Thanks for your feedback, Kagami.

Quote Originally Posted by Kagami View Post
We cannot expect people to know everything about you... especially when you are not close..right?
How are people going to know you have been in xxx for x years, know how to speak xxx and whatsoever?
...
Many (but not all of course...) people here assume everyone who look ''far-east'' are Chinese and greet them with '' Ni-Hao'', in rare occasions- ''こんにちは''. ( Although very often follow by ''where are you from?'' if we have the chance to chat up a bit. )
I was brought up with the values of 'not judging a book by its cover'. One of the most basic rule of social conduct I was taught is not judge people based on their looks. It is generally wrong to assume things about people you don't know, and if they are indeed wrong it is offensive to voice them to their face.

That is why I find it just as offensive for Westerners to say 'nihao' or 'konnichiwa' to any East Asian they see in the street. From my experience, it is usually ignorant and racist people who behave like that. They almost never try to be friendly or start a conversation, but just to make fun at the 'funny-looking people' and often add derogatory comments that they (probably) won't be able to understand. I have travelled a lot and it's almost always boys and young men that behave like that, whatever the country. I have had Arabic kids gathering around me saying 'hello America', just like in Japan, then throwing stones at me when I walked away. I know that if there is any appearance of friendly feeling in those kids, it isn't real. When I was a child, I know that other kids would also make fun at any non-White (and sometimes even Mediterranean Europeans) because they looked different. "Greeting" them in their supposed country's language (or any language in the same region) is always derogatory in those situations.

I can think of one exception when greeting a Westerner in Asia with 'hello' or a Japanese with 'konnichiwa' (or a Chinese with 'nihao', and so on) isn't derogatory or racist. It is when a person knows the language in question, hears people talking in that language in the street and tries to have a friendly chat with them, perhaps to practice his/her language skills. It only works when you have actually heard the person(s) you want to approach speak (on the phone or with friends) so that one can be completely sure that they are indeed French, Japanese, Russian, or whatever. Assuming that a person speaks Mandarin just because they are East Asian (or even a Chinese national) is just as plain offensive as assuming any Western-looking person speaks English or French or Russian.

But even when you are sure that a person in the street speaks a language you can speak, I wouldn't encourage just throwing a 'hello', 'konnichiwa', 'nihao', 'bonjour', etc. just like that in the street. It looks suspicious, and nothing garantees that the other person actually wants to speak with you. I always try to ignore weird peope trying to talk to me in the street, even (or especially) people trying to sell/advertise something. Americans, Australians, Indians or Spaniards often feel confortable chatting up a perfect stranger in public, but that is not polite in most northern European countries, and it will just end up making the other person uneasy.