British actor Stephen Fry, known for playing everything from medieval clerics to alarm clocks, has a blog. And considering that he is so ubiquitous that he’ll even rouse you in the morning, it’s quite appropriate his second post is on Fame, it’s advantages and drawbacks.
I am not famous. Not even a little. And yet, living in China, I experience something akin to Mr. Fry’s fame. Consider this passage:
I get stopped on the street, I get (occasionally) hounded by photographers, I get letters from strangers asking for money, sex, advice, approval, time and so on. Journalists with nothing better to do write descriptions of my personality or offer glancing mentions of me. People who have never met me know that they loathe me, or that they like me. I am asked to be patron of this charity and to be on the board of that good cause and so on. I can get a table at the Ivy restaurant and tickets for premieres and parties. A medium ranking sleb.
In my time living in China, I have been stopped on the street, surreptitiously (and occasionally blatantly) photographed, been offered jobs, interviewed by journalists, and overheard people opine about whether or not they approve of me. But I am not famous. No, my skin, my genetic heritage, my physiology is famous. Because I’m white. I just hang on to those coattails, or rather, I’m dragged by them, since I can’t change my appearance. My phenotype is a medium ranking sleb. I am a distinctly separate entity in these encounters, orbiting the interaction between this Chinese person and my body. Whether they actually are addressing me, or simply the archetype they assume I am, is a roll of the dice.
There are times when it is utterly impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone in China because of my blinding whiteness. I am perceived as a White Man, with all the intrinsic characteristics attributed to that category. Some have been unable to accept that I am not Christian – I have been called a liar for asserting I was not. All white men are wealthy Christian Americans, for some, is a tautology.
Some expats and bloggers in China have argued with me that these are naive and sweet stereotypes, a product of isolation and ignorance, and separate and distinct from Racism™, which is the monstrous creature that burns crosses, enslaves nations and exterminates whole peoples. I cannot accept this argument. Once you are in the habit of placing people into boxes based on something as slight and insubstantial as appearance, it is merely a matter of changing the label on the box from “silly foreigner” to “inhuman enemy”. I am not so quick as to embrace terrified imaginings of a near future in which tens of millions of sexually frustrated, xenophobic Chinese men invade Everything, but I recognize the backdrop that makes such a suggestion imaginable.
Mind you, if I were black in China, I might apply the word “infamous” rather than “famous”. It’s been no secret to those of us living in China that people of different races are painted with a brush as broad as Yunnan, and the recent round-up of black people in Beijing is par for the course. Likewise, other racial categories, including even Southeast Asian Chinese, are further down the totem pole. I’ve witnessed Chinese businesspeople say they will hire a Filipino because they are cheaper. Skills are irrelevant; your market value is determined by ethnicity. As a white man in China, I feel more self-consciously privileged than I ever have before in my life, and simultaneously never felt so discriminated against, objectified. In a strange way, it has been a good thing for me – I don’t think I would be as aware or sensitive to how race is perceived, around the world, if I had only lived in the U.S.. Indeed, recent hysteria over China confirms this belief.
This tendency to define people in groupings like this is not strictly Chinese but all too human. To apply attributes to individual actors because of their membership in an ethnic group or nation, denying their individual choices or self-definition, is something I now prickle at when coming from my own country as well, as toy recalls invoke the dangers of “The Chinese”, as opposed to the dangers of long supply chains and merciless price competition. It’s interesting to read about the newly released Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s movie about three well-heeled American brothers touring in India, and how it casually depicts Indians as essentially exotic props.
I find myself wanting to follow a sort of code of radical individualism, resisting the application of broad categories or stereotypes as shortcuts to familiarity with people I encounter. But it’s damned hard – after all, it can become progressively harder not to stereotype a Chinese stranger who stops me on the street as someone who will stereotype me, becoming a negative feedback loop of stereotyping and distrust.
Like Mr. Fry, I would like people to stop coming up to me in supermarkets because of my face. But I don’t think they will.
I’m a Filipino-American living in Xinjiang. It’s a very different experience from what the many white expats I encounter recount to me. I, too, have my recycled and cliched and overused conversation, but they’re of a different nature. “Ni bu xiang meiguoren” is a classic. I have completely mastered, tones and everything, the sentence “My parents are Filipino, but I was born in the United States.” On the other hand, on the streets, I don’t get noticed or pestered.
I should write about it sometime.
Frey’s list pretty well describes my walk from the bus stop to my apartment today, passing through a group of high school students. With kids, even 18-year-old kids, I can still write the experience off as quaint, even when they start a conversation by shouting “foreigner!” in English. I chatted with three girls for a while, and they seemed to get over the weirdness of me being there and speaking (rather simple) Chinese. At some age, this all stops being quaint and forgivable, but I haven’t quite decided what age that is yet.
Though I’ve pretty much gotten used to the staring now, it’s still annoying. The part that irritates me more though is the backlash. There seems to be a lot of negativity towards white guys in China and the attention they get – as if we asked for it in some way. I’ve noticed this hostility from local Chinese, as well as a good number of foreign China watchers…
Oh, and on a completely unrelated note – anyone else get completely distracted by the double-d breast feeding article teaser on the Slate page?
I’m a Hongkong Chinese & I travelled China for 3 months few years ago. I also encountered staring by the local Chinese. I remember one time when I was in a train, I was the only ‘foreigner’ in that compartment. People chatted with me & one of them even picked up a paper to read which I left on the table. I was very surprised by their ‘curiosity’
But definitely, to be stared by local is just as common as in many countries, even in a big city like Paris. I’ve been living here for a while & i get used of staring now.
Great post. Sums up pretty well what I feel sometimes.
Very accurate – and it leads to ignoring anyone who shows any sign of stereotyping you – why pay any attention at all to some guy who shouts hello or worse at you, unending stares, or any of it?
The worst part, no matter the form of discrimination (‘positive’ or negative), is not being seen as the individual that you are.
And good luck getting me to see the individual behind the guy (or girl) that doesn’t treat you as one.
Chris – Five years old. Beyond that and it’s just reinforcing a lifetime of such treatment.
I definitely agree with your assertion that being white in China qualifies you as a celebrity. I’ve always likened it to the level of being a player on a local professional sports team. You’re not to the level of a rock star, but certainly high enough to get noticed on a regular basis.
Great blog entry. Dugg: http://digg.com/offbeat_news/White_Fame_in_China
Dave,
Another great post. Not to get too philosophical about it, but I do think there is an element of 正名 zhengming or “rectification of names” in this as well.
It seems to me that quite often in Chinese society your “category” matters more than you do. This can lead to some amusing situations. (You simply CAN’T be American if you don’t have blonde hair, for example) or the less amusing consternation over ABCs or people with mixed heritages. There is perhaps an essentially dehumanizing aspect to it all that I think sometimes rubs those of us from Western (defined broadly) countries the wrong way. We are not people with individual characteristics but in fact representatives of our group that must somehow be shoe-horned into whatever understanding (however warped) of that group the viewer may have adopted over the years.
This is not just about “white people” or foreigners either. Witness the need for any ethnic minority group shown on CCTV to be dressed in “native authentic” garb.
Nor, of course, is this limited to the Chinese. I wonder how many tourists in Beijing would honestly prefer their hosts to be in gowns with queues (or at the very least in Mao suits on bikes) so as to make their travel experience more “genuine”?
Anyway, great post.
Get over it! You chose to go to a country of 1.2 billion people with the same hair/eye/skin color. What can you expect? Quit whining.
@student: “Get over it! You chose to go to a country of 1.2 billion people with the same hair/eye/skin color. What can you expect? Quit whining.”
Actually, they don’t all have the same hair, eye or skin color, and there’s plenty of examples from Chinese ethnic minorities, particularly the Uyghur, and the attitudes towards darker skinned Chinese, not to mention the occasional Han Chinese who looks different and faces discrimination, like the girl of supposed “Roman descent” with yellow hair who kept getting her head shaved and teased in school.