I was greeted with this quaint little phrase several days ago, at three o’clock in the morning, by a Chinese man pointing violently in my direction, wearing short shorts and a button down shirt with only two of the buttons done up. He had swaggered in from the upper floor of an early morning restaurant that sold oddly un-Chinese cheeseburgers and catered to the “rock and roll all night” crowd of Beijing nightlife.

As my mouth dropped to the floor in horror at this utterance, Dog Feces proceeded to literally strangle one of the members of the eight-person posse we had managed to accrue that night. Feces, whom none of us recognized, shook the scruff of the man’s shirt for roughly a minute, pointed directly between his eyes, and yelled, “FACK YOU!” once more. “FACK YOUR HAIR. IT IS BALDING!”

He was quite flushed, and his eyes were so open that he looked a bit like a character from Japanese anime. He was very drunk.

Luckily, the “balding” man he had chosen to strangle was also quite inebriated, but still jolly, and invited Dog Feces to sit down with us. And what followed was the most ridiculous, but at the same time most interesting, conversation I have ever witnessed.

I have a theory: A culture is only fully revealed when it lets its guard down. For better or for worse, when a culture stops caring about its “image,” it can finally let the world know who it is. In many ways, cultures experience the “insecure teenager” phenomenon.

Overcompensating for an inner insecurity, teenagers buy out the shelves of identity-defining stores such as Hot Topic, looking for the flashy, jet-black, I-Don’t-Care-About-You attitude conveniently summarized on a t-shirt. But fundamentally, you can learn little about people by looking at the image of themselves that they try to present. Mr. Emo Hot Topic, I know nothing about you except that you probably have a lot of wallets hanging from those chains coming out of your pockets.

The same is true with culture. Confronted with a changing and globalized world, the natural response is to buy out the “Hot Topic” of a shared historical tradition. Stores spring up selling terracotta warrior reproductions, saying to foreigners far and wide, “Buy our ‘culture!’” And an entire industry develops around tourism at famous historical sites, complete with entrepreneurial beggars offering everything from straw dolls to caricatures done with calligraphy brushes.

But I feel as if this type of “culture” is nothing more than a caricature of itself. It takes a face and exaggerates the notable features to unrealistic proportions. It takes a short and unrepresentative list of hobbies and turns them into a two-dimensional cartoon. On a cultural level, it takes a list of holidays and traditions and turns them into a two-dollar figurine you can put on your mantel.

Culture is more real than that, much less salable and much more experiential. You find raw culture in the unguarded ramblings of a drunkard, the offhand comments of a taxi driver or the dinner table chatter of a large restaurant.

Which brings me back to Dog Feces. What struck me most was how uninhibited he was, even for a drunk man. Every five minutes, he would point to another person around the table, and resume his rounds of “FACK YOU” ‘s. But every time he began, he would express a different concern he had about American culture. My table was called racist, sexist, violent, sexualized and intolerant, based on nothing more than our country of origin. By comparison, Chinese culture lacked any kind of discrimination, practiced peace and chastity and extended an inviting hand to all visitors. I offer a direct quote from Feces’ mouth: “American culture is more racist because it is not as pure as Chinese culture.”

When asked about the Chinese government, he said he believed in nothing more than raw power, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) happened to possess. He had the red star of the CCP sewn to the back of his pants.

This man’s views were not and could not be written in a brochure. He was far from polished, and his condition at the time prevented him from being on guard. His words of wisdom were punctuated with loud English cursing and acts of random violence (including trying to open the front zipper on a pair of my friend’s pants and biting his neck several minutes later). Yet here was something genuine. His views on life, liberty and government were cultivated in a genuine cultural context: He had never been outside of China.

Though in no way representative of the average Chinese person, he was direct evidence of what growing up in China can produce. I should note here that my encounter with Dog Feces was just as positive as it was negative. His friendliness and (intentional) humor were refreshing, and his views were certainly very interesting. I should note as well that I am far from an American apologist — I agreed with much of DF’s criticism of American culture, though maybe not to the same degree.

But I will say firmly that this man is a Chinese man. Just as I am an American. Neither of us is fully representative of our respective cultures, though in a way, we are part of them.

I left China several days ago, and I have to admit, I didn’t take many pictures. But this was due to more than the practical consideration of the crappiness of Chinese “Duracel” batteries. In truth, more important than the physical pictures are the mental ones. And I will not leave China with pieces of glossy paper, but a collection of impressions.

Dog Feces is certainly not on the cover of my mental Chinese scrapbook, but he is on the last page, right behind the sour milk guy by the side of the road and my last Shanghai taxi driver. And scrawled under his picture is not “fack you,” but two entirely different words: “Thank you.”