“You know how every major city in the West has a China town? Well, I live in the opposite of that”
Yes, I hate to say it, but I am a resident of one of the many laowai ghettos that exist in the major cities all around China. Whenever my family or friends from home ask me about where I am living, I often have to answer with the above statement.
While I make many efforts to go and explore “Real China” as often as I can, I notice far too often that my friends and colleagues appear to be completely ignorant of their surroundings, and consider going to Starbucks to order their double-mocha-latte-something-or-other in English to be a genuine part of their Chinese experience. To assist these people (or anyone else in their situation) I have devised a surefire 25 point checklist to tell if you are not living in a section of “Real” China.
You might be in an Expat Enclave if:
- You give your fork back to get chopsticks
- You have no place to sate your craving for squid, starfish, or scorpion
- You have no desire to take a picture of any of the signs
- You have heard it pronounced “Nee Hey-ohâ€
- The Budweiser costs the same as Tsingtao
- There are more ads for Chinese Language schools than English ones
- Those Nike shoes, are actually Nike shoes
- The parks have 5 soccer games going on but only 1 Tai Chi group
- You start to ask Chinese people to take their picture
- You enjoy the coffee
- The toilets are inside the buildings
- You ask someone where the nearest bus stop is and they hail a taxi
- A sport other than ping-pong is playing on the TV (exception: Houston Rockets games)
- You get less than 5 strangers staring at you when you walk down the street (double if you have blonde hair and/or black skin)
- It’s safe to cross the street
- You start to wonder where everyone is spitting, since it’s clearly not on the sidewalk
- You wonder the same for using the toilet
- The pirated DVDs work
- You hear “I’ll just have a pee jew†said a to a waiter on more than one occasion
- The locals can speak more than one European language
- There are multiple restaurants that sell good Western food (or Indian, or Thai, or….)
- The “No Smoking†Signs are frequently posted and adhered to
- The babies are only showing one pair of their cheeks
- Everybody knows your name
- None of the above seems strange to you
So if much of the above list applies to you, please, do yourself a favour and branch out, because you’re probably missing out on a heck of a lot of this great country.
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The thing about Chinatowns is that the businesses are often run by Chinese. Not sure one could say the same of ‘laowai ghettoes.’ The language thing takes on a different light.
Damn, laowai be gettin’ out the ghetto think he got da right to come back an’ attacks his bredrin? Don’ you forget, you still laowai!
Okay, now that being a China expat is getting into its ghetto phase, it’s high time that China expats got to hold their own parade to celebrate some obscure or non-existent festival – it can’t be one that the locals might know about. I’m thinking something along the lines of Pancake Day, Burns Night, or New Zealand Independence day.
Likewise, a ghetto simply wouldn’t be a ghetto if you can’t get a some kind of food there which you can’t get anywhere else. I’m thinking of something along the lines of Pizza burgers, or maybe fried chicken with ‘secret laowai spices’.
Now I’m going to look into how to become a ‘community organiser’ (or maybe even a Charles Liu-style ‘community activists’).
Places like this exist in cities other than Beijing and Shanghai? News to me.
However, the idea of celebrating a fake laowai festival to confuse Chinese people is something I’m pretty excited about.
It depends on your agenda. I think that anyone who’s spending more than six months in the same area in China would prefer to live in or near these “western enclaves”. On the other hand if you are just a tourist or are not planning on living in any single location in China long term, then I totally agree with you that it is better to check out all the crazy, obscure and beautiful things “Real China” has to offer.
wow sounds like Glen lives in Jinqiao Pudong –
26.) Buick caravan’s with 2+ kids onboard is the norm
huzzah. not a single one of these applies in my city.
i’m so hardc0re it hurts sometimes.
@ Kellen, yeah, the only one I could claim is that the pirated DVDs work, but that’s just because I know where to go. Also, sometimes they still don’t work.
FOARP > I’m in! Let’s celebrate New Zealand’s Independence Day en masse…whenever the heck that is…
Charlie and john > Yeah, they exist all over the place, I’m in Suzhou and living in a smallish one, and I have found similar neighbourhoods in different Chinese cities I have traveled to.
Stephen > I agree, it totally depends on your agenda. I do enjoy living in my Lao Wai ghetto for daily things, but one of my favourite parts of where I live is that old town Suzhou is quite close, so I can get my dose of “Real China” frequently. What I don’t get (and hoped to come across in this very tongue and cheek list) are the people who never leave these enclaves. It makes me wonder why they moved to the other side of the planet to begin with.
Great post Glen. And, unsurprisingly (as we live a block away from each other) most of it applies to my
neighbourhoodghetto.Suzhou is a bit unique compared to similarly sized second-tiered cities, in that it virtually functions as a satellite city for Shanghai, and thus has a bit more of a market for foreign-tuned “luxuries” (ie. plumbing that allows you to flush toilet paper).
I actually had a good conversation about the “real” China with my wife yesterday.
I think we need to be be cautious about how we, as foreigners, label The Real China. What we consider “authentically Chinese” is usually based on a level of income/poverty that is strikingly different from our home countries, and therefore interesting to the tourist/culturalists in many of us but would gladly be exchanged by your average Zhou Blow.
However, what makes it exciting for us also makes it dreary and miserable for its residents. Poor food quality, bad sanitation, questionable education, pollution, lack of safety, etc.
I absolutely agree that as foreigners we need to get out and visit/live/experience these places for a more comprehensive perspective on China and our personal “China experience”, and especially think its great to chat with locals whose stories are strikingly different then our own. But I also think it’s important to recognize what parts are “cultural” and what parts are “class-based” so as not to confuse positive development as destruction of culture.
I think you need to properly define ghetto. I just moved into the French Concession over the weekend. The area has a lot of foreigners and therefore has a lot of Western restaurants/other shops that cater to them. The area is frequently called an expat ghetto, especially as most of the houses/apartments in the area attract high rent (and since they are old building usually expats are the only people that choose to live there). But at the same time I can walk one block over from my apartment and there’s a lot of Chinese shops and little roadside restaurants.
Plus since I live in an old building most of my neighbors are old Shanghainese.
J.
LOL – I am happy to be lost among the local population – then again there are not enough foriegners in Dandong to make enclave or a bubble – perhaps a hamlet…
The Real China is only a foreigners dream. Ryan’s got a point, it’s a classist approach to think that only places with poor ventilation and no proper sewage are the True China. Why, BMW parked in front of KTVs aren’t real?
Ryan > Well said, as always my friend. However, I do disagree that places like our neighbourhood are unique to Suzhou. I noticed locations like this in other cities that are comparable to our own (i.e. Hangzhou and Qingdao) and these cities are more their own entity (especially Qingdao) than Suzhou is.
There was a reason that I put “Real China” in quotation marks, as it is something that I have heard from several of my friends around here, and read in different blog posts. I think that it’s very indefinable, and in reality it includes both the segments above and below the poverty line, and both the mega-cities, and the extreme rural areas. Just like the United States is a mixture of both New York and Nebraska, China is both Shanghai and Shaanxi.
However, what I do take problem with are the countless people that I run into (and the more that I don’t) who are content to just stay in their little expat haven and call it their time in China. On the other end, there are certainly foreigners who are “Rural Snobs” thinking that their time in a small town is far more authentic than anyone’s time in a larger centre.
John G > I did define a ghetto, how many of the items can you mark off on the list? 🙂 Lord knows I can get a lot!
Alberto P > I agree, it is classist to label unsanitary conditions as more authentic, and to be honest, it is downright insulting. As there are many tourists (both Western and wealthy Chinese) who go to “visit” the country side, then return to their nice homes, and complain about how much of this traditional way of life is vanishing. Hardly seems fair to me!
However, I think that places that many people label as “Real China” (again with quotation marks added on purpose) do full well exist, however, what people need to realize is that China is REALLY developing rapidly, so anything new and modern is a crucial part in China’s very real identity.
I think #10 should be “You can easily find coffee that isn’t instant.”
It’s true that most foreigners are guilty of falsely labeling experiences and areas as authentically Chinese. I think Glen’s 25 things point more to the fact these expat bubbles shouldn’t be confused with truly living a life in China, not necessarily that we think going downtown for an afternoon teaches us about Chinese culture.
Before I moved here, friends who had also been international teachers and/or bankers abroad attempted to explain the expat bubble to me. I didn’t really *get it* until I lived it. It really is amazing how “easy” (for lack of a better word) these types of areas are to live in. It seems just a tad culturally narrow-minded for people to go out of their way to buy import brands just to avoid taking a risk on something local. And I do mean everything from appliances to food to apparel. Why bother travelling and living abroad? It makes me discount those people who pride themselves on having lived in a few countries – if they’ve been hopping from one expat bubble to another.
Ryan, you raise a good point that there’s a distinction between culture and class based definitions of what is authentically Chinese. I’ve traveled quite extensively throughout China over the past 10 years. I’ve seen where the upper upper class lives as well as old towns and minority villages. Real Chinese life and culture exists in all of those scenarios. That said, maybe it’s not completely possible for a foreigner to get an “authentic” Chinese experience living here, just like any foreigner elsewhere, right? Perhaps unless you live with a host family. Going back to the original point, that experience is far lessened by those content with staying in their bubble.
I think that as China develops, these types of neighborhoods will become prevalent across most major cities. Yes, a lot of the development is positive, but I do think some of it is destructive to culture. Loss of a hutong to an apartment building, for example. In big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, this phenomenon is taking over more so than say, in Suzhou. Here, we see it as completely compartmentalized, which is a shame in a different sense. It just perpetuates the divide between expats and locals. Then the real pity is that neither really learn much about one another. It’s true that we foreigners need to be careful about confusing poverty with authentic culture – anywhere we travel, really. I had a serious problem with this when friends of mine wanted to visit a favela in Rio De Janeiro. I had mixed emotions, and for a variety of reasons, I ended up not going. As Ryan says, what’s exciting for us is dreary and miserable for those living it. It’s also a good reason why, as travelers, we need to be sensitive about photography. Too often, I see the obliviously insensitive tourist happily snapping away at locals. But I digress.
Oh, one more thing, red bean shows up in food here, get over it! 🙂
Oh how people take things seriously.
I remember, being in Hong Kong in 2000, seeing exactly the same discussions regarding the elusive expat ghetto of Discovery Bay. Long discussion of Discovery Bay vs Midlevels vs anywhere else does it really matter? And by no means is that ‘old time’.
foreign ghettos, cultural bubbles, “æ´‹”人街… Tianjin has them too, and it actually takes a conscious effort not to get sucked in (assuming you don’t want to be sucked in, that is).
It’s not just about where you live, though obviously that’s a big part of it. These are questions I ask when I’m taking stock of how we’re living in China:
– Where do you work/study?
– What percentage of your time do you spend in English?
– What percentage of your time do you spend with other foreigners?
– What percentage of your play time do you spend with Chinese friends but doing foreign-style recreation?
And some bigger questions:
– Most of the time, who’s making more of an adjustment to their behaviour, you or locals?
– There’s a lot of cultural distance between a foreigner and a local. Who’s covering more ground to meet the other?
– In which direction is your lifestyle going (increasingly engaged, or increasingly retreated into the culture bubble)?
The “right” answers, of course, depend on how long you plan to stay and what your goals are.
Arguing over what’s “real China” is sort of beside the point. There are many chinas, but if your neighbours are mostly laowais and Koreans and you spend most of your time in English, then you probably aren’t living in one of them.
Just remembered, we did a whole list of things to try — mostly easy, fun, little things — for laowais who want to start branching out: China-friendly New Year’s Resolutions for Laowais
@Joel: That you call it “play time” displays, beyond any doubt, which cultural group you spend the majority of your “free time” with. 😉
haha, well, fulltime language students sometimes have a little time on their hands.
mostly what I meant though was the difference between inviting locals to activities where foreigners are more comfortable, or joining locals in activities that they’d be doing with or without a foreign friend. I saw this a lot among the foreigners in Tianjin: whenever they spent recreational time with Chinese it was usually doing stuff that is normal for foreigners but a little novel for the locals. Some foreigners even felt a little annoyed that their Chinese friends wouldn’t reciprocate in kind (“I’m always inviting them to do X but they never reciprocate”), not realizing that their Chinese friends don’t host those kinds of activities even among each other, or that her Chinese friends live in different economic worlds. Part of it was just general preferences for how you spend free time, part of it was economics.
When people say ‘real China’ I think they just mean ‘traditional China’; ie, an authentic experience – it’s just something any tourist expects to get from their chosen destination. If was going to visit the UK as a tourist I would want to stay in a traditional castle hotel and not the Holiday Inn, go to a pub and have a local ale and not the nearest Sbucks; it’s not a classist approach, just a thought process that you have because you are not ‘of the place’ – it’s not necessarily linked to poverty and hardship, although this does come into it in China.
I think a great deal of Chinese people are guilty of romanticising the real China too.
True. I agree with this. Traditional is what you see in history books and well, movies. But then again, those are Hollywood-produced movies that we see more often than not.
Haha, I love this list! Although I don’t live in China, I can totally see all this happening. It ain’t easy to see some real China when you are a laowai. Wish I could be Chinese for a couple of days, just to see what they do, when they feel all comfortable in for example their own homes.. For now, I just keep trying to find some real China whenever I visit the country 😉
Great list Glen!
Well, it’s an interesting balance you need to find when you’re talking about foreign enclaves and “being engaged,” and “doing Chinese things” with your “Chinese friends”.
Call me a crazy multiculturalist Canadian, but in the end, who cares how many Chinese friends you’ve got, and how much Chinese you can speak? How about you can live happily and get what you need to get done, done? I mean seriously, are you here to compete with Chinese people to see how Chinese you can be?
Back home in Vancouver and Toronto, we’ve got a whack of Chinese-Canadians. The thing that made me interested in China in the first place was that I had a friend whose parents had immigrated to Canada 14 years before, and still didn’t speak English. Are they less Canadian? How about the Chinese-Canadians who have jobs in normal companies, but just prefer to hang out with other Chinese-Canadians? Are they lesser folks?
Here in Beijing, are you going to criticize these people from Xinjiang who, thanks very much, would rather not hang out with Han people if they can avoid it? And if your Chinese friends are all minority people, is that lessening your “Chinese” experience?
I think it’s easy to get caught up in justifying your foreign existence here, but honestly, its mostly a big head competition. Get a job, make money, have fun, raise a family. It’s not just the Chinese way — it’s the human way. Cheers.
@Rob: Comparing the multiculturalism of Canada to China is just impossible. Anyone from China becoming Canadian will be so in every sense of the term. No matter how long I live in China I’ll never be Chinese.
I don’t think the point is to “become Chinese” though, but to take advantage of the opportunity to understand and learn about a culture that is foreign from your own. See where it is different and where it is the same. This, I think, is the true value of living abroad.
The difference between most Chinese immigrants (or any immigrant) to Canada and expats in China is the term in which they plan to stay in the country. I say most, as obviously this isn’t hard and fast. However, if you rounded up every laowai within China and took an average on how long they were going to stay in the country, I’m guessing it would be about 2 years.
That’s a snapshot of a culture at best. It’s better than a tourist, but it’s no where near as long as it takes to fully understand a culture/language/people. But if you spend that time actively immersing yourself in it, you will certainly have a more complete idea of what it’s all about.
I think there are a good number of people who feel there is more to get out of life then a job and money – in fact, I’d say a few people sacrifice those two for the latter two in your list.
@Ryan I kind of get your point about immersing your self in a new place, etc. But at the end of the day, we ARE immersed in whatever we do, if that means having to understand how to get the maid to clean the knob on the toilet properly, or if it means memorizing the bus map, or if it means figuring out how to wine and dine a high level official and at night enjoy some underground rock, they are all a different experience, all of which are legitimately different from “home.”
It’s statements like Joel’s that get to me:
“Arguing over what’s “real China†is sort of beside the point. There are many chinas, but if your neighbours are mostly laowais and Koreans and you spend most of your time in English, then you probably aren’t living in one of them.”
We’re all in China – you’re not going to find another mix of people doing the same stuff anywhere else in the world, even if they are mostly foreigners. In fact, as many mainland Chinese will remind you, there is only one China. And we’re all here, just living. I don’t see the point of looking down on people simply because they don’t have the time or inclination to learn Chinese and make Chinese friends.
I have to admit, I have benefitted greatly from “localizing” myself, but honestly, if I were here on different pretenses, living in Shun Yi or something on assignment from a multinational, I wouldn’t want to be judged any differently. I would be doing whatever it took to make sure my kids were growing up with good education, a balanced view on China, and a feeling of self identity and culture from their homeland with an understanding of how they are the same and different from Chinese people.
Maybe you are Canadian, I’m sorry I haven’t read your blog long enough to figure it out. Maybe you’re familiar with the multiculturalism experiment, and how it’s not yet finished being played out. I think the jury is still out on how “Canadian” new Canadians are, although I personally support the notion of them being Canadian and constantly helping us redefine what “Canadian” means. Anyway, I think the experience is still informative of what it means to co-exist in a place with people different than you.
Re: Rob’s comments
I don’t see the point of looking down on people simply because they don’t have the time or inclination to learn Chinese and make Chinese friends.
It’s not about looking down on anyone. The lifestyle choices for me re: cultural adaptation depends on my goals. If I was only gonna be in China for one year, I wouldn’t bother with much language study. But if I want to eventually function in Chinese culture contexts in Mandarin, my lifestyle choices will either hinder me or help toward that goal. If my goal was to go to China for work but with no real interest in Chinese people and culture, then the laowai culture bubble would be perfect for me, just like Vancouver’s Chinatown is a great fit for elderly Chinese immigrants who have no hope of learning English. Regardless of obnoxious foreigners who like to show off their language and cultural skills to other foreigners, the reality is that foreign culture bubbles hinder cultural adaptation.
We’re all in China – you’re not going to find another mix of people doing the same stuff anywhere else in the world, even if they are mostly foreigners.
I’m not saying laowai culture bubbles aren’t special cultural experiences; the mix of people is really interesting and personally I enjoy it. But if I live a foreigner lifestyle on an inflated foreigner salary and don’t regularly interact with Chinese people in Mandarin, how can I say I “live in China” or “experience China”? Only on the mere technicality that I am physically in the country. But at the level of human experience and culture, I’m effectively living in an Anglo-international culture-insulation bubble beyond the margins of Chinese society. It’s “experiencing China” the way an imported Chinese grandpa who speaks no English and never leaves Chinatown experiences Canadian society.
In fact, as many mainland Chinese will remind you, there is only one China.
I’m speaking culturally, socially and economically, not politically. There are “many china’s”: peasant China, urban China, special economic development zone China, migrant worker China, official privilege China, laowai bubble China – the list is almost endless. People can live in the same cities and even ride the same buses but live in separate worlds with vastly different experiences.
And we’re all here, just living.
“Kum Bay Yah…” 😉
My point is that if we want to ‘experience China’ in any meaningful sense of the term, then it’s a good idea to get outside our laowai cultural bubble, because the experience of ‘China’ that we have inside the laowai cultural ghetto is not shared by 99.999% of the Chinese population and certainly not mainstream Chinese society. We can call that ‘experiencing China’ if we want on the technicality that we’re physically within the borders of China, but there’s very little recognizably Chinese about that experience. People don’t need to feel bad about not wanting to do much cultural adaptation. But if they do want to live in Chinese society, getting out of the culture bubble will be helpful.
PS – I agree with Ryan: your Canada/China comparison is meaningless. (I grew up in greater Vancouver.)
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Number 10 made me laugh for sure!
I always say there are people who LIVE in China and people who WORK in China. The ‘work’ in China people basically live in the Laowai world and don’t mingle. Those of us who live here tend to be the ones who go and eat and drink at the local hangouts.
I plan to write a thing about this on my blog soon. 🙂
Haha, that’s awesome and so accurate. I just got back to the U.S. from visiting my dad who lives in Suzhou. My dad tries to get into the Chinese culture as much as possible, but he can often be seen at Jack’s the bar around the corner from his place. I was surprised to hear so much English!
I’ll be moving to Chengdu at the end of July to teach, and I hope to experience the culture as much as possible.
This is a great article Glen….funny coz it’s true!
I am thinking we should get a list of what we define as laowai ghettos based in different cities of China…..for me, Shekou in Shenzhen HAS to be included……
anymore for anymore?
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