Foreign
Devils In The Middle Kingdom
Teaching Overseas ~ By Ben Hill
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"Hello!
Hello! Laowai, Hello!" - I hear it everywhere I go; there's no escape.
'Laowai' has
the literal translation of 'old outsider', and is probably the most polite
word in Mandarin Chinese for a foreigner, carrying an implication of respect.
'Waiguoren' - 'out-land person' - is another word I hear, sometimes whispered
in surprise or disbelief, but more often issued as a sort of challenge
to do something interesting orhengduentertaining. Since even the most mundane
of tasks performed by a waiguoren inevitably falls into one of these categories,
and encountering a foreigner in a world that is overwhelmingly Chinese
is entertainment in itself, the challenger is rarely disappointed.
A less polite
term for a non-Chinese person is 'Gweizi' - foreign ghost or foreign devil
- very rarely spat out as an insult, although any racism encountered in
China is usually much more subtle than this. In the Cantonese language
of China's south-east I am 'Gweilu' - a white ghost.
After spending
the majority of the last five millennia of history at the hub of its own
self-contained universe, the origin of China's attitude to the outside
world isn't difficult to understand. The Middle Kingdom - the literal rendering
of the Mandarin for 'China' - carries with it the suggestion of centrality;
another expression for the Chinese empire, 'Tianxia' or 'all under heaven',
gives the distinct impression that nothing else matters, not least the
wild savages inhabiting the reaches beyond the Great Wall.
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Chengdu
is famous for its pandas.
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But all this
is changing, and quickly. The image of the foreigner as barbarian, Bad
Element, or otherwise malign and corrupting influence, has all but died
out. To the great majority of Chinese, though, an out-land person is still
an unknown quantity. Indeed, despite China's recent policies of 'opening-up',
many Chinese have yet to experience a laowai at close quarters, let alone
speak to one, and in most cases 'Hello!' - always shouted, never spoken
- is the only fragment of English they know. There's nothing to be gained
by being annoyed by all this attention, but hearing it for the tenth time
in an hour can be wearing on even the most hardened sinophile.
'Hello!' can
also function as verbal shorthand for "Ah, I see you are an out-land person;
I would like to practice my English with you, do you mind?" All Chinese
university students are required to study English alongside their chosen
subject, and although reading and writing proficiency is often high among
the young, educated generation, their opportunities to practice conversation
are limited. Sadly, though, within a few halting sentences the initial
enthusiasm to learn is often overcome by an innate shyness of dealing with
foreigners, and the impromptu lesson quickly breaks down into uncomfortable
laughter - that particularly Chinese laughter which carries no humour but
instead serves to mask awkwardness or embarrassment.
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It
must be added, though, that this is not always the case. Foreigners are
also considered fair game for anything from brief street-corner entertainment
(where any reply brings nothing but an uproar of laughter and yet more
'Hello!'s) to free English classes conducted in the public squares, shopping
malls and teahouses where young, eager Chinese congregate - and it is always
English, the very notion that a laowai might speak any other language would
only be met with bewilderment. China is even more intent on adopting English
as lingua franca than ever before following her accession to the WTO in
2001, and native speakers are in great demand as teachers, but the trouble
is that desire for linguistic mastery doesn't always go hand in hand with
willingness to jump through the necessary hoops to achieve it.
"You're not
like other Foreign Teachers, Mr Ben. You don't want to play games." Wednesday,
and fourteen students are absent from my lesson. Almost half the
class. This is by no means a common occurrence - there's no place for truantism
in China's rigidly disciplined school system - yet they seem to think they
can get away with it during my lessons because to them I'm simply not a
teacher. I'm a Foreign Teacher, an entirely different species, balanced
precariously between valuable educational resource and cut-price entertainment
service. An American colleague has described our status as that of performing
monkeys, a situation which unfortunately isn't helped by the flooding of
the circuit in recent years with young, unqualified teachers who see a
job in China as a route to an expenses-paid holiday in return for sixteen
periods of hangman each week. While I see nothing wrong with that in itself
- it's certainly great experience for anyone considering a teaching career,
and when it comes to English, China needs all the help she can get - it
leaves in the minds of my students, and even my Chinese colleagues, a confusing
and conflicting impression of the purpose of the Foreign Teacher. |
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It can be
difficult to adapt, at first, to the fact that a foreign face in China
stands out like the largest sore thumb imaginable. There can be no disappearing
into the crowd. Everything I do is a constant source of fascination and
amusement for the people of Chengdu, my adoptive home city, and without
needing to try, I become a tourist attraction in my own right. Then there's
the staring.
They stare
at me; I at them; they at each other. There is rarely, if ever, any malice
in it, rather curiosity, and the Chinese people are, as a rule, very open
in expressing their curiosity. Sometimes merely posting a letter or buying
vegetables can draw a crowd. But it's not just me. It would seem that everyone
in China stares at everyone else, and it's this lack of discrimination
that - after the initial culture shock - makes it all the easier to accept
and ignore. There's no taboo about staring here, so when someone stares
at me I can stare right back, and as I'm often just as interested in the
starer as they are in me, I'm finding it can work both ways.
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Chinese attitude to Foreigners (always spoken with a capital F) can be
in turn wonderfully hospitable, bafflingly contradictory, or even downright
insulting. I swing between being treated like a movie star and being treated
like a leper on a regular basis. One writer has likened the treatment of
'Foreign Guests' by Chinese officialdom to that accorded to a rare but
slightly unpredictable wild animal: we must be looked after and protected
at all costs, but at the same time carefully watched else we should do
something either harmful to ourselves or embarrassing for our keepers.
Thus life in China, although enjoyable and fascinating beyond measure,
can also be very frustrating. Separate laws and regulations apply to Foreign
Guests - I cannot, for example, even receive a parcel without the permission
of my 'work unit', nor can I stay at certain hotels - these are 'Chinese
Only'. Even where I am allowed to stay, I am often required to pay twice
as much, or more, as the locals for the privilege - despite only earning
a local salary - and although the widespread dual-pricing policy of the
last few decades is being - officially speaking at least - eradicated,
many traces remain.
If these 'rules'
were applied evenly, then they would be a little easier to swallow, but
for foreign nationals of Chinese descent and appearance, they are conveniently
forgotten. This amounts to little more than state-sanctioned racism,
but the Chinese don't see it like that - and would be aghast if it were
suggested. These are the rules, they say, and that is all there is to it.
There is even a stock refrain: 'guiding shi guiding' - rules are rules.
It can't be racist, because there is No Racism in China; it is a Foreign
Problem. But then so is anything else that the government considers unhealthy
- prostitution, juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, homosexuality, mental
illness - for the Chinese, these are all Foreign Problems. |
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Realising
that all this may have made life as a Foreign Devil in the Middle Kingdom
sound like an incredibly fruitless uphill struggle, I'll say this: as annoying
as the constant 'Hello!'s can be, and as frustrating as the petty officialdom
gets, the rewards and insights of this incredible country - one quarter
of civilisation - more than compensate. Perhaps it is because of, rather
than despite, the challenge of being accepted here that my time in this
country so far has been more rewarding than - and so different to - that
which I have spent in any other. It takes a long time and a lot of effort
to break in and be accepted - even in the smallest of ways - as an individual,
rather than just another laowai. After a year, I haven't yet managed it,
and many Foreign Devils give up after a matter of months. Some don't even
try, but for me that's just going to make it a whole lot more worthwhile
when I get there.
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| Ben Hill
left the drizzle and familiarity of the north of England in 2002 to work
with the British Council as a teacher of English in Chengdu, south-west
China. He's going to stay there until he works out what to do next, and
in the meantime uses writing and photography to document his experiences.
If you would like to contact Ben Click
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