BEIJING (SCMP): A Japanese online influencer has complained about being discriminated against by a Singaporean taxi driver who mistook her as Chinese.
The young woman who goes by the name @CrazyJapanese online and has 664,000 followers, shared “one of the worst experiences” she had in Singapore on Feb 20.
She said she took a taxi with her luggage when she was ending her tour in the country and going back to Japan.
She said the “old driver” at the taxi rank was impatient with her and her friend, who was seeing her off, because she spoke Mandarin with him.
When she asked him if she could get in, he only pointed his finger towards the back, gesturing to her to pack the luggage herself.
She said she was shocked by the zero help from the driver, but continued to check if she could use the credit card to pay, because she did not have cash.
The driver ignored her question and kept yelling “get in” at her.
The woman, who works as a teacher and introduces herself as a speaker of English, Chinese and Korean on social media, said she was speaking Chinese to the driver because that was the language he used.
She said goodbye to her friend and got in the car. Then the driver asked: “You guys are from China?”
She told him she was from Japan and the driver’s attitude completely changed. She said he treated her “like a queen”.
“The most stupid people in the world are those who generalise,” she said, interpreting the driver’s sudden politeness as a “racist” stereotype that all Japanese are polite.
“All my friends and students from China are even more polite than the Japanese. I really hate racist people,” she said.
Her video attracted more than 160,000 views and 1,100 comments on a major social media platform.
Some agreed with her.
“The drivers here based on my experience are not great with the service of helping out with luggage, especially when the destination is the airport,” one online observer from Singapore said.
Another said: “Drivers here are not service-oriented and professional. A lot of them have bad experiences with loud, rude and entitled tourists from China, which may explain his prejudice, but there is no excuse to be rude to you like this.”
A third person backed her up about Japanese people’s politeness from the perspective of a foreign tourist: “When I visited Kyoto and rented kimonos for photos, locals were not nice and said mean things in our faces because we have darker skin. Our photographer had to stand up for us.”
However, another online observer criticised her, saying by complaining about the taxi driver she was also “generalising”.
She responded: “I am not offending Singaporeans. Please do not get me wrong.” - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
