The Geography of Laowai
It’s really about race, not nationality and not foreignness. I joked with my friends back in China that if I were ever abroad and encountered a Chinese person, I’d be sure to call them 老外 laowai. It was only ever a joke, as anyone who knows me knows I detest the word and all it carries with it. In the derogatory-vs-not argument among expats in China, I was always squarely with the former.
In a recent conversation with a Northeasterner I made a similar joke about how now they were the laowai. With clear certainty in their expression they told me matter-of-factly that no, in fact they were not a laowai, and that it was still me.
It’s not a word that can be used on Chinese, they said. It’s Europeans, Americans, white people and black people but not ever Chinese. Indians, I asked? Sure. Japanese? No, not really. They’re just 日本人 or 日本鬼子*.
This actually surprised me. I know a Japanese person walking down the streets of Shanghai won’t stand out as such and so isn’t going to get the hēlló! likely to be received by the non-Asian expats. In fact it goes one step better. While in China I once was witness to a Skype conversation between a friend of mine in China and an old classmate of theirs now studying in the United States. The conversation was littered with comments about how the laowai were insufferable. Laowai this and laowai that. I interjected that the only foreigner in the situation was the Chinese person, but to no effect.
I imagine the term has got to be less common in Harbin than in Shanghai. After all there is a large number of ethnically-Russian Chinese in the area, and surely they’re not called laowai, are they?
Has anyone with experience in the more Russian-influenced Northeast seen this difference, or is it all just imagined? Alternatively, has anyone had a similar conversation as the one above but with a different outcome?
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* It should be noted that the conversation was originally about slurs and that the speaker was opposed to the term 鬼子 regardless of the nationality of the person being addressed.
some older folks used to use 老中 back in the day for Chinese people overseas. That usage is quite dead by now.
BTW, was the marker of 老外 as a race-defined term even in question?
Ha!
When my second son was born in lower Manhattan, my wife (Chinese) called a Chinese car service to pick us up. (You have to take the kid home by car and in a car seat.)
Since she was a little exhausted from having just given birth, I went out to meet the car when it arrived by the hospital.
I opened the door and got in to let the driver know (in English) that it was us who called. He promptly got on his CB and called his company and said “这是个老外！”
I blurted out “谁是老外！这是美国，知道不？你就是老外！”
Upon recount of this episode to my wife’s family members, it became clear that Chinese think (as you mentioned) of any non-Asians as 老外. Just like you, I think this is quite ridiculous, and will add that it doesn’t reflect well on their empirical thinking skills as a culture.
In my experience in Harbin (I lived in Jilin for 8 years and visited Harbin a few times), Russians are also called 老外.
Clicking through I was hoping this would be a look at the distribution of the usage of the term within China. I recently had someone suggest to me that it’s mostly an urban expression, and rural residents would be less likely to use it. I’d never come across that idea before (and I’ve never spent much time in the real countryside).
It is definitely about race. I grew up in Brooklyn and my parents and their friends would use the term 老外 to refer exclusively to whites, while using 老黑 to refer to African Americans. I don’t think there was a derogatory connotation so much as the sense that they were “the other.” It was more like “they’re different from us and it doesn’t pay to question it,” rather than “they’re inferior to us.”
@jdm: Well, there’s this.
If you click on the map it tells you that the greatest percentage of usage is outside China!
Very interesting topic!
I think we very rarely examine the meanings of the words in our daily vocabulary, in fact for those who have had little exposure to unfamiliar languages, cultures, or concepts, it’s very difficult (and sometimes uncomfortable) to gain the vantage point from which to do so. In the mainland, trying to determine which terms have tinges of ethnocentrism is like trying to figure out which parts of the ocean are wet. It’s hard to tell if the term is really to blame, and avoiding the term doesn’t avoid “all it carries with it”.
My Chinese wife and I attend a Chinese Christian Church in the US, and I’ve heard a speaker from the Mainland in the midst of sharing an illustrative anecdote that happened to involve the use of the term “laowai” mention in passing that here in the US, “we” (speaking of the predominantly Chinese congregation) are the laowai. This little aside was received by most of the listeners as a novelty, but without signs of offense or protest. Of course, everyone of those listeners have been living outside of China for at least a few weeks, most a few years, and some a few decades. Strange twists in language are all just part of the deal.
In my estimation, “waiguoren” (and “laowai’) simply means non-Chinese. Though “wai” usually means something like “outside”, it’s instructive to also remember that “zhong” also usually means something like “center”. We can call China the middle kingdom, but we really still mean China — not “the country in the middle”. In the same vein, I think for most Mandarin speakers “waiguoren” and “laowai” is the word for non-Chinese, they may translate “waiguoren” as “foreigner”, but they still really mean “non-Chinese”. The confusion stems from the fact that for mainstream mainlanders, “foreigner” and “non-Chinese” are muddled concepts on their own, and without some very novel (and perhaps uncomfortable) examination, they seem almost synonymous.
For many, suggesting that “laowai” could mean a Chinese person in another country is perhaps somewhat akin to suggesting that whatever country happens to be in the middle of the map on the wall is “zhong guo”.
As an American living in China, I have never really liked how Chinese people call us “foreigners,” whether it be wai guo ren or lao wai… but I don’t take it personally as this is just what they are trained to do. I am curious to know where lao wai comes from, though, because I know that lao refers to older people who are often revered in China; hence the words laoshi (which can be used as a sign of respect when greeting an older person). So I wonder where it gets its negative connotation?
I used to live in Harbin and Russians were usually called 老毛子, usually not 老外. If a Harbiner thought I was Russian, they would refer to me as 老毛子, but then quickly change gears once I said that I’m not Russian and I can speak Chinese.
I think Chris hits the nail on the head. What we are dealing with here is the old philosophical question of whether words are defined by their definitions or by the set of things to which they can refer. The third option, that they’re defined by the literal meanings of their components, is no more true in Chinese than it is in English.
Yep, this all accords with my experience. My Chinese in-laws in the US refer to white people in the US as foreigners. I also remember showing them pictures taken in China that included a Malaysian person of Chinese descent, and it was quickly established that she was not a foreigner. I can’t actually recall whether they used the term 老外 or 外国人. But despite their 20 years in the US they were surprised when I asked about the usage.
Like Pete, I used to live in Harbin and encountered the 老毛子/老外 distinction there. The former seems much more clearly derogatory to me; I don’t find 老外 derogatory to much as annoying.
I know a Fujian guy in America who hired a 3rd generation Chinese American kid to work for him. This kid couldn’t read a word of Chinese, spoke no Mandarin, and had very limited conversational proficiency in Cantonese from his parents and grandparents. Yet my Fujian friend would argue with me whenever I referred to the kid as “Chinese American” and angrily insisted on calling the kid “American-born Chinese (ABC)”. The distinction was important to him.
This same guy didn’t get it when I tried to explain to him, because we’re in America, that he is the 老外, not me. So whenever we talk about an irritating Chinese business partner of his, I just roll my eyes and say, “You 老黄 are all the same.”
中佬 has been suggested to me as an alternative, but it’s a bit old fashioned and pretty derogatory. At any rate I wouldn’t use it for the same reasons 老外 bugs me,
@Chris – interesting comment.
But I think 老外 is not exactly the same as 外国人. I wouldn’t say 老外 is derogatory, but it is definitely not a neutral term like 外国人, it carries some richer connotations.
From what I have collected asking around, 老外 is perceived by many Chinese as a comic/cute term, often evoking images of big-nosed bearded men tottering about doing all sorts of socially awkward things (see also 出洋相) and generally not understanding Chinese culture. In this sense it may be related to the other meaning of the word, which is layman, (外行). I wonder if it doesn’t derive from this originally.
Of course I see how some here might find this offensive, but it is in no way meant to insult, as I tried to prove in this real life experiment last year. Often this word is just there to convey the weirdness and raw curiosity felt by most Chinese who even to this day have never had any real contact with Western people. But then again, this is true mostly in the country, in Shanghai people tend to use it less, and more neutrally.
You are right that there is much more to this than just linguistics – it is about culture. On the other hand, I always feel that it is unfair for us well traveled Westerners to look down on this behaviour from people who never had the same opportunities as us. Perhaps we should put ourselves in our grand parents position, the first time they ever saw an Asian or an African walking down the street. I am sure they too would do a lot of pointing and calling … and sometimes, I am afraid, they would get much nastier than that.
It would be interesting to investigate when and where the term 老外 emerged, as this would give more clues about it. In any case what is sure is that the definition in all the major dictionaries as “foreigner” fails to capture its whole meaning.
In my experience on the streets of here-and-there, China, the two groups of people who use this (within earshot of me) the most are children and considerably uneducated people. (But of course that’s just my raw memory and not any form of empirical data.)
@Randy
Complaint #1:
Your description is pretty misleading. Maybe not factually incorrect, but unlikely to be interpreted the same as “The percentage of total use outside China is greater than that of any single Chinese province”
Complaint #2:
I am now about to spend the next half hour playing with lexicalist, rather than doing work
@Greg: Good catch. Thanks.
In my experience, 老外 are all white (or close to it). Black people are 黑人 (or worse), Indians are 印度人 (or worse), the Japanese are 日本人 (or worse), the Koreans are 韩国人 (or worse), etc. But 老外 are white. 外国人 is more inclusive.
This word seems to have become such a bugbear of laowais all over the world. It only sounds derogatory to us because the words “foreign” and “foreigner” carry negative connotations in our mother tongue (and as a result we deliberately avoid them in conversations and writing, usually replacing them with “international”). The argument that “you are in our country therefore you are the foreigner” is not logical because “foreigner” can only be defined by the speaker, not the physical place you happen to be in; it’s a matter of perception. And like any word in any language it’s context and tone that matters more than the sum of its components.
Here’s a great picture that I took of a friend of mine in Beijing. We got quite a few smiles from people around us.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=14145677&l=eec58ce7df&id=839350164