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by Lincheng Li |
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ISALC, Lewis and Clark College
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by Lincheng Li |
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The worst things that happen always stay with you. I had a very bad experience in the Seattle, which is a beautiful city. I don't know what word I should use to describe my feelings at that moment, but I realized I was in a foreign country and I felt extremely hopeless and sad, which made me cry.
The experience happened last spring. A friend of my friend came to visit us from Canada. We were very happy to get together. It rains a lot during the spring in Portland, and we decided to go to Seattle because we had never been there before, although it is not far away from Portland. We got up early and rented a car. We took three hours to get there and planned to come back in the evening. There were several spots we wanted to visit. We went to Pike Street Market first, which we had heard about many times. We didn't realize something bad would happen there.
Pike Street Market is a very big market. There are all kinds of goods from different areas and countries. We saw a very attractive shop that sells Indian goods, such as bags and scarves. We went into the shop and saw an Indian woman and man sitting there. When they saw us coming in, they didn't look very friendly, but we were excited about shopping. While we were picking clothes to try on, and the woman was counting everything, we touched. At that time we all felt very uncomfortable. It seemed the woman thought we might be thieves, but we really wanted to buy something from this shop, so I picked out one handmade bag. My friend picked out three tops. We began to bargain with them about price because we had heard this was part of the fun in this kind of shop. We told them the price that we wanted to pay. While we waited for the owner to say his price and we could negotiate, all of a sudden, the man became very angry. He pointed his finger at us and said we insulted him. We said we were just asking. If he didn't like it, we still wanted to buy the items. However, things got worse and worse. He started yelling at us because there were just five people in the store. Also, he said very bad words to us. If I had been a man, I would have hit him immediately! Then he grabbed the clothes from our hand and pushed us out of his store physically. He pushed us too hard and we almost fell down on the ground. We felt very upset and tears were in our eyes. We didn't even have time to say anything. We got very mad and felt wronged.
We saw there was a barbershop next to the Indian store. We asked the woman who worked there, "What should we do"? She told us there was nothing we could do. Fortunately, a Japanese woman took us to see the manager of the building. We waited a half-hour before the manager showed up. We told him everything that had happened in the store. He said we needed to call the police if we had been physically assaulted. We called the police and waited for two hours because it was not an emergency. It was 4 o' clock already. The police asked the Indian man about the whole thing. The guy said he never pushed us and told the police we were bothering him. The police asked the woman who worked in the barbershop, and she told them she heard us screaming and yelling in the store. He thought we were causing trouble. While the police told us what they said; we were all in tears and felt that we were being tortured. The police said they could put all the information in their computer. That was the only thing they could do for us because the witness sided with the Indian man.
We were silent all the way back to Portland. This was the saddest thing that has happened to me in this country. I swore I would never go to an Indian shop again. We hurt terribly. I remembered my mother told me that living in a foreign country is not an easy thing. I didn't understand that until this thing happened. It left a bad taste in our mouths.
Created by: krauss@lclark.edu
Updated: 9/24/99