This Blog and Being a Foreigner Writing About China

This blog began when I started writing about some of the places I have lived in China and experiences I had in them. I write mostly for my own sake, to preserve memories and because I find writing about things the best way to spark new ideas. Putting what I have written on a blog was a secondary step that I took after some time of mental swaying.
Most of the things I write about are about local places in China. There are some fantastic things written about China as a nation, but personally I'm more interested in reading about specific places and cultures within this nation

One of the most universal of all the shared human experiences is probably that of picking up slices of wisdom from a kung-fu master. It is a bit like the over-indulged on proverbial box of chocolates: Urma Thurman got some convoluted story about Superman from Bill. I think I got a slightly better one from the man who taught me kung-fu in New Zealand. “The world’s best martial artists, the reason that they're so good, one of the reasons anyway, is that when they see someone doing martial arts, they don't think about who is better. They just think about what they can learn from them. Even if the person has only done martial arts for a short time, maybe that person can do something which they can't." I not only agree, but would suggest that it is applicable to almost everything.
Does this really need stressing? I think it perhaps does when 'I'm-the-local-expert-ism' is one of the most destructive attitudes sometimes displayed by foreigners in China (and probably most other countries too). In Rivertown, Peter Hessler writes of his displeasure about not being acknowledged by two Danish women in a restaurant. "In Fuling, I wasn't a tourist and to have other waiguoren treat me as if I had violated their solitude didn't please me." But why they should have felt compelled to pay more attention to him than any of the other people in the restaurant, I'm not sure. "I was resolved not to help [with ordering food] until they acknowledged me. (p. 348)" Later the waitress apparently asked him to translate, and so full of rage was he because the Danish hadn't treated him as anybody special, that he felt like ordering them a plate of hot peppers. But perhaps the reason they hadn't asked him to help was because they didn't care what they ate or perhaps they thought it would be more fun to try to order on their own. Perhaps just the reason they didn't want to say hello, was because they knew he only wanted to show off his special local knowledge and language skills. Or perhaps they had met people like Hessler in every town they had passed through and found them to be all equally irritating.
It is almost certain that you know things about China that I don't, even if you've never been to China. Someone who's stayed for one day in any of the places I've lived and written about probably knows at least a few things I don't. I do speak reasonable Chinese (with a huge foreign accent) and can and do read Chinese books (slowly). But that doesn't make me an expert at Chinese people or culture.