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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 |
