It happens everywhere: In the streets, the metro, the malls, restaurants. Girls giggling, small children running around, everyone getting big eyes in surprise or shock and the word slips over their lips 外国人！(Wai Guo Ren) sometimes only whispered, sometimes screamed out loud and accompanied by finger pointing to make visible but is out of the ordinary of their daily routine, their concept of what China looks like, and what they would have expected to see on this very day the exclamation took place.
Why are people in China expressing this term when they see someone from a different country?
There can be a multitude of reasons for that. The closest assumption is that most people in China look quite similar in skin and hair color, facial features, walk, and making their way through the city in families or small grous rather than by themselves. All those features can cause an 'out of the ordinary' impression, especially for young children in China when they see a foreigner.
Another reason might be that especially small children have not seen any foreigners in their life before. They have heard some people talking, might have seen a few pictures in advertisement or from distance. The occassion to be close to someone obviously so different from themselves and sticking out of the mass, can lower the self-control and cause babbling or exclamations of excitement.
The third reason is missing restraint or consequences, low level of education, or cultural difference. China is a country which is built on very conservative and strict ideological grounds to limit foreign influence. That causes Chinese people to develop their own cultural appropriateness, standards of politeness, and standards of education. If parents are missing to tell their children not to point at people in public, teachers are not explaining why it is impolite to point at people and call them names, and societies are not condemning a certain behavior, it will most likely show up again and even be positively enforced with a nod, smile, or ignorance by the addressed person.
Why is it offensive for foreigners to be pointed out as such in public by others?
The first reason is embarrassment. In the same way as Chinese people do not want to be dragged on stage, pointed at with spotlight, and shown to everyone as "The Chinese, look at them, Ladies and Gentlemen!", people from other countries do not want to be pointed at, 'exposed', or treated like an object that somebody should look at. For some of us it is extremely embarrassing and 'face'-threatening and we don't want to be the center of attention whereever we go or whenever we step out on the streets. Some might even develop a social phobia and don't want to go out anymore or anger, insulting, shouting, or pointing back.
Another reason is that our concept of politeness and our education prohibits us to do so ourselves. When I was a child and saw a person with a different skin color or who were disabled, and would point that out with gestures or verbalize it, my parents, grandparents, or someone in the streets would tell me not to do that because it is impolite and "you don't want that to happen to yourself, right?" Doing so by others triggers our childhood trauma of being restraint to do so and therefore, we feel revulsion against others doing it. We think of poorely educated people that we don't want to get to know or make friends with.
One more reason why we don't like it is that after living abroad for some time, even in monogenious countries like China, we will find like-minded friends, see Chinese people every day and eventually get so used to this environment that we don't even see ourselves as different from anyone else anymore.
In conclusion, it is plausible and underrstandable why people in China are calling out foreigners but we hope that it will become less and less in the future and that we can simply recognize each other as human beings, meeting each other in public with mutual respect rather than calling each other out on the basis on some dividing structures like borders that were invented in the 17th century to control people more effectively, and keep them within a place to increase the wealth and importance of others.
What we can all do to avoid more of these situations is to make sure children understand that what they are doing is making others uncomfortable and talking with them to not show this kind of behavior anymore.
Comentários