You know what, kidneyfailure? (about China)

The BBQ Pit
61

Give me a break, Koxinga. I don’t know what it’s like in Taiwan or if you’ve ever lived on the Mainland, but foreigners in China practically have our lives gift-wrapped for us here. We get salaries far beyond what out Chinese counterparts do for the same amount of work, we get furnished apartments with utilities paid, we get insurance, we get paid vacations. Even Chinese PhD’s don’t get that. If even sven doesn’t get that (as some, for whatever reason, don’t) then her experience is not typical and not representative of what it’s like for the majority of foreigners in China. Most of us do get that, however. Thus, I don’t have much sympathy when a foreigner whines about “racism.”

I certainly didn’t say there wasn’t any racism, just that I don’t believe every Chinese asshole who is rude to a white guy is a bitter racist. Nor do I believe for a second, as even sven does, that the government is racist or has some racial platform it’s going to push. That would incredibly stupid of them and I think they know that.

  1. No, he wasn’t lying. But I also don’t believe he made an effort to present the other side of the coin. That’s how I feel about even sven as well.

  2. I don’t find it offensive because I don’t want the “underbelly” of China to be exposed, I find it offensive because the other picture of this country…the one that the vast, vast majority of Chinese and foreigners experience here…isn’t being presented. Since when has it been a sin to want to hear both sides of the story?

  3. Yes, I do want a balanced picture. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, is it?

  1. Do you have any kind of mandatory wage cap because you’re a Peace Corps volunteer? If not, you should have reported your employer to the FAO or FEB long ago, because he’s ripping you off something bad. Your experience with this is not typical.

  2. Frankly, you have way of knowing why they didn’t pick you up. You can assume it was racism, but you really have no proof. I wonder if anyone is going to accuse you of being a mind-reader as they did to me upthread…

  3. As intolerable (and illegal) as that is, we’re talking about the racism YOU experience on a purported daily basis. Also, I’d say the anti-Japanese sentiment in China is more political than racial (not that that excuses it, of course). Also, the cite eludes me at the moment, but there was a place in Jiangsu that had a similar sign that was forced to remove it due to public pressure.

  4. Ok, I’ll give you this one. That is true, though it does not appear to be the norm.

  5. How awful. But, again, you can’t be sure that this was because of your race.

62

Have you ever thought for a moment, kidneyfailure, that not everyone’s lives resemble your own? While you are having a great time in the big city with your family, a single female South African teacher in a small town is going to be living something very, very, very different.

How often do you get people pointing laughing, and yelling “hulloooooooooooooooooo”, “laowei” and “ta ting bu dong” at you in Shanghai? Probably not often. So it probably doesn’t get to you. I get that every time I step outside, even on my own college campus- every time I walk to class, every time I eat lunch, ever time I go to buy toilet paper at the store, every time I get on a bus…It does get to me.

For my salary, it’s paid by the US government and I’m not allowed to accept work on the side, which is something I take seriously. It gives you a different perspective when you are in China without the easy money. Making money hand-over-fist can cover up a lot of sins- I know plenty of feminist women who are teaching “happily” in the Middle East making small fortunes and just ignoring the bad stuff. Money does that. Doesn’t mean the bad stuff isn’t there.

I swear, if I said “The Pope is Catholic” you would say “How can you possibly know that?” Is there any length you won’t go to invalidate my experiences?

Yeah, maybe I just keep having cab drivers in Kunming who have some bizarre circumstances that make them slow down to pick me up, take a look, frantically start waving me away and yelling excuses, and then picking up people ten feet away from me. And I just keep running into these circumstances every damned time I need a taxi in that town.

Doesn’t seem likely.

One thing that tipped me off a little bit, kindeyfailure is that very day, when we finally did get in a cab, we got stuck in traffic. A cab driver going the opposite direction started to berate our driver for picking up foreigners. He was actually raving a bit about the “damned foreigners” until my cab driver said “Hey, you know they can understand you, right?” He spent the rest of the drive apologizing.

Which isn’t unusual. My Chinese friends also get shit when they go out with me- people whispering “traitor” or “why are you out with those foreigners?” and “aren’t our Chinese good enough for you?” as we walk by. And I’m female hanging out with females!

You’re going to come on here and say “blah blah blah that didn’t happen, you misinterpreted, blah blah blah.” But it did happen. And when crap like that happens often enough to become a pattern, you are going to come to conclusions.

63

Sounds like you, personally, know which side your bread is buttered on. Good for you, laowai. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that.

But I have to agree with others here that your relatively cushy life in Shanghai doesn’t invalidate what what even sven is experiencing out in the sticks. For fucks sake, this is exactly analogous to (say) someone in 1930s New York City declaring that black lynchings in the Deep South must be a myth because he had never witnessed such a thing. (Just how far away is Sichuan from Shanghai anyway?)

64

Although life here in Taiwan is quite different from the mainland (thank. God.), I can attest that folks seeking employment here as English teachers have a much harder time if they are Black or Asian, particularly for children’s schools. A lot of parents want the kiddies learning from someone with a white face, and a white face only: if that’s not racism, what is? It’s a bit of reverse discrimination, or some such, but being lauded because you’re in a white minority (rather than spat on) also gets wearisome over time. A lot of people are not looking at you as another person at all, but as a white stereotype. Try living with it for a decade or two, and you’ll see what I mean.

65

China Guy lives in Shanghai, I’ve never even been there. My “cushy life” involves a one-bedroom apartment that I share with my wife and mother-in-law (three of us in the same room…just wait until the baby comes) and a part-time night job that keeps me out until 9:30 (and that’s after a full day at my full-time job) and a salary higher than even sven’s, but pitifully lower than that of anyone else I know. However, I do still have a standard of living that is better than most of the Chinese people I see around and it would make me look like a childish, greedy idiot to complain about how the ignorant Chinese discriminate against poor little me while I’m so much better off than they are. Sorry, call it a character flaw or a manifestation of my assholish stupidity and/or naviety, but I just can’t get worked up over every jerk who ever shouted “HELLLLOOOOO” at me, especially since I have a relatively well-off standing in this society and he probably has nothing.

I guess I just *care too much * :rolleyes:

66

I don’t live in Shanghai

I don’t know why you think that I do, I don’t know where you or Koxinga got the idea that I live in Shanghai, but I don’t live there. As I just said to him: I’ve never even been there.

The things you described above happen to me all the time. Used to bother me, now I just ignore it or I write the person off as a dumbass who isn’t worth my time. Sometimes, when they’re particularly obnoxious, I’ll get in someone’s face and give them a piece of my mind. But I’m not going to act like a victim and claim that I’m being horribly discriminated against because some asshole shouted “hello” at me…especially when there really are people in the world who are being discriminated against.

67

I recently had a woman call me practically in tears begging me to tutor her child. At the time I was the only white English speaker in town, and she simply “could not accept” a black person tutoring her child. She offered me several times the going rate. I had to turn her down, since my job here is to help my students- mostly the children of farmers- on not the rich people who can afford private tutors. I kept getting phone calls for weeks about the matter.

68

even sven, every post of yours just gets more pathetic than the last. You are a horrible person.

69

Whoa, whoa, whoa…I certainly wouldn’t go that far. :frowning:

I’m a loudmouthed asshole who thinks he knows everything, even sven is self-important and whiny, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she and I got along were we to sit down together and talk face-to-face. I don’t think she’s a horrible person at all. Let me just state that right now. Rand Rover, I have been a rude, obnoxious jerk to even sven, but I’d like to think I at least have something approaching an argument or point to make and it just comes out wrong. Just calling someone a “horrible person” brings nothing to the conversation at all.

70

She’s your basic know-nothing know-everything do-gooder who does nothing but bad. She’s above all us mere mortals who work for a living (i.e., those of us who create value and make the world a better place).

She doesn’t have the ability to do anything that would create actual value, so she places herself above it all. She’s just a loser with her ass in the mud and her head in the clouds.

71

Look, I’ve never had someone call me a nigger or a wetback, but I’ve witnessed many friends have these very words screamed in their face. Sure, I didn’t personally experience the racism as a target of it, but I witnessed it and thus it certainly became an experience of mine.

So yeah, if you both agree that what she says occurs- for whatever reason it may be- then yeah, that’s racism. Racism she has experienced if she has witnessed it.

72

Takes one to know one!

73

I said I didn’t feel that the feelings the Chinese had towards the Japanese were as much racial as they were political, didn’t I? I can’t imagine that the Chinese hate the Japanese because of their race, especially since the Chinese and Japanese are members of the same race.

74

Keep losing, loser. You are not making a difference. You will die, and no one will remember you. I help people every single day. When I’m dead, what I did to help them will live in on the value I created.

You don’t help anybody. You do shit that is forgotten the moment after it is done, all the while thinking you are doing your part to make the world a better place.

75

Will you knock this shit off, please? Believe it or not, we actually were trying to have a somewhat civilized conversation in this thread.

76

Excuse you, sir! He is a lawyer and he is important. You should be honored- HONORED- to be graced with his presence. These posts will later be chronicled in the annals of history, studied by the masses in a way similar to that which we study Plato.

77

No, I said I’d try to get to this when I have more time. I *do *think a lot of what is perceived as racism is ignorance (unintentional or otherwise). The price gouging referred to is universally applied to everyone, so not sure if that counts as “racism” either.

but there is plenty of racism and if I ever feel comfortable discussing it after I leave China, I’ll start a GD on Tibet.

78

Dude, you’re a tax lawyer. Flatworms create more social value than you do.

79

You’re visiting Free China, dude, at least for the moment. Feel free to say whatever you like! We won’t tell.

80

I am the spoiled one that lives in the paradise of Shanghai. Yes, I have a good set up that I’ve invested 25 years of my adult life in Asia to build. But my kids go to local school, my wife was born and raised in China, my wife’s family are certainly not wealthy or privledged, the MNC I work for doesn’t pay for my car or housing, and maybe just maybe my youngest would have not been born with her special needs if we had been in the US.

I absolutely understand that your life in Sichuan is going to be different. I doubt if you live in a small town though - and just so the folks playing at home understand better, just how many millions of people live in your small town? :wink:

You’d be deluded if you thought I didn’t get “hello” thrown out an irritatingly frequent amount on a daily basis. Yes, it’s nothing like what you get, but this still happens in Shanghai. Having spent 3 years in the Chinese countryside and usually in villages, yes actually I do have an idea of what it is like. And I spent about a year altogether in Sichuan. The crowds watching you like you’re in a zoo, speaking like you’re not there, touching, going into the public bathroom to watch (not freaks wanting to see you relieve yourself but wanting a naked look), etc.

I do not obviously have the experience of being a foreign woman in China. I do not have the experience of not understanding the language (I spoke fluent Chinese before I first stepped foot in the mainland), so I can’t relate to the challenge of not understanding. Although to be fair, I’ve been to plenty of places including Sichuan where the locals speak an unitelligible dialect. The good news being that a lot more people can speak and understand Mandarin these days.

“ta ting bu dong” isn’t something I hear either :stuck_out_tongue:

Stuff like taxi experiences in Kunming I simply find mystifying as I don’t have that experience. Seriously. It’s outside my frame of understanding because it just does not happen to me. One obvious possibility is that foreign women are treated differently than men, other than that i got nothin. I don’t really hang out with foreign women in Shanghai, so I don’t have anyone to ask. I’m the only foreigner in the office.

And I do get out to a lot of different cities and to factories in the middle of nowhere such as Shenyang, Changchun, Wuhan, Kunming, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shiyan, Dalian, Beijing, Qingdao as part of my job. Taxis can be a pain the ass, and I can get ripped off or taken for a ride. But I don’t get taxi’s trying to pick me up, see it’s a white boy, drive on 20 feet and pick up a local instead. And to be clear, I don’t get that anywhere in China.

even sven, from some of your past posts, you run with an “interesting” crowd. And what you experience may be normal for that crowd, but it’s got nothing to do with the “reality” that I experience. And that’s why I do usually ask a lot of clarifying questions to try figure out if it’s something pretty unique to you or more universal.