User Comments - Tal

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Hi suansuanru

If you see me on the street, just come up and say 你好！I would be thrilled, I like to hear 你好, but I don't like to hear 哈陋!

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Be my guest changye哥, I also long for a simple life, (but never get it, 呵呵.) Actually I originally intended this sentence to be something like a koan, but every year students will assume that I have 3 specific aspects of life in mind, (e.g. childhood, adulthood, old age) and are baffled when I deny their theorizing!

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

呵呵，听起来很熟悉。不过，不好意思，我真讨厌那部电影！

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

My students love to tell me that every coin has 2 sides, but I like to tell them that life is a coin with 3 sides!

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

By Jove, you're right! Why didn't I realise that?

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

suansuanru, let me just clarify a little, (my own personal feelings of course, I'm not trying to speak for anyone else here.)

I don't consider the term 老外 offensive in itself, and 外国人 could also be considered neutral. What I do find annoying (and frequently offensive), is the attitude many Chinese people have towards foreigners, an attitude that usually goes together with use of these terms.

What do I mean you will wonder? Well, staring is one thing. Maybe this is less common in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, but throughout China it is still extremely common that a foreigner will be stared at wherever he or she goes. Chinese people will almost always feel it necessary to point out a nearby foreigner to their companions, uttering the words 老外 or 外国人, then they will all turn to have a good look or call out "hello", or maybe "哈陋".

Just the other day I went into a shop to buy bread, and as I am handing over money at the counter 2 or 3 other people came in. One of them (a middle-aged woman), immediately said "老外“ to her companions and exchanged a look of wonder and amusement with the cashier. (She did not look at me at all as she spoke, but her 2 male friends were staring.)

"That's right, I'm a 老外," I said, (in Chinese), "but really I prefer to be called a 'foreign friend'."

She looked at me as if I had just performed some kind of miracle and gasped: "You can speak Chinese!"

All three of them stared at me intently as I left the shop, and were still gazing and pointing I noticed, several minutes later, after I had crossed the road to visit another shop. This is a fairly typical occurrence for me.

Now many people, even other foreigners, will wonder what on earth is so bad about this and why am I complaining, and that is because they have no idea what life under such conditions is like, maybe they come to China for a couple of weeks holiday and find it all quaint and charming to be treated like a movie star and have every Chinese person they speak to tell them how well they speak Chinese etc, but I can tell you that for someone like me who has lived in China for several years and has (for all intents and purposes) made a life here, it is tiresome beyond measure to be constantly treated as if I do not exist except to provide some kind of spectacle.

Please go on "calling" foreigners 老外, I couldn't care less about that. But could you, (and any other Chinese people who might be reading this and trying to figure out how not to offend foreigners), do it discreetly amongst yourselves, not calling it out every time you see a foreigner so you and your friends can enjoy the spectacle and have some fun. Please just try to imagine that a foreigner is actually a person, more or less just the same as you, even though they may look so strange to your eyes. Try to avoid staring, do not point with your finger, and if you must call out "hello", why not do it in Chinese?

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

baba, to be honest I cannot imagine anything upsetting you, so I'm sure you'd be fine. You're one of the most sweet-tempered, well-disposed and kind-hearted people I've ever had contact with. If only there were more like you.

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

"...if I thought someone was intentionally using the word to have a go at me, there is a good chance I would 'fly off the handle' as you say..."

The thing is Bob, 'flying off the handle' is very bad form for a foreigner in China, and one has to get used to being treated as an outsider. As we've noted here, there are different contexts and different degrees of such treatment, but 老外 in China must learn to accept them all gracefully, if for no other reason than (hopefully) keeping one's own sanity and emotional equilibrium.

Certainly the "intention of the speaker is more important than the actual word", but the word is repeated so often that it becomes unspeakably tiresome to hear (and is associated in one's mind with the many times it is not meant kindly.)

Let me conclude by simply reiterating that (in my opinion) you cannot really know how living in China will affect you unless you try doing it. Before I came here I really had no idea what I was letting myself in for. That was probably just as well.

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

Well, I admire your assurance. But I maintain you can have no idea how you would feel when you hear this word time and time again, often in contexts where its use seems to be linked to condescension and/or rudeness. With respect, I have known you to fly off the handle occasionally just because of things you see expressed in the written word. Imagine what it would be like to live your life in a foreign country, and be reminded daily that you do not belong, that you are at best a 'foreign friend', at worst merely an interesting and strange animal from an alien culture, that you need not be treated with respect.

Posted on: What do Foreigners Like?

You didn't answer my question about actually visiting China. I'm prepared to surmise you have never lived here for an extended period of time. So, sorry, you're not qualified to make that pronouncement with such assurance.