Dragonwings Foreignness and 'The Other' Quotes

It is much trickier to deal with a demon of the Middle Kingdom than an American devil, because you always know that the American devil means you harm. (1.35)

There was reason to worry, too, for just a few years ago, the demons had broken their own laws and turned away over twenty thousand of their former guests who had expected to be readmitted. This figure does not even reflect the large number of Tang men who could not get into the country for the first time. The demons, it seemed were determined to cut down on the number of Tang people living on the Golden Mountain. (1.38)

He was my father and yet he was a stranger to me. I had never seen him.
I thought to myself, How can we ever speak to one another? He's as strange to me as a demon. (1.47-48)

The founder [of the Company] had written: "The three virtues of the Stranger are to be silent, to be cunning, but above all to be invisible." (2.51)

I stared at the brick as it slid across the clean, worn, wooden floor, and at the glass that scattered about my feet. Outside I could hear jeers and shouts. For one moment I glimpsed howling, sweating, red-and-white faces, distorted into hideous masks of hatred and cruelty, a sea of demon heads that bobbed restlessly outside our store. I could not understand the words they were growling out, but their intention was plain. They wanted to burn and loot and hurt. Looking into that huge mass of faces was like looking into the ugliest depths of the human soul. (2.89)

Because a demon can help or harm you, there is no way of telling if a demon might be testing you before he will reward you or whether he is trying to trick you. (4.34)

I think [Black Dog] had lived so long in this land of the demons that his mind had become poisoned and he begun to think like a demon and to despise the Tang people around him. Maybe when he had first begun to take dope, he had just meant to get away from his conflicts; but after a while, taking dope had become an end in itself. (5.12)

I feel like I'd just woken from some long dream. I can follow the dragons' ways better among the demons than among the Tang people. (5.126)

[..T]he boys above [Jack] began to make mock Tang-people sounds – sounds like "Wing-Duck-So-Long" and "Wun-Long-Hop" in rising and falling voices. I could have bitten off my tongue. But I stood there, staring at them, not wanting to let them chase me away. I felt something soft and wet hit my leg. It was an old tomato. They began to throw bits and pieces of garbage at me. Still I stood there. (6.48)