I believe the line markings is for water when you cook rice.
You add 9 cups of rice (perhaps with the plastic cup that comes in the box), then fill it up to the 9 cup line with water. Once cooked, this will produce perfectly cooked rice.
> Curiously the places with the least foreigners are the most xenophobic ones and vice versa.
That's actually the standard. It's easy to be xenophobic when someone has very little exposure to other cultures. Once they get exposed over a long period of time, people realise that they are just people too.