Often when I go to the market to buy something, I find it useful to feign ignorance of the Chinese language. I find walking around as a deaf-mute relaxes people and causes them to say things (like the actual prices) in my presence that they probably wouldn’t say otherwise. Some of the things said can range from the naive to the nonsensical. When I first came to China, I used to rush to stand up for myself whenever the commentary took a turn for the personal, now I find it more amusing to let them prattle on for awhile.
Yesterday, we went to a little hutong to buy 剪纸 jianzhi for the Spring Festival. As usual, I hung back a little bit and let YJ and her Mom do the real shopping lest the seller know there was a laowai involved and add the usual ‘foreigner’ surcharge on each purchase. As I stood before the rows of delicately cut red paper, the seller’s helper came up to me and asked me what I liked. I responded by smiling and shrugging my shoulders. “tingbudong?” (don’t you understand?) he asked. Another customer, a woman of vaguely lao tai tai age wandered over to see what the fuss was.
“He is a foreigner,” said the seller to the old lady.
“Ah,” replied the woman. “Certainly either a French or an Italian.”
At this point it should be noted that I am tall, with brown hair and brown eyes. No American would ever mistake me for anything other than “Big dumb white guy.” But this is China, anything is possible.
“French?” asked a third bystander. “How do you know that? I thought he was Arab.”
I understood the impulse behind this game. There is a latent compulsion among the Chinese to identify things or people as being part of one group or another. It hearkens back to the days of old and the need to zheng ming (rectify the names) so as to have order in the universe and has come down through the ages in various forms. People who straddle the line, for example American-born Chinese or Chinese who have married a foreigner and lived abroad, frankly tend to perplex. One must be easily categorized so as to be safe. Finally, fearing that this was becoming another installment of “Lao Wai Street Theater,” I decided to put an end to the debate and said in my most keqi voice, “Auntie, I am an American.”
“He understands!” exclaimed the observant seller.
“American! Impossible,” said the old woman, clearly not impressed and sizing me up, “You don’t resemble a true American.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Heide toufa, heide yanjing, pifu bu bai! Ta bu shi zhende meiguoren,” she said, addressing the small crowd in her position as Streetside Cultural Authority. (Black hair, black eyes, skin not white! He is not a true American.)
“Why not? What is a ‘real American’?” I asked.
“White skin, blond hair, blue eyes,” she said, taking her fingers and widening her own eyes apparently for effect.
I was tempted to ask the crowd, “What then is a true ‘Chinese’?” But I think they would have missed the significance of the question. I had a friend of Jewish descent in Beijing whose girlfriend’s friends disapprovingly said he wasn’t “really white.” I’ve heard repeated horror stories of Asian-Americans and African Americans being refused English teaching jobs in favor of blond Europeans with barely any English because the students want a ‘real American’ teacher. Part of this is ignorance. The vast majority of Chinese have little if any contact with people from other cultures and what little knowledge of other cultures they do possess is a mish-mash of media stereotypes, half-truths, myths, and flat-out bullshit.
Looked at another way however, this conflation of physical appearance with national identity is far more subversive than the Chinese standing on the street corner with me might have realized. If physical features (code for ‘race’) determine nationality for your average Chinese, then what does this mean for the CCP’s “big tent” definition of national identity? Are the Tibetans “real Chinese?” What about the Uighurs? It seems that the definition of “Chinese” identity shifts conveniently depending on the conversation.
On yet another level, I think there is something to be said here about China’s ongoing quest to be taken seriously as a modern and developed nation. I don’t really see “developed” or “civilized” as having much to do with tall buildings, glitzy shopping malls, proper English signs, or the number of cars on the road. I see it more as a mentality, an understanding that one is part of a larger world. For me one part of being ‘developed’ is respecting all people and treating everyone equally and fairly. This means not openly disparaging someone for being black or turning someone down for a job because they look “too Asian,” pushing somebody out of the way instead of waiting in line, calling somebody a “whore” for marrying outside her race, or charging somebody more money because they look like a foreigner.
I know that by this definition there are many places and people in America that would qualify as “underdeveloped.” (I should know, I grew up in New Hampshire.) Similarly, there are many Chinese for whom this is preaching to the choir, who have a worldly and international perspective and lament that this kind of discrimination is far too common even in China’s biggest cities. But still, all the internet connections and tech expos and high-speed rail networks in the world won’t matter until people’s thinking begins to change too. Whether it is in an old hutong or a new chatroom, backwards thinking is still backwards thinking.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Duncan // Feb 7, 2007 at 6:02 am
And don’t even start on whether ethnic Chinese in places like Indonesia are really Chinese or really Indonesian…
2 davesgonechina // Feb 7, 2007 at 8:56 am
“People who straddle the line, for example American-born Chinese or Chinese who have married a foreigner and lived abroad, frankly tend to perplex.”
I had a Canadian colleague at my university in Xinjiang. Thing is, his family was from Utah, so he had dual citizenship. He had entered one semester on his American passport, gone home for a holiday, then come back on his Canadian and dual citizenship wasn’t making sense to her. After a couple of weeks, I went to the office for my own business, only to see the FAO throw her hands in the air and cry “Is he Canadian or American!!!” in total incomprehension. When I confirmed his dual citizenship, all she could say was “mei banfa!”
I play the tingbudong game too. And I’ve actually argued that they’re being subversive by suggesting “insert local minority here” isn’t Chinese. On rare, satisfying occasions, I’ve actually had people get the comparison and re-think.
Then next week they see me with a new foreigner and it starts all over again.
3 Anonymous // Feb 7, 2007 at 5:52 pm
This is found all over the world; note Biden’s remark about Barack Obama being “articulate”. I have yet to hear of anyone saying president Bush is “inarticulate”, even though there would be more than an grain of truth in it.
People who straddle two cultures are always in the minority, and will be viewed as strange by the majority, regardless of what country you live in.
4 Kevin S. // Feb 7, 2007 at 7:47 pm
This helps to answer a question that I’ve had in my mind lately.
Q: I recall reading that Beijing counts (or at least used to count) the Chinese diaspora as part of the Chinese population. If this is true, then why doesn’t Beijing allow Chinese to hold dual citizenship?
A: Because dual citizenship confuses the hell out of many Chinese people.
5 Xiao Zhu // Feb 7, 2007 at 11:04 pm
This is a nice post. I have also written about the Chinese habit of defining nationality by physical appearance. Obviously the over-simplification causes more problems than it solves (but only when you think about it). It tends to drive me mad - especially the assumption that all foreigners do not know how to speak Chinese.
6 Leah // Feb 7, 2007 at 11:05 pm
And yet, even when you do possess the “undeniably American” features you describe, there is still confusion– while I have the requisite blond hair and blue eyes, my “high nose” suggests that I am actually French… At least according to one local drunkard with whom I once shared baijiu and pai huanggua. This guy also made the oh so astute assessment that because my Chinese was not as good as my friend’s Chinese, I was also less intelligent than she
(I think his exact words were, “…not stupid, but not very smart.”)
In response to Anonymous, I’m not sure we’re living on the same planet. Your point about Biden on Obama, which, as the Times’ article puts it more or less translates to, “articulate… for a black person,” is well-taken. But I have, in fact, heard Bush called “inarticulate” on plenty of occasions. If we don’t hear it anymore, I would argue that it’s only because the fact has become so very banal.
And difference *does* operate differently in different places. Perhaps, in some senses, foreigners will always retain something of their foreignness within a new context, but the degree to which this happens is highly contingent.
7 無名 - wu ming // Feb 8, 2007 at 1:54 pm
on that trip to taishan that i took right before SARS got crazy, a group of us walking up the neverending starcase up the mountain got tired of responding to the incessant “hello, hello,” and this prodded the onlookers into trying to guess who these foreigners who clearly didn’t understand english were.
russian, perhaps? the guy with the suit jacket slung over his shoulder was convinced we were russian.
finally, by time we got to the top, one old lao taitai figured us out, and confidently proclaimed: “ah, ta shi i-la-ke ren“
as fore whether considering non-han to not rerally be chinese is subversive, it may be in a rhetorical sense, but the practice of modern china is that it’s a han empire, not a multiethnic republic; not dissimilar from how americans can have a constitution that states that “all men are creatred equal” and then treat blacks as untermenschen legally and personally, and not see any problem with it.
8 Davesgonechina // Feb 9, 2007 at 4:28 am
@Wu Ming: “it may be in a rhetorical sense, but the practice of modern china is that it’s a han empire, not a multiethnic republic”
Reminds me of the Pesci-Damon dialogue in the Good Shepherd:
Joseph Palmi: We Italians have family and food. The Irish have the motherland, and even the n——s have their music. What about you [WASPs]? What do you people have?
Edward Wilson: The United States. The rest of you are just visiting.
9 TMH // Feb 15, 2007 at 5:33 am
What about your favorite ABC?
What the hell am I?
A couple Chinese girls said the other day: “Chinese Americans don’t think like the normal Chinese here do.”
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