinner and his house is a mess, are you going to raise stink with him in his own home, or just bear with it and leave in peace at the right moment? It's a different call for each person, courtesy vs honesty, tolerance vs impulsiveness. Furthermore, we foreigners are not all alike, this is true. As I am not even close to being anything associated with Iranian, I just chuckled at this naughty foreigner who got caught but didn't take it personally just because of the word "foreigner". There are times when simply being a "foreigner" in China is a benefit, irregardless of where you are from, and then times like as stated here where it is not fun at all and we all want to differentiate and distance ourselves from each other. I think Americans would say "you can't have your cake and eat it too". We like it when things go well, hate it when things go sour, even if by association. Lets be realistic then, shall we? While visa policies are annoying now, people qualified for visas still can get them, where in countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain, Chinese without deep pockets have to jump through impossible odds to get their visas. With the unqualified competition dwindling, salaries are improving for foreigners here, which I feel is a benefit. Fair or not, fact is fact. I take it that from most comments against what I said originally, which was simply meant as a contemplation, the wound runs deeper with many of you and for this I must ask, what makes you continue to stay in China then? I am not one to judge, so keep it to yourselves. People have their reasons and it's their own business. BTW Vyborg, I'm not your mate, so keep it real.
Dec 20, 2013 21:58 Report Abuse
200 foreigners were deported. Again, no specifics. Yang Rui was a CCTV host for a talk show that interviewed foreigners. CCTV is owned and operated directly by the government. They didn't even punish him or have him apologize but when something is said about Chinese on US media, they go into "Fight for the Motherland" mode. About the visas... yes, getting a residency permit for Chinese can be tough.However, Chinese can become citizens of other countries. Do foreigners even have a choice? No, absolutely not. I wouldn't mind having a Chinese/Canadian citizenship but that's not possible. Some of us are married here, or have jobs here. I know I can't change the mentality of 1.4 billion people but the government can... and they are doing a piss poor job of it. Rather than focusing on collaboration they prefer separation and using the 600 000 people as scape goats to unify the Han in pointing fingers and spewing blame. You know who else did that? Many bad men (Hitler for one). Know how it usually ends? In violence.
Dec 21, 2013 00:34 Report Abuse
I am in the same boat as you. Would love to see citizenship policies to the sincerely married. Unfortunately, some chips on the shoulder go back to the days of CiXi, the woman who could not, and then we have what we see today.
Dec 21, 2013 20:22 Report Abuse
I admire the expedience of lumping all non-Chinese into one "foreigner" group.
Dec 20, 2013 21:33 Report Abuse
On a different note, the bus I was travelling on today to work broke down. I was not charged the 2 RMB for the replacement bus.
Dec 20, 2013 14:53 Report Abuse
The 100 RMB note with the "M" in the crner is relevant to the story - HOW? Is this how you hypnotise Chinese Tobacconists?
Dec 20, 2013 10:32 Report Abuse
Oh noes! Foreigners steal too! This is obviously more noteworthy than Chinese stealing, because foreigners' actions immediately reflect upon the status of the expat community (while any immoral act by a Chinese is automatically absolved by their cultural superiority).
Dec 20, 2013 01:17 Report Abuse
Are we getting to be like the locals now that when a little heat gets thrown on the word "foreigners" we need to feel defensive? I mean they get uppity when someone points a finger at one bad Chinese person doing things in a negative social manner when compared to our standards and upbringings. We know that not every foreigner does bad things and so do the Chinese. But at least we should be able to take negative news about random foreigners with grace and honor so as to let Chinese friends learn not to get angry everytime some laowai feels astonished about things like pork bellied men eating without shirts on in restaurants, or making change with the taxi driver who had his finger up his nose so high that you thought there might be some artifacts hidden up in there. That way, when someone in Egypt does deface the Sphynx with Chinese characters, we don't have to see retaliations on Weibo about how some foreigner missed a garbage can when tossing out a napkin while walking the streets in Beijing.
Dec 19, 2013 21:30 Report Abuse
I don't agree with you either. When one Pakistani-British man supposedly was "trying to rape", (I saw the video and I am still not convinced)a young Chinese woman... foreigners were getting targetted out and attacked. Nationa news anchors were making statements like "get rid of all trash foreigenrs" and there was a 45 day crack-down on FOREIGNERS and the visa restrictions tightened for foreigners and the visa restrictions got worse for foreigners and more and more cases popped up... While yes, the intelligent Chinese people think for themselves and know we aren't all from "wai guo" and are different. But they are the minority, the mass lump us all together basically.
Dec 19, 2013 22:47 Report Abuse
I don't agree with you either. I was here in 2008 when something happened concerning the Olympic Flame in Paris (and something about Tibet but I didn't really understand that) and all of a sudden 'the French' equaled evil and Carrefour saw their business decline until one of their CEO's apologized to the People of China. The Chinese, as no other people, are inclined to generalize and homogenize everything that's not Chinese. Doing that to themselves as well, sad enough. The fact that they did discern 'French' in my example is quite rare and due to the extensive reporting on TV at the time. Look at the heading of this article. Have you ever read anything that said 'Chinese man imprisoned for stealing...'? I can't count the times people asked me questions like 'Do you people eat rice (and then ending with:) 那边? (Over there)?' BTW, 'The Final Say'? Not here, mate.
Dec 19, 2013 23:49 Report Abuse
I also, don't agree with you either, as well. All these stupid stories about bad foreigners, I know the US news talks a lot about foreingers (immigration), but good or bad, at least immigration in the US is legitimately an issue. If you include tourists, foreigners in China are like .07% of the population. 1 out of every 1,500 people. We're a drop in the bucket. Not to get into complex issues like 'foreign influence' there is really nothing that the foreigners who are here could do here that has a significant impact on the day to day life of your average person. I think a good parallel in the west to the tendency to demonize foreigners here would be the media coverage of white-on-black violence in the US. Specifically the recent trayvon martin case. In the absence of potentially racially motivated murder of a black man by a white guy, it would have been a minor local news story. Instead it was national news. Something statistically very rare (now) gets a lot of attention because it offends a delicate national psyche.
Dec 20, 2013 14:43 Report Abuse
Oh, come on ! Stop to remind here about all wrong or stupid things foreigners did in China !!!! You only want to fire the Hell more than it's fired ! And stop be so rasists !!! In every country, Iran, China, Europe any country this things happen because the "bad" anbd "good" does exist in all the world ! Stop being so irascible with foreigners from China ! I am foreign and is not my fault for Mrs. Zhao who was not pay attention to her money or for Mr. iranian who took away her money ! And I am sure , here are lots of foreigners who came to China for their business, have nothing in common with this people who is called also a "foreogn" . "Stupid news" , I would call thid article ! or "closed mind"
Dec 20, 2013 19:04 Report Abuse
Great more "foreigenrs" making my stay here in China easier. If this keeps up, I will have no choice but to leave because everytime a foreigner does something it ends up in the headline news.
Dec 19, 2013 19:30 Report Abuse
yeah. Maybe it is just best if we all just mess the place up, seems that is what the press wants.
Dec 19, 2013 20:15 Report Abuse
Yeah, but the rest of foreigners have not any fault !!! China know only to put them all together and apply some stupid laws.... In any country is happen , not important if foreign or Chinese and China should think about this ! In my country also a lot of Chinese do illegal things , but our goverment do not apply laws putting foreigners all together into it ! I relaly hope this will not attract anything bad again with our staying in China..
Dec 20, 2013 18:56 Report Abuse
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