The misunderstood French

This is a very common personal experience told by many Chinese tourists visiting France.
The same story, albeit experienced by different people, are always related to me, whenever I told them I: a) have a French bf; b) have travelled to France for holidays.

The story goes:
Mr A went to Paris (somehow, Singaporeans/Chinese perception of a French holiday is to go to Paris, never mind the fact that there are many more lovely places to visit in this country. The most romantic city plus buying the latest LV product at a cheaper price is enough reason to make the trip to France worthwhile).
Mr A got lost in the city, needed to ask some Frenchies for direction, or to ask some Frenchie train station officer for help.
Not knowing how to speak French, he asked for help in English.
The super proud and Anglo-hating French would pretend not to understand a word, or even ignore the question altogether.
The desparate Mr A, after several futile attempts in communication started to speak in Chinese, and voila! The Frenchie was suddenly enlightened, and began to render help to the poor tourist in English.

This same story was repeated to me, this time by a Malaysian Chinese I met at Ko Adang. According to his experience, he has to swear in Hokkien before the French train officer finally answered his questions in English.

Are the Frenchies really so haughty and in disdain of the English language?

I'm no French expert and have been to France only three times. And thankfully, I've not been in such a situation.

It's true that the French are no English speakers and don't like to speak English.

However, from my personal experience in interactingn with French, I would think the French do not like to speak English (even to English speaking tourists) not because they look down on the language, but because they can't speak it well and are too "pai seh" to admit it, and too embarassed to show their lack of command of the language.

And go out of Paris, and you'll find English-speaking French becoming rarer and rarer, especially among older generation.

So next time, if you meet a French who refuse to speak English, don't mark him as "hao lian" immediately.