bighairylaowai.com

I’m a sweater. This damp affliction is borne both of my physiology (a lumbering 100kg +) and personality (regrettable tendencies to be swamped by anxiety and to lend disproportionate emphasis to the scrutiny of others). Some would question my choice in coming to China, a land where foreigners are especially rare and invariably elicit a broad spectrum of astonished reactions, and Chengdu in particular, an intensely humid basin, circumvented on all sides and smothered by a thick canopy of smog. Being the sweltering height of the summer, my routine has consisted of dashes between kong tiao (air conditioning) vents, shorts and loose open shirts at all times, frequent swims, frequent loads of washing and naps during the claustrophobic hours of the mid-afternoon. As such, I have crept towards living nocturnally, save the necessity of my 3 hour teaching shifts every morning.

So upon the telephone jarring me out of one of my Sino-Siestas on a particularly hot-wet-towel day, and being invited out for an afternoon stroll, I began to have unpleasant premonitions of overwhelming moisture. To the majority of callers, the offer of an excuse of some teaching emergency or personal mission, and the promise of meeting at a more temperate time, 3 feet at all times from the breath of kong tiao. However, the caller was the attractive N-, whom I had met 2 weeks previous.

As an aside, anyone who has read previous entries will have noted barbs being directed towards exploitative roundeye travellers and teachers cynically playing the Laowai card to hook up with starstruck local girls. My answer to any claims of hypocrisy; I, myself avoided the majority of branches when falling off the ugly tree (ahem), and I can unhesitatingly confim the impeccability of the lady in question’s character, sensitive (in Chinese terms) friendly and inquisitive, with almost total fluency in English and a stable career. And, of course, her discerning nature regarding men. A raft of priceless comments and questions from our first meeting concerned the width of my shoulders, my food intake (You must eat a lot qualified instantaneously by because you play so much sport and are so strong) and snub nose (It is so strange! Can I touch it?). A week punctuated by 2 phonecalls (I have seen a film. What is this word lesbian?), a wholesome, chatty dinner-date that Richie Cunningham would have approved of, promises to speak daily on the phone, dutifully accomplished over 7 days and then this inevitable afternoon of outside activity.

As bad luck would have it, this was the first day of cloistered humidity, after a week of perpetually light drizzle that had served to dissipate the typically hot fug. The omens were not good; upon leaving my heavily air-conditioned apartment, a thin patina of sweat formed in the hollow of my lower back. The fusty taxi had no kong tiao facility. No shaded area as I waited for 10 minutes by the gate of Sichuan Normal University, the scheduled meeting point (Chinese women are never early). We met, and she guided me through the university grounds, where she is a Chinese -English teacher. It was genteel, but unshaded. The first spots of perspiration. We passed the playing fields, where gangs of lithe, Chinese basketball players strolled past, their heads swivelling as they kept their gaze on whitey, wordlessly conveying why is this attractive girl with the albino Orangutan? The diligent analysis of every passer-by opened the floodgates. I desperately tried to recover the situation by innocuously falling out of her eyeline, and scrabbling my shirt sleeve across my face, but this guerilla contrivance only exacerbated things (Shaun of the Dead, fanboys). She could not but notice. Mortifying questions, all the worse for her attempts to not make them mortifying, followed, like Do you need a rest? Do you need a water? and Are you well? Walking 500 metres in the space of 10 minutes had not exhausted or made me ill, nor was it necessary to rehydrate. It was all the worse now. The act of wiping was now blatant and undisguised. It provoked the ultimate indignity, the offer of a tissue. I had to take it, my sleeves were sodden and would admit not a drop further.

The Tour from Hell was curtailed. We walked to the bus-stop, and though the relevant bus was lingering but 50 metres away, the notion of running for it was not realistic, lest I drown in my own bodily fluids. We waited unbearably at the exposed bus stop. It pulled up, and we boarded. The enclosed, unair-conditioned space made my heart rattle and breath quicken, like a cornered animal. When the Missing Link alights on buses in Chengdu proper, fellow passengers tend to freeze in captivated astonishment,but we were a long way out of the city centre by now, and not a fellow honky in sight. The aghast ticket collector handled my money and passed me the ticket without dropping her gaze.

Then the old man in front turned around. Like all old Chinese people, he had been wafting himself languidly with a fan, but upon sight of the glossy laowai he froze. His jaw dropped to near Hanna Barbera extremes, and his eyes expressed befuddlement. Half a foot from my face, his head turned rigidly but surely between us, alternating 80% of his stare on me, and the rest on N-. After perhaps 2 minutes, the confusion expressed in his face dissipated, he made a miraculous logical leap, and his look hardened. During the 2 + 2 phase, it had been amusing. I had made some greetings in Chinese, offered to take a photograph of him, and joked about it with N-. This judgemental transition was not so easy to shake off. Despite a momentary respite, waves of sweat began to ebb again. I considered that I should be sitting somewhere in the back rows of the bus, behind the Laowai Only segragation divide. Even Yoda, the shrivelled wife of my accuser who had been regarding me from a corner of her eye, seemed to shrink from discomfit at her husband’s intensity. N- broke from her jaunty demeanour to rebuke our prosecutor with a sharp line of Chinese, inolving a striking bu! [a particle of speech that forms negatives]. This goaded him further. The true sweat of the desperate, leg-sweat, sprung forth, and it started to seep uncontrollably through the unsympathetic, man-made fibres of my light-hued three-quarter length shorts. We came to our stop, and though igniminously sodden, I offered my goodbyes to the man.

Such an incident impelled me to write about the perception of foreigners in the Middle Kingdom (uhm… literal translation of Jongwuor, the native name for China, as I was sick of repeating China over and over), and the use of the word Laowai in particular. Laowai literally means old outsider, and is supposed to be the most respectful, honorific form of address for a foreigner, as opposed to the neutral waiguren, and varyious sub-strata of out and out insults. Every China blog worth its salt has some kind of discourse upon this topic, inevitable considering that the issue regards your position within your present society, be it temporary or not. To kick off, it has to be made clear that you’re not pigeon-holing the billion plus speakers of Mandarin in an uncomprimising, monolithic mindset. The word laowai will signify marginally or wildly different things to each and every one of them, and these meanings will evolve constantly and subtly as a result of the slightest incident regarding the actions of foreigners, and conversely the actions of their own countrymen, be they perceived directly or only through second-hand reportage. Playing the semantics card typically marks out a stubborn ar*ehole who refuses to concede an irretrievable argument, but here its necessary to demonstrate the elusive shift of the signified meaning under the surface of the signifying word. Laowai runs the spectrum; ironic, neutral, respectful, welcoming, disdainful, functional, whole-hearted, mean-spirited, insular, capacious, aggressive, an in-joke or hurtful barb directed towards a foreign acquaintance, and many other near-imperceptible shades in-between.

I felt that some of the cynical views propounded on other sites were much too hyper-sensitive and egocentric. I am never called laowai within my block, as through getting to know people and see them every day, making the effort to offer them garbled Mandarin, I am referred to by my English name, Chinese name or just by a warm helloo!

Though many of my younger students called me laowai, this was an affectionate term. The Foreign English Oral teachers are regarded differently from the Chinese teaching staff. We give each class a single lesson a week, so there is no ennui. We learn quickly we cannot discipline them, we don’t even try, so there is no fear. This means we must keep them under control through the incentives of games and prizes, so we are entertainers. We are strange and different, so we are fascinating. And in the case of the big hairy laowai (can’t resist referring to myself in the 3rd person), I have fur to gasp at and the ability to throw them in the air and swing them about, a zoo-exhibit and fun-fair ride in one. Laowai marked their fondness for me and my lessons, outside the crushing dogmatic system of their National Curriculum. Hearing it out and about on the street did not offend me either, as I considered the relative scarcity of our species and the uniquely physical appearance of this particular one. Disregarding my friends in the hood and a few scattered in other places I frequent, and other laowai of course, I have kept my head down and gone about my business undisturbed and incognito - the exact self-effacing attitude of anyone living in a big city. The difference is, while I feel absolutely anonymous, I am in turn the most conspicuous person on the pavement as well. But this was not a problem either, as there is little personal common-ground between my audience and I, nor would there be any cause for umbrage, as I understood that the appearance of a large caucasian, in a country that only opened its door meekly to the rest of the world in recent times, would provoke astonishment. Were I living in a city where being white-skinned was not extraordinary, then the attention would powerfully affect me. As it is, the reaction is understandable, though hardly acceptable. If the country should continue to drive west at such a dizzying rate, and locals still persistently point, gasp and exclaim laowai, then call it racist. But eliminating taboo racial labels from accepted public discourse in Western countries has hardly rid us of racial divisions either.

One of my favourite memories in Chengdu was my third day, when I walked for an hour from the centre to see what it was like in the sticks. People were amazed, and of course I heard laowai and waiguren, but armed with a few basic phrases, I was able to communicate simple things to the enthralled, furtive packs of children that were following me, and the old folk that stood agape in sheer dumbfoundment. Walking back from this outlying suburb, with directions, a bag of oranges and a bottle of water that I had procured through my limited means of communication, I was unabashedly elated.

Even the phenomenon that another blogsite has termed as Language Rapists, is no bother. It involves being cornered by Chinese students that aspire to be fluent in English, and inundated with questions as they initiate free-conversation. Though it can be tiresome if you are plugging away in the gym or the swimming pool, or need to get somewhere, I feel that we are being so over-paid for working far less hours and with no responsibility compared to Chinese teachers, that it would be positively Grinchy to refuse, while it also affords the occassional interesting conversation of your own.

Good-natured fascination with whitey is best encapsulated by what my friend Ole refers to as Hello Sniping. This simply involves the tendency of locals to shoot you a hello!, but only when they are a few steps past. It shows off limited English skills and amuses their friends, while avoiding the threat that it may actually embroil them in a conversation in which they could not take part. To give them the heebie-jeebies, turn sharply, stride towards them, and in turn exclaim a vigorous hello! that suggests you expect to partake in a dialogue with a fluent English speaker. They will giggle feverishly and scamper off.

In this light, such opinions as the following skim off another blogger’s description of his month holiday to China, are mightily crude and short-sighted:

“Laowai”… To me, it means “dog.” It means an individual who isn’t really human. That’s how it feels when the Chinese say it in reference to me. They never say it directly to me, always among themselves. You aren’t privy to their conversation, but you can see the degree of entertainment that they enjoy when you’re in their presence.

Probably the best psychological training one can have is to live here long enough to establish that internal perimeter.

This guy needs to change his pad, hug somebody, pet a dog, and fast. The line about discovering yourself abroad points especially to his Narcissistic expectation that the natives should be carrying him about on rickshaws between cascading waterfalls and snowy mountain-peaks while his crucial apotheosis of spirit comes to pass. It is astounding that the term laowai should have such a psychological impact within a short holiday.

My Spanish friend Sergio, the only one of us that plans to stay long-term in China, reacts aggressively to the L word. Should it come within earshot, he will use his decent Chinese skills, and facetiously ask where the laowai is and what they are doing, if he can take a picture and so forth, all with the intention of bursting their collusive bubble and shaming them. He reacts like a Dago Spike Lee. If an outsider should use the informal term of racial delineation he will become strongly affronted and act pugnaciously, but will frequently use the same word in casual situations with his friends in an act of strengthening the group’s cohesive identity.

I will admit that the old man on the bus experience is turning me slightly towards this bristling, siege mentality. I am utterly apathetic to political matters, so the commonly derided Chinese philosophy of indifference and even disdain of anything non-Chinese has never affected me before. But being the focus of such negative scrutiny, epitomised by the old man, did affect me, and provoke agressive stirrings. This was the first time, outside the roundeye binge-drinking bubble of Renmin Nanliu, that I had been in the informal company of a Chinese woman, and every male look conveyed the questioning inferiority of Why are you with this foreigner? Aren’t we good enough?

I really should stop sobbing into the keyboard. Discussing this issue with N- in the park, she pointed out that accusatory looks were being addressed to her, I was just the exotic roundeye catalyst. We came to the metaphor of Faye Wraye; while all of New York has its eyes on King Kong’s rampage, judgement is being applied to the heroine only, who has struck up an incomprehensible empathy with the big hairy ape. Indeed, being so far removed from the average Joe-China’s perception, the laowai enjoys far-greater social freedom, unrestrained by the censure and standards of your peers. Unfortunately, pushing through the logic of this situation also means encountering the redoubtable Pat……

I don’t want to sound pretentious and seem as if my prior blogs constitute a canon, but I have discussed the issue of Yellow Fever at length in other entries. I would certainly be p*ssed off if I was a Chinese male, and the majority of attractive girls were hanging out in seedy western bars, dressed in hotpants, high heels and cut off tops that bear meaningless catchphrases in a language they don’t even understand (well, most of the Chinese patrons of Shamrock and Carols can’t speak English at least), all on the lookout for some so-so whitey with equally shabby intentions. Not my standard behaviour, but I’m sure everyone likes to think of themselves as Tim rather than Finchy (gratuitous Office reference, one per blog standard).

The Laowai whisper becomes insidious, so much so that you begin to think of yourself as yellow-skinned and other foreigners as laowai. I stopped dead in my tracks, like all of my Chinese acquaintances, when a gaggle of Americans strolled down my street. I almost pointed and whispered to Cigarette Man, whom I was standing next to at the time. If I am walking down the road, and I see a honky, I can discern if he is on holiday or is a working resident, by his reaction. If he shoots me an eager look, or makes some gesture of recognition, he is on holiday and thankful to meet another caucasian. Of course, there is never more than a hi! - what would your opening gambit possibly be? Maybe:

Hey! Y’know, I noticed we’re both white and have double eyelids, unlike the rest of these Godless barbarians! Isn’t that just crazy?? Can you point me towards a western toilet old bean?

If there is not a single flicker, indeed if his gait shifts to blinkered impenetrability, then the stranger has lived here for some time, and is loathe to surrender his independence and denigrate his achievement in adapting to a strange new country, by talking to a mere laowai. That would be degrading.

In my first week in Chengdu, a man scraped residual phlegm through his nasal canal with a coarse snort, allied it to the product of the subsequent almost bark-like hawk from the top of his throat, and spat it with a loud, wet slap by my feet. Not yet being conditioned to such snotty intimacy, I shot him an innate glare of repulsion, to which he sneered and cursed laowai. Within the span of the the same few days, a horde of 5 year-olds from my new Primary Class swamped me as I was trying to leave the school, joyously chanting laowai! laowai!

Its all about the semantics, ysee….
[couldn’t reach a conclusion]

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 1:53 am and is filed under Chengdu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.