1 in my 7 years in Shanghai I too have experienced the most unfair treatment by my fellow Chinese race for being yellow.I have lived in a couple places around the world and I am sad to say I have never felt more like a second class citizen because of my race than in Shanghai.
Including: the embarrassment of bringing my Indian friend to "Windows Pub" years ago when it was still in underground Jingan and was refuse entry until I clarify that although I am yellow, I am indeed an overseas chinese. (they are not even doing a special foreigner event that day.)Why don't they just hang "Yellows and Dogs not allow" like old Shanghai!
On another occasion, my sanders are thrown aside by a cobbler half repaired when a white woman came by, he told me that he would repair her shoes first because she is white! She throw him only RMB10 for changing the whole sole after that and I have to pay him RMB20 for just glue!
2 I play music with chinese excellent jazz musicians in Beijing and often, companies like BMW, Audi, VW, etc who organise parties refuse to hire us because 2 of us are chinese. They prefer white monkeys, they just want to see our faces and the music skill is not important at all.... Thats a shame. And all my respect to the few event organiser who actually care about good music instaed of white faces.
3 What's been equally interesting is that coming out of this experience in which I was firstly discriminated against (they wanted a someone white), then financially shafted (they told me to work for the two day contract anyway and then refused to pay me) and then physically threatened (because it turns out i was dealing with the mafia), I've returned to Shanghai with this story and while most have been appalled, some have responded with "Well, you can sort of see it from their point of view that they wanted the exoticism of a foreigner..."
Do us expats live in such a hermetically sealed glass case in China that the notion of Equal Opportunity can seem like such a distant concept.? Not to mention the basic violation of human rights where one should be paid for their work, especially if promised. Oh, and of course the death threat syndrome is an interesting stretch of the empathy imagination!
One senses how easy it is for complacency to turn into an attitude of neo- imperialism.
4 i think the issue which is quite specific to the "racism" case in china has much to do with stereotype and money.There exists a preconceived notion amongst the local population that foreigners have greater wealth... Therefore, in business dealings sometimes we have the chinese trying to over charge "laowai," and on the other side of the coin the chinese may want to employ non-asian foreigners over asians so they have the prestige of showing they can afford "authentically foreign" faces. Call it conspicuous consumption, if you like. Crude, i know.... but this is exactly how the market forces of race demand have been explained to me in the industry. And though "Western" companies should know better, sometimes they also perpetrate this bias.
Contrary to racism based on ignorance and fear, this is prejudice based on stereotype and the desire to cater to assumed laws of commerce |
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