Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 3 (China)

The Gentle Giant did his Year Abroad in Tianjin for his Chinese degree in Zurich.

Being Swiss, he found the Chinese habit of spitting particularly revolting, with the pre-spit hawking even more disgusting, because the noise is making the hearer anticipate the gob.

He decided to take revenge.  

One day, he picked this man coming from the opposite direction as his victim.  

When the man was within earshot, the Gentle Giant started to hawk exaggeratedly, long and loud, just to prepare the poor man for what was about to follow. 

Then, as the Gentle Giant and the man had just passed each other, he made the sound of spitting, loudly, in the direction of the man’s back.  The poor man jumped up in alarm and quickly looked behind him, to see if the gob from this tall Westerner might have landed on the back of his shoes.

The Gentle Giant got a lot of satisfaction from this silly game:  “NOW you know what it’s like!”

(China, 1980s)

Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 2 (China)

American Gayle, one of my evening students, went to Nanjing to teach English for a year.

She told me when she came back that people would stand in front of her, waggle a finger up at her nose, and say, “哈哈哈，外国人！外国人! / hāhāhā, wàiguórén! wàiguórén! / Hahaha, foreigner, foreigner!”

This annoyed her so much that she decided to fight back.  

At 5’ 8”, she towers over a lot of Chinese people, so she’d point a finger down at their face and say, “哈哈哈，中国人！中国人! / hāhāhā, Zhōngguórén! Zhōngguórén! / Hahaha, Chinese person, Chinese person!”

(China, 1980s)

Giving them a dose of their own medicine: 1 (Switzerland)

When the Gentle Giant (my Swiss boyfriend in the 80s) and I first met, one of the things that we found we had in common was how Sino-centric we thought the mainland Chinese are in calling Westerners 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person” / foreigners when they are in the West.

One day, when I was over in Zurich, we were walking by the river when we saw two mainland Chinese men coming from the other direction.  We looked at each other and knew immediately what we were going to do to them:  as the two men walked past us, we muttered, “外国人! 外国人! / wàiguórén! wàiguórén! / Foreigners! Foreigners!”  After we passed them, we turned round, folded our arms and stood back to watch their reaction.  Sure enough, they’d suddenly registered that they’d heard “foreigners, foreigners” in Chinese, and turned round to see who’d uttered it.  The Gentle Giant and I then pointed at them, repeating, “外国人! 外国人! 你们就是外国人。/ wàiguórén! wàiguórén!  nǐmen jiù shì wàiguórén!  / Foreigners, foreigners, YOU are the foreigners”.

Whether the message had sunk in or not, or for how long, we had our bit of fun all the same, giving them a dose of their own medicine.

(Switzerland, 1988)

How to make yourself unpopular: 2 (London)

During a conversation with a mainland Chinese chap, he referred to the Brits as 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person” / foreigner.  I said, “Actually, in Britain, you and I are the foreigners, not the Brits.  You should at least use the neutral term 西方人 xīfāngrén / “west direction person” / Westerner.”  

The next time this chap talked about the Brits, his mouth started to make the ‘w’ shape (for wàiguórén / foreigner), but he stopped himself in time and changed it to ‘x’ (for xīfāngrén / Westerner).

As they say, a teacher is never off-duty…

(London, 1987)

How to make yourself unpopular: 1 (London)

As pointed out in the blog Logic-defying thinking, I have found mainland Chinese people to be Sino-centric in their view of life.  

They refer to China not as 中国 Zhōngguó / “middle kingdom” when abroad, but as 国内 guónèi / “country inside” / within the country, domestic [flight, e.g.].  For example:  “国内的东西比较便宜 guónèi de dōngxi bǐjiào piányi / Things within the country are cheaper”, i.e., things in China are cheaper — when commenting on prices in London, say.

They also refer to non-Chinese people as 外国人 wàiguórén / “external country person”, i.e., a foreigner.

In my opinion, both of these terms are correct when used within China, but not when they are abroad.

I was once invited to a party thrown by a Malaysian chap who’d grown up in Beijing, so some of the guests were from mainland China.  I’d arrived with Charles Aylmer (Cambridge University Library).  

When we went over to the Chinese group, Charles introduced himself in Chinese.  Greatly pleased to have found someone outside their group, especially a Westerner, who could speak Chinese, they said, “我们是从国内来的 wǒmen shì cóng guónèi lái de / We’re from within the country.”  

The little demon in me just couldn’t resist trying to wean them off this Sino-centric attitude, so I said, “啊，你们是英国人 / Āh, nǐmen shì Yīngguórén / Ah, you are British.”  They looked totally puzzled.  I explained, in Chinese: “你们刚刚说你们是从国内来的，你们现在是在英国，那么国内就是英国，所以你们就是从英国来的。/ You’ve just said you're from within the country.  You're now in Britain, so ‘within the country’ is ‘Britain’, therefore you’re from Britain.”

They refused to speak to me for the rest of the evening.

(London, 1987)

Logic-defying thinking (Spain)

Metro (newspaper) 140818: QUOTE A pensioner claims her holiday to Benidorm was ruined, because there were ‘too many Spaniards’ in her hotel.  Freda Jackson, 81, said: “They really got on our nerves because they were just so rude.  One evening a Spanish guy nearly knocked me flying and he just walked off without even apologising.  The entertainment in the hotel was all focused and catered for the Spanish — why can’t the Spanish go somewhere else for their holidays?’ UNQUOTE

This story reminds me of the Sino-centric attitude of Chinese people, especially mainland Chinese people in my experience.  

When abroad, they still refer to China as 国内 guónèi / “country inside” / within the country, domestic [flight, e.g.].  

Also, when they are in the West, they still call Westerners 外国人 wàiguórén / foreigners, when they themselves are the true foreigners.

(Spain, 2018)