Things aren't done this way in your home country. Men don't normally walk hand in hand back there. Here they walk with their arms draped over each others shoulder. But if a man touches a woman around here, it's considered a lewd sexual invitation. Just to be seen in public with a foreign male is enough to ruin a woman's reputation--or to help her advertise her profession. A proper woman is deeply insulted if a man's eyes slip below her neck. A woman-watcher must develop peripheral vision to save face.

Saving face is the art of giving a discount to reality while raising the value of interpersonal harmony. Take the word "yes": it means something different in Asia. They believe a positive answer will make you feel better. So when you ask "Is this the way?" you may find yourself five hours later happy and a hundred kilometers in the wrong direction. Perhaps the aversion to "no" came from the days when a negative at the wrong moment to the wrong strong man would mean the sacred head of the speaker would roll in the mud. Now that is losing face!

Whereas the head is sacred, the foot if vile. You can't get much lower than the bottom of your foot, and pointing it at someone's face implies that he is more loathsome than your feet. When he gets angry, he smiles. The ideal person never displays negative emotion in public. He is supposed to be detached from this life where nothing is permanent. Pride, fear, anxiousness, anger all conjure up a smiling face. To embarrass someone is to expose his surface calm as a mere mask. This could be dangerous for without face he has nothing to lose by expressing his anger. There is sometimes nothing but a thin smile between you and a knife.

After a few months you begin to recognize the emptiness of an angry or embarrassed smile. It's a handy cultural skill to have. It beats walking into a home with your shoes on and being welcomed by the smiling, red-faced family lined up at the door. Sometimes when the smiling at temples and shrines visited by unknowing foreigners becomes too bad, the elders decide to post a man at the threshold pointing at your shoes and saying "You, shoe off."

After a while you develop the Asian art of smiling yourself. You get plenty of practice over matters concerning privacy. In the Asian family there are often too many people for such a luxury as individual space. On a crowded city bus you are offered lessons when people step on your toes. They're too embarrassed to excuse themselves, so they giggle. It's not the way things are done in your home country.

Sometimes the exotic conduct is more than you can handle. Your mind throws an automatic circuit breaker just before your certainties burn up. Time deserts you in surroundings where transportation systems work on a "maybe tomorrow" schedule. Your prejudices lurk in the dark, menacing sensual eyes staring back at you. You begin seeing a smile as a cover for some sinister intent. Every phrase in a strange tongue spoken around you seems to be about you. You find yourself stripped of all certainty and naked before the world.

Paranoia though uncomfortable gives you a form of relief to your confusion. You start finding fault with the Asian ways instead with yourself. You begin smelling the open sewers, the tobacco smoke, the uncomfortably pungent aromas of fermented fish past frying. Even the incense and unfamiliar flowers seem too heavily sweet. You curl inside the safety of a cultural bubble by sticking to hotels and restaurants where other like-minded foreigners hang out. You travel from city to city as though going through mined enemy territory. Of course, those who wish to rob you or take advantage of your weaker morals or your greed are drawn to such places. They look for those who are the most nervous, who probably have a lot to lose.

f you don't want to be eaten, don't look like food. Relax. If you can't relax, fake it. Show a calm face. Walk away from tourist touts and traveler traps. Look for people with eyes, people who look back at you and meet your eyes. Then go sit near them. Adjust your priorities. Put adventure ahead of comfort. Smile. You will always see what you're looking for, so look for the good and things will look good.

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