Shaping Chinese Perceptions of the World
In conversations with Chinese friends, I often surprise them by saying that the vast majority of Americans (or British, Australian, etc.) lead lives that are not entirely different from their Chinese counterparts. Most of us, for example, never stray far from home due to financial or practical considerations. Many marry within their social group, often a classmate from high school or college. Many choose to enter the same industry as a parent or close relative, sometimes even within the same company. Some face familial pressure to marry and rear children at a relatively early age, and many Westerners feel trapped by circumstance.
Yet these Westerners, for obvious reasons, rarely spend time as expatriates in countries like China. As a result, the typical Westerner a Chinese person might meet cuts a very different profile from the norm in their home countries. From personal observation, these qualities describe quite a few of us laowai:
-Many foreigners come from comfortable to affluent backgrounds. As a result, few feel any need to contribute to the financial well-being of their families back home. In any case, salaries for most laowai in China are not high enough to be of much help in developed countries, anyway. Foreigners who work in Asia for financial reasons typically head for Korea or Japan where they can earn far more money. In my years in China, I have never met a single non-businessman who came here for the money.
-Most foreigners here are reasonably well-educated. Few lack a university degree, and those that do are usually in the process of obtaining one. After all, it is quite difficult finding work in China without at least a Bachelors.
-Many foreigners have extensive prior travel experience, and have often worked or lived in other countries before coming to China. Experienced travelers tend to be very independent by nature and not as tightly bound to the conventions and norms of their home country. A corollary to international experience is linguistic ability. Many of the expats I know speak at least one foreign language, even those from infamously monolingual countries such as the United States.
Certainly, few of us foreigners in China are entirely footloose and fancy-free; we have issues just like everyone else. I do believe, though, that as a whole we do not fit the profile of the "average" Westerner, and it is easy to see how the perception of Western life among Chinese people can become rather skewed.
A brief footnote for my Chinese readers: if you want to know what true Americana is, go to Las Vegas.
June 23rd, 2008 - 20:23
My fellow Matt-American, I’m agreed on most points except for this:
-Most foreigners here are reasonably well-educated. Few lack a university degree, and those that do are usually in the process of obtaining one. After all, it is quite difficult finding work in China without at least a Bachelors.
Setting aside the student population, which includes both the language students from the global north and the medical and engineering students from the global south, I think this paragraph doesn’t describe the laowai labor pool very accurately. Half of the reason why schools and businesses are in “new visa rules” freakout mode is that the Chinese have finally started to crack down on people in China with a high school diploma or Associate’s Degree (those teaching illegally on Business Visas) or fake degree (those teaching illegally on Work Visas), which is thinning the ranks of expats almost as quickly as SARS did in 2004.
June 24th, 2008 - 15:04
Matthew,
You’re probably right…it is a lot easier to find teaching work in China without a degree than in, say, Japan or South Korea. All the same, I’d say the proportion of foreigners in China without degrees (or any tertiary education) is greater than that of US, Australian, or British society as a whole (for example).
June 25th, 2008 - 11:18
Matt:
This is an interesting observation. I think American’s in general are, as you suggest, inexperienced as travelers. To the extent they have traveled, they tend to stay close to home, or at least close what they know.
A typical “off shore” American vacation would be destined for someplace like Mexico, France, Italy or some other, latin- based or first world country. Let’s face it, most of us like to play it safe.
Then too, American’s often don’t research the history or culture of where they go. They hit the prime tourist spots, lounge on the beach or by the pool and count calories.
So what does this say about those of us who venture to China. I’d like to think we are like Joseph Needham, Edgar Snow or Pearl Buck: someone who is inquisitive and is struck by the deep history and rich culture of China. We are also willing to take a big step into a culture quite unlike our own and totally outside our comfort zone. We not only accept it, we seek it out.
It may be a stretch, but perhaps we are the modern day Needham’s. And like him, once in China, we will be more than repaid for our exuberance.
June 30th, 2008 - 19:56
I think wherever you go people tend to judge a particular group of people, based on the ones they are familiar with. In other words, assume people from another country are by default like the ones in their own country. For example, I have had many Chinese people tell me that Americans are very “adventurous.” I usually disagree with this statement, adding that it’s only the adventurous ones who ever set foot in China. Same holds true with just about any other ethnicity in any country. The Chinese in the US are definitely not an accurate cross-section of Chinese people in China. If they were, then 90% of China would either be highly intelligent and over-achieving graduates of Bei Da and Qinghua or low educated children of farmers from Fujian.