10.08
A friend of mine (who is dark-haired) explained to me that she has two friends she hangs out with frequently in China: an Asian and a blonde. When the Asian friend is present, Chinese staff all approach her for any communication needs. No surprise. The funny thing is what happens when the Asian friend is not present. The Chinese staff all naturally go to the brunette rather than the blonde. Never mind that the two girls are “equally white”; apparently subconsciously, darker hair equals higher likelihood of speaking Chinese.
There’s no question about the black hair principle that John describes above but when it comes to black hair and black skin…there’s a whole new calculation that is incorporated in the determination of the sequence of approachability. Indeed, this reminds me of a quote:
“What does it say to me where I speak Chinese, have travelled throughout China, enjoy Chinese culture and understand it to a certain degree, have close relationaships with more then a few Chinese and can even cook a couple of Chinese dishes but still be treated by most Chinese as something strange? What is it to try to do everything you can to try to fit in and yet are considered a monster?”
Just to finish off the progression…my experience has been Asian, Brunette, Blonde and way down on the line is Black(skinned). Somedays this heirarchy is maddeningly frustrating but at other times you realize that you can (that you have to) take advantage of the situation such as when you’re taking a crowded 12 hour hard-seater train ride and all you want to do is chill-out. Let the Asian, Brunette and Blonde deal with the: “Where are you from?”, “Do you like China?”‘ “Do you support the war in Iraq?” questions. Let them ignore me as I watch the countryside go by in the window and enjoy a moment of silence in noisy room.
I am going straight to the shop and buy a bottle of blonde hair dye. And then to the optometrist to get some blue contacts, because with my brown hair and eyes, I don’t think I look quite ‘foreign’ enough. The advantages of being a westerner in China outweigh the disadvantages 99 to 1…
You are spot on here. I’m a (white) teacher at a college in small-city China. When our school was looking to hire new foreign teachers, our boss explicitly told us that they’d rather have an American person than a British person, and that they did not want to hire a “negro.” I corrected his terminology, of course, but he kind of waved it off. It did seem very appropriate, however, that he used that particular wording considering the rest of his sentence was so discriminatory.
Anyway, when I asked my boss “why?” He answered that the school wanted someone who looks more “traditional” and someone who looks like a Westerner. So, apparently white = “traditional” and black people do not look Western. It was one of those situations where I couldn’t really press the issue because of a lack of communication and a weird power dynamic with my communist-elite boss. I still felt guilty though.
A second issue, though a bit less racist, is with my students. They also seem to think that the words “negro” and “colored” are appropriate descriptions. I really don’t know where they’re picking this up, but it is the most common description from my college level students describing anyone with dark skin (including many Asian people). When I was showing pictures of my friends at a party from when I was home this summer. I asked them to describe one picture with some of my friends dancing. The one thing every class pointed out in this one picture– always in this same way– was “two of them are negroed!” (my friends Sidney and Julia were in this one picture). I spend the rest of the class explaining why NOT to say that (beyond the bad grammar of adding -ed).
I’m a bit glad that I did not tell them that Sidney (a male) is not only “negroed” but also “homosexualed” as that too is pretty frowned upon here.
Anyway, you do have a good point about having to deal with less of the “where are you from”s than us white laowai here… I guess it’s a small consolation…
Great site!