The porter looked up at the very last moment before I dodged him. It was a crowded sidewalk but I've learned Astaire-like moves on these streets. My fancy moves didn't stop him from dropping the potted plant he was carrying. The pottery cracked right in half and his eyes were locked on my retreating form.

"My friend laughed. "I think that's the first thing I've seen broken because of you today. You planning on causing any traffic accidents?"

"That wasn't my fault."

"Well, it never happens when I walk by myself."

"Meh. Grow a beard."

Being in China puts me in one of those positions that are played out all the time in our games. I'm the person, far from home who is the lone (or at the very least rare) exemplar of his culture/race (and I'm using that in terms of being one of under 20 white people in my city).

It definitely affects your perception of a place when you are constantly singled out as a foreigner. It's funny how the angsty elf in a human city gets a lot more sympathy from me these days.

Now, part of the "singled out" phenomenon comes because I live way out in the sticks of China. Not breaking rocks in Xinjiang, but definitely far from Shanghai. In the big, more cosmopolitan cities there're lots of foreigners around and you can pretend you might have a chance of blending in. Every time a character's gotten into a huff about having to cover up pointed ears, I've now got stories to prove it's important.

Friends of mine who've been in China for 12 years often tell this story: There was a small group of white people out for a walk in their small city. Todd, who is a tall guy, stopped in a shop with his little daughter, and the rest of the group kept on going without letting him know where they went. He stepped out of the shop and kind of looked around quizzically and people just pointed down the street. Every time he got to an intersection he'd look around lost-like and random people would point in the appropriate direction. Yeah. It's not a place to dine and dash.

When there's a homogenous population that one person doesn't fit into you draw attention. Taxi-drivers and anyone involved in the tourism industry obviously isn't going to freak out. But the thing is when you stray off those beaten tracks. Even in Beijing if a white person (or even more crazy in China, a black person) wanders through a residential neighbourhood away from the embassies and universities, the normal places people live you start getting stares. You get people pointing. People elbow their friends to make sure they don't miss the experience of seeing the foreigner. And that is what everyone who isn't Chinese here is: foreigner, not part of "our China."

But in our game worlds, one of the things that happen is that homogenous places either overreact or underreact to having someone different hanging around. As I've experienced being that "You're not from around here" target there're a couple of different ways people actually behave.

The first is the pointing and calling out. It's funny at first, but gets old right quick. I've stopped hearing the calls of "Laowai!" or "Waiguoren!" or even "Hello!" (which is the only English word the speaker knows and is just looking for a reaction). My students know they have to call me by name if they want to get my attention when I'm out around town because otherwise I'll completely not notice them. Sad and insensitive but true.

Now that's fairly benign; what about more hostile reactions? At least in China I haven't gotten many. One time in India I was screamed at in the middle of the street for being a blood sucking American parasite, but those were somewhat different circumstances. GMs often put in really antagonistically racist characters to show that "off-worlders aren't welcome here." But in reality it usually tends more towards stares than anything overt. Of course, when I travelled in the Middle East I displayed my Canadian flag prominently to avoid anti-Americanness.

And there's the other side as well. One of the benefits of living under a totalitarian regime is that people tend to be very scared of what would happen to them if they were responsible for anything serious happening to a foreigner. So even though people might not like you, you get essential services pretty well. And things like taxis always assume you need a ride, which gets intensely annoying but can be dealt with.

The last thing I want to mention is the way you tend to form groups with other outsiders, especially if you're in a place for a long time. The expat thing can be really stabilizing/exasperating but it's hard to ignore. Sometimes a person just needs to complain about being strange all the time.

J Unrau
Hungry J Propaganda
www.djs5.com/hjp