Small rant on being white in central China

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The students who I know best at the research institute have have relaxed about the whole "OMG FOREIGNER!" thing. They are my friends and they treat me normally which is a wonderful relief from the world outside of our research group. I recently read a blog post (one of the many responses to Amy Chua (who must have a brilliant publicist) where a Chinese-American woman currently working in France discussed the racist environment there. The blogger said that people often yell "NEEE HOWWW" or "konichiwa!" when she walks down the street, and also that people have a lot of ignorant assumptions and ask her a lot of ignorant questions about Asian/Chinese people. Actually that kind of ignorance sounds rather like me, age 14, who had grown up in 98% white towns in New Hampshire my whole life. Well also when Asians use self-deprecating humor and use stereotypes to poke fun at themselves, it is hard to know where to draw the line.

Anyway, sometimes when I am having a bad-China-day, I often have thoughts like "gosh people are so ignorant here" and "this would never happen in America." I should probably revise this thought to "this would never happen to my demographic living in my neighborhood in America." To America's credit, we are in principle taught that we should treat everyone equally. Here, people say "oh they are just yelling 'hello' at you in a not-so-polite-way because they are so excited and interested to see a foreigner... it is because you are special!" Hm. To be fair, it seems that foreigners are just beginning to make their way to cities other than Beijing and Shanghai, so for people who live a bit farther out, it might be very interesting for them. A lot of people here are really sweet and genuinely interested. I have had many nice conversations that were initiated because I am white. Also when it comes to looks, there's somewhat of a racial inferiority complex so that (terrible!) skin-whitening products are very popular and women avoid the sun and get surgery to add a fold to their eyelids and whatnot. I often get comments like "your skin is so white and beautiful, I like your big blue eyes" to which I generally laugh and respond that in America people make fun of me for being so pale and I think Chinese people have nice skin too.

But also sometimes people treat me like I'm stupid or fellow students make fun of Americans/me in fast, regional-accented, chengyu-ridden speech that I cannot understand or there's that particular kind of sneering/yelling/laughing "LAOWAI!" or "HELLO! HELLO!" that people just shout out as if you are not a person, but some foreign object there for their entertainment. So often I'm just minding my own business when some people yell "HELLO HELLO!" laugh and point and then walk away, laughing to themselves. Often get called fat (not taboo to discuss here) and people have commented on my nose that I previously did not think was big. More seriously was a friend who got singled out and sexually harassed in broad daylight because she is white. Also the "You Americans are all like this.. right???" My friend taught me how to say "it depends...." (看情况/kan qingkuang... literally look at the situation), a crucial phrase that I find myself using all the freaking time. If you said similar things to a Chinese student studying in America it would be called racism and they could find sympathetic ears to which they could air their indignation. I'm not sure if people here have "you should be careful about race or ethnicity-based generalizations" lessons. I sort of think not. I also have heard stuff like "black people in America are dangerous" and "the minorities in China are not intelligent but they have good hearts."

Anyway, just a rant about how I don't think that all of Chinese behavior towards foreigners can be summed up as "it is because you are our special guest and we are so happy to see you!" My final message is optimism for the future. As more and more people go abroad and make friends, we will keep learning how to better respect each other and treat each other as humans.

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