Dear New China Expat,
Please don't take this the wrong way. Speaking from personal experience, I find a lot of you to be swell, engaging, adventurous people. You're not here to move mountains or convert heathens, at least not in the conventional sense. More importantly, you're a far cry from the Old China Hand, who bounces from one hotel bar to the next, looking for love, enlightenment and validation in all the wrong places.
I also get that you fancy yourself a bit of a collector. Only, instead of, say, easily impressionable local Chinese women or easily attainable material wealth, it's the Deep, Meaningful Experience. It often comes in the form of an unexpected cultural exchange, where, for instance, you learn that cab drivers, who in their carefully accumulated infinite wisdom, actually know a thing or two about Obama. Or that the owner of the little shop tucked away in the alley directly across from your Old House with New Renovations has been there since 1953! In these rare, but oh so memorable encounters, there are no rules -- only the completely uninhibited desire of wanting to step into someone else's shoes for a Shanghai minute, to be "roughing it." It's the Expat answer to taco trucks and unmarked, unadvertised restaurants -- living la vida local.
Still, as much as I applaud you for putting yourself in harm's way time and time again (just think of all those cardboard-filled dumplings you've ingested!), there's a part of me that thinks you're kind of missing the point. You see, the street vendors and craftsmen and cobblers and crotchety old grandmamas and kindly grandpas and mahjong hustlers and tai-chi practitioners are all sufficiently impressed by the American Way. They're mostly believers. They'll greet your warm, inviting smile and gracious, grateful gesticulations with a warm, inviting smile and gracious, grateful gesticulations of their own. Not because they're blissfully ignorant -- street knowledge is street knowledge is street knowledge -- but because they see no reason to question it. America is Great, America is Beautiful when it's a house sitting on the hill, a supernova that makes its impact felt somewhere in the Great Beyond.
The people that really need convincing can't be kept at arm's length, and aren't nearly as complicit in your ongoing game of self-gratification. These are your colleagues, your underlings, your overlords. Who are outwardly benevolent and seem to fully recognize the significance of your contributions, all the while marveling at your naivete. Your Great Liberator complex. Who, in their own passively aggresive, noncommittal way, poke fun at your linguistic woes.