My Least Favourite Word

I’ve decided my absolute least favourite word in Chinese is laowai, followed closely by the only slightly better waiguoren, which literally means “out-of-country person”. Both are Chinese for “foreigners” (See the Wikipedia entry on laowai here.)

Obviously at home we have the concept of "foreigner”. But in no way do we throw the term around like they do here. An example: I ordered lunch today at a campus restaurant, and when my food was ready, the waitress literally sang out “laowai!” – “foreigner!” Even in homogenous NL, can you imagine someone of a different race sitting in a restaurant and being called a “foreigner”? In NL, with its 98% white population (or more), who would dare make the presumption that, say, a black person or Asian person hadn’t actually been born in the province? There are many things I’ll miss about China, but being called a laowai isn’t one of them. To me, it’s the ultimate example of China’s lingering xenophobia – it draws a line in the sand. There is “us” and there is “them” and never the two shall mix.

For someone like me who loves diversity – who has travelled to 14 countries and met people from around the world – this alone is a deterrent to staying long term in China. I’ll take Washington, DC, thank you very much, home to many “foreigners”, not to mention a myriad of embassies and international organizations. Beijing and Shanghai are improving, but a third-tier city like Changzhou is not somewhere I could live for long. For everything I’ll miss about Changzhou, I’m ready to leave the stares, the laowai shouts and the annoying “hellos” behind in three weeks….

That’s another thing about being an expat in China. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t have someone saying “hello” to me. That might sound pretty harmless, but much depends on tone. I have no problem with a little kid or teenager seeing me, smiling and saying “hello”. I don’t like the half-taunting “hellos” I get from some people, usually young guys with their buddies. It’s like they’re trying to impress their friends by mocking the laowai. You might be German, French or another nationality…. it doesn’t matter. If you’re white, you get the annoying “hello”. In a bad mood, it leaves me fantasizing darkly about going up to random Asian people in North America and saying “ni hao”…. who cares if they’re Japanese? They look Asian, so they must speak Chinese. I’m also tempted to let loose some rapid-fire English that leaves them in shock. “Hello” is probably the only English word these people know, as I suspect the better educated don’t do it.

I try to understand all this and not let it bother me. If I was part of a race that had continuously inhabited an area for 5,000 years – with almost zero immigration and political leaders with a taste for xenophobia – then I might stare and call people laowai too. You can’t even begin to compare NL, although our overwhelmingly white population mirrors China’s Han Chinese population (and to be fair, we have our own version of laowai in the term “Come From Away”, though we hardly bandy it about as they do here). I think in NL, we’re still very much aware that we all come from immigrants. Just a few hundred years ago, most of our families were still in Ireland, England or Scotland. The oldest settlement in North America, and our 500 years are a mere blip next to China.

As China opens up, I wonder how it will look in the future. Surely, there will be more and more children born to expats in the bigger cities. They won’t be "out-of-country people", but will they still be called waiguoren? In 20, 30, 40 years, will laowai be a thing of the past? I hope so.