Hopefully I’ll be dead before then.
The ta ting bu dong thing baffles me because it happens the moment I walk into a place, without giving any indication about whether I understand or not. This is what I usually hear when I get on a bus or walk into a store. I usually respond with some broad Sichuanhua, leading everyone to crack up. It used to really get to me…saying “she doesn’t understand what I’m saying” is just such a strange reaction to seeing a foreigner. I’ve decided to believe it’s a politely indirect way of asking if I understand or not.
What bothers me about the "Hullooooooooo"s is that it actually isn’t the poor and presumably ignorant people doing it. The buckets-on-a-stick ladies, restaurant kids, shoeshine ladies and taxi drivers are all perfectly polite and offer me some of the most genuine smiles. When they do express surprise, it’s genuine and generally friendly. Whenever I visit villages I’m always amazed at how hard people try not to stare and how nobody yells stuff at me.
It’s chubby middle-aged businessmen and cocky young men who feel compelled to yell stupid shit at me on the street. It doesn’t come of as surprise or curiosity- it comes off as some kind of territorial display. I understand everyplace has it’s share of douchebags, but becoming the target of every douchebag in town wears thin. Didn’t their mother’s ever tell them it’s bad manner to yell dumb shit to strangers?
It’s really mostly Kunming that is that bad with the taxis. I get it in Chengdu, but infrequently enough that it’s possible that there are genuine reasons for it. The cab drivers in my town are some of the nicest people I know, and when we lose cell phones or jackets they actually get people to find us and return them! Kunming has a large foreign student population, and from my experiences with foreigners in these parts I wouldn’t be surprised if they have made a genuine bad impression. Still, it sucks to be stuck someplace for an hour with cab after empty cab passing you by.
Don’t get the wrong impression- I’m not some kind of crazy party girl- really anyone would say I’m a big on the boring side. Mostly I hang out with students, the other foreigner teachers (admittedly a sleazy bunch), Chinese teachers, and people in my yoga classes. I am single and in my twenties, so I do try to do things at night besides sit at home watching CCTV9. Unfortunately in my town, there honestly isn’t much to do. Mostly we sit in restaurants or at shao kao, but occasionally we get so bored that we head off to the town’s single sleazy club. It’s a mafia run town, and mafia types tend to flag me down and buy me drinks when I’m out and about. I’d rather not meet them, but I also don’t want to know what happens if I refuse them. Anyway, I know there are more than enough laowei who are here to drink and screw, but I’m really not one of those.
I’m willing to bet that it never even occurred to their mothers (or themselves for that matter) that it would be rude to shout stupid things at foreigners, people they most likely never imagined encountering in their lives, when they see them on the street. Therefore, I agree with China Guy that it’s more ignorance than racism.
even sven, are you going to acknowledge the post I wrote wherein I said that I don’t live in Shanghai and don’t have a cushy life at all? and that I, too, am subject to the “HELLLLOOOOOO” and the “外国听不懂中国话” bullshit that you are? I wouldn’t be surprised if my life in China actually wasn’t all that different than yours, I just don’t jump the gun and call it racism everytime someone is rude to me.
I’ve never had the “ta ding bu dong” thing stated explicitly, especially among strangers, but it is a source of longstanding frustration that some of my wife’s older relatives cannot bring themselves to talk to me directly, having to constantly look to my wife as an “interpreter” even though I’m sitting right in front of them and they know perfectly well that I speak Chinese. But on some other level, the idea that of a foreigner speaking Chinese is just alien to them, no matter how many times my wife exclaims, “he’s sitting right here, why don’t you ask him yourself?!”
So where do you live? Heilongjiang?
Man, I get that all the time: "你想知道吗？你自己问他吧！”
But I still think it’s more ignorance than racism.
Hell, have any of you given any thought to what it’s like to be a Jew in China? You don’t have any idea how often I get asked, “What’s that little hat you’re wearing?” “How come you can’t go out on Saturday?” “Are you rich?” “Do you hate Muslims?” I’m not going to bitch them out for asking things like that, though. They just don’t know any better.
Yeah. Spend most of my time in Daqing.
I’m not sure what racism looks like when it’s not based on ignorance.
Well, have you given any thought to what’s like to be a woman in China?
If you’re serious, then surely you realize you’re demanding acknowledgement that you lead pretty much the same life as even sven, as you’re living in the equivalent of Minnesota while she’s down in the equivalent of Louisiana?
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But there’s a difference between ignorance and racism, wouldn’t you say? An ignorant person just doesn’t know any better…they don’t know that it’s rude to say “your skin is so white” or “your nose is so big,” right? A racist knows that that is bad (or, at least, knows that that is considered wrong by most people) but still does it.
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Sure! Of course! That’s why I have never said anything to even sven when she has brought that up. I assume it must be rather difficult to be a foreign woman here.
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Of course, Koxinga. Contrary to popular belief, I am not an idiot. I just feel that perhaps my take on the situation (which can’t be all that different from hers) is a bit more nuanced due to my having been here longer than her and having a family here. By that I do NOT mean that I have a right to talk about China and she doesn’t, just that I’ve seen more and been through more and experienced more than she has and, perhaps, that makes me less apt to call something “racism” or less apt to get worked up about something mundane. OTOH, she may very well have experience that I don’t. Overall, though, I would still not say that her experience here has been typical and I don’t like her to present it that way lest anyone else get the wrong idea about this place.
I feel like I’ve been saying the same thing over and over again.
I’m sorry, but this is really, really stupid. I tend to like your contributions, kidney, but I can’t believe I’m reading this in a post of yours.
I can agree on the ignorat person doesn’t know any better, but a racist is ignorat to the fact that all human beings are human beings.
It is not that a racist knows that s/he is wrong and chooses to ignore the fact - for a racist the other people are wrong… now why this person is a racist may have different reasons, but mostly it is from being ignorat, selfish assbags
Well, I don’t know how to put this other than: this is a China thing. If someone said that to me in America I would be upset. In China I just chalk it up to them not knowing any better. I don’t want to sound like an asshole any more than I already do, but I assume this is the kind of thing foreigners who have lived in China would understand and maybe others wouldn’t. Most Chinese people say things like this but they don’t really mean anything by it just because they don’t know any better. This is difficult to explain.
Obvious troll is obvious.:rolleyes:
First of all, racism is a byproduct of ignorance. Trying to say that there’s some difference between the two is ridiculous. All you’re doing is working to excuse racism. I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve never been to China. I have no fucking clue what it’s like there. But you’ve just admitted that there is racism there (you called it ‘ignorance’ of course) and you’re excusing it. You’re validating in my mind what others in the thread have said in regards to your rabid defense of the Chinese. You might as well go into all those threads where people argue about slavery in the United States and tell us that the slave owners simply didn’t know any better and so they shouldn’t be called racist. And you might as well go into all those threads about WWII and tell us that the Nazis simply didn’t know any better and so they shouldn’t be called anti-Semites.
When someone says that something is ‘difficult to explain,’ typically that means that whatever they’re trying to explain is bullshit and they can’t find a way to phrase it in a positive light.
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This just sounds like some sort of Chinese exceptionalism to me.
Although I’m really not getting what’s so bad about people yelling “Hello” at one, unless it’s in that sleazy construction worker way. But I gather that’s not it because you all say it happens, regardless of gender?
*First of all, racism is a byproduct of ignorance. *
Right. But I would argue the following: all racists are ignorant, but not all ignorant people are racist.
*Trying to say that there’s some difference between the two is ridiculous. All you’re doing is working to excuse racism. *
I’m not trying to excuse racism at all. I have NEVER said there isn’t any racism in China, there certainly is. Hell, why wouldn’t there be?!
*I don’t have a dog in this fight. I’ve never been to China. I have no fucking clue what it’s like there. But you’ve just admitted that there is racism there (you called it ‘ignorance’ of course) and you’re excusing it. *
I’m not excusing it, I’m saying there is (in this case as it pertains to foreigners in China, anyway) a difference between “racism” and “ignorance.” even sven said that she knew people who didn’t want blacks to teach their kids simply because they were black. That is racism. A friendly person saying, “Wow, you’re really white” to a white person in China, where people don’t know any better, is not racism.
*You’re validating in my mind what others in the thread have said in regards to your rabid defense of the Chinese. *
Well, that makes me sad, Melon, because I like your sense of humor and I enjoy your posts quite a bit. But, as a foreigner who lives in China, I can make a distinction between racist assholes and people who say what I consider to be stupid things because they don’t know any better. Maybe in America or Britain or Canada it isn’t that way, but here it is.
*You might as well go into all those threads where people argue about slavery in the United States and tell us that the slave owners simply didn’t know any better and so they shouldn’t be called racist. And you might as well go into all those threads about WWII and tell us that the Nazis simply didn’t know any better and so they shouldn’t be called anti-Semites. *
Real situation: I went into a corner store that I frequent to buy a bottle of wine for my shabbat celebration. I have my kippah on. The owner of the store says to me, “Wow, what a funny little hat! Why are you wearing this?” and takes it off my head, places it on his own. His wife says to me, “Wow, you’re so white! So much whiter than we are!” and proceeds to compare her forearm to mine. I don’t get pissed. Why? Because this is a guy who literally gave me the shirt off his back when I was caught in a rainstorm once, a woman who greets me as a friend every time we run into her on the street, a couple that has shown nothing but friendship and kindness to me. I will not get angry if they say, “Wow, you’re really white” because I know they don’t mean anything by it! They just don’t know that you shouldn’t say something like that in the West.
This may not be applicable to other places or other situations, but it often is here.
Why aren’t you wearing one of those traditional chinese pointy hats? You are complaining about not being accepted, while wearing something that says “Look at me, I’m different.”
It is not a normal “hello”, and it is typically not said to your face, it is typically shouted as a “hulloooooooooooooo” at your back. It is not shouted in a friendly tone, it is shouted in a kind of cartoonish, sarcastic way, and then they all burst out laughing.
I do not reply, so many times they will shout it again and again. Replying just makes them laugh even more.
I am a guy, but it is typically shouted at me by groups of young men, or by guys looking to impress or amuse their girlfriends.
My Chinese friends walking with me are very embarrassed by it when it happens, so they know it is not polite or friendly.
Even some of my male Chinese friends are hesitant to walk with me because they are embarrassed or ashamed by what some other Chinese people say or shout at me.
Some cities are worse than others. There are only about 500,000 people in my city, so it is only considered a town or village by Chinese standards, but it is not as bad here as it is in some of the larger cities of 5 million or more people.
Again, the majority of people are not a problem, and many of them do go out of their way to be polite or helpful.
I didn’t complain about not being accepted. Actually, I didn’t complain about anything. I said he took it off my head and I didn’t get pissed. I’m wearing my religious headgear as I should, not as a sandwich board to make people look at me. People in China wouldn’t even know what it was, anyway. They just would think it was some funny little beanie.
Traditional pointy hats? Gimme a break :rolleyes:
That’s a nice anecdote, but hardly anything that I would call racism. That’s the kind of exchange I would welcome with open arms and a smile because they’re obviously interested in, and comfortable with, you. Even having your kippah removed by someone who doesn’t know better is completely forgivable and understandable, in my book.
I’m pretty sure even sven would feel the same way.
This is the void I can never cross with you religious folks. Clothing has nothing to do with spirituality.