My China experience was often frustrating. Though I imagined myself to be extremely flexible and open-minded, living for 3 months in a foreign country, despite speaking the language, proved to be a challenge.
I am, for all intents and purposes, an American girl. If China taught me nothing else, it’s that my “Chineseness” doesn’t extend all that far below my skin tone, even if my Mandarin isn’t too shabby for a girl with her feet planted firmly on US soil since the tender age of two. When I was out with white friends, I was surprised at how the level of service was consistently higher. They were never seemed to bear the brunt of bored, dismissive glances or suffer through outright hostility. Chinese people, according to them, were so sweet and nice! Are you kidding me? I’d always reply, deeply jealous that I couldn’t slip a well-oiled path through my summer, coddled and swaddled in my foreignness.
“I think it helps that I don’t understand Chinese,” one friend admitted to me. “If I knew what they were saying, I’d just get angry.”
And I definitely had hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing moments of anger. There was the shoe repairman who ripped me off, did a shoddy job, then ignored me as I stood literally over his shoulder as if I were a statue. It was hard to explain at first why I found this so infuriating, but I eventually realized it wasn’t because of his crooked pricing scheme. I’m in the fortunate position where I can afford to get a little bit ripped off – what I wanted was better treatment in return. I suddenly hated hovering in cultural limbo and realizing at the same time how arrogant and self-serving my dissatisfaction was.
If only, I mused, I looked as white as I felt.
Let’s compare two situations: interactions with Chinese service people by myself, and when I was with foreign friends. If I was by myself, service could range anywhere from abominable to decent. It was a dice throw on however they felt that day – one time, I tried to buy a skirt and the shop girl gave me nothing but attitude, marked up the price for no apparent reason, and seemed angry my arrival forced her to get up from her chair. (It was so ridiculous that I didn’t buy the skirt.) An editor at City Weekend one time had me call up a shop in English, even though I could speak Chinese, just since by virtue of sounding like a foreign customer they’d make the effort to actually answer her inquiry.
Of course this isn’t ALL service in China. I’ve also had my share of truly friendly, professional, and memorable service experiences, particularly with good taxi drivers. But the best way to ensure prompt, respectful service is just to be obviously, blatantly foreign. People are far more helpful and forgiving, in part because the “laowai” represent the moneyed expat class. It’s a double edged sword, and one I wished I were on the opposite side of for convenience’s sake. Why see the “real China” when it’s one that’s even more unpleasant and humiliating than for Chinese locals who know the ground rules? Why would I want to sign up for a summer of waiters copping attitude when I genuinely wanted to like the culture and people?
People most of the time sensed I wasn’t really Chinese. 90% of the time, they’d guess I was Korean. One time I even just told a DVD salesman I was, only to be called out on it by another customer who asked for a Korean TV series recommendation. (Sorry, I told her, I’m a Korean girl who only watches English films.)
There’s a part of me that’s bitter about the summer I could have had. I imagine some of the more traumatic experiences might have been erased – like that time a shop girl pointed to a Chinese sign and bitchily asked me to read it, just to humiliate me with proof of my semi-illiteracy. It’d be pretty unlikely she’d try to pull that on a blonde customer with accented Mandarin. I may have seen a more authentic China, but sometimes, I found it exhausting and painful in a remorselessly personal kind of way. It’s probably why I fell in love with Starbucks while I was there, taking comfort in American drinks and Western-style service. It was a relief not to have to worry about whether they’d take credit cards, make change for me, or get my order correct. Sometimes, you just want coffee. And pizza. And burgers…
Related posts:
RSS feed
I think you’re definitely right about the service thing — sometimes looking foreign can get you better service. I think that can disappear though if you’re foreign-looking, speak Chinese and have been here awhile. You start to learn from local friends how to get deals and therefore you want to take advantage of them since you stopped thinking RMB100 was really cheap a long time ago. But things are still a crap shoot: sometimes things can work, sometimes they can backfire. You either save a lot of money or get something extra for the same price or you ended up getting treated like a complete local and therefore having to fight for every bit of service.
If you don’t understand the language, you can act blissfully ignorant and just accept the inflated price and therefore probably get better service as shopkeepers try to take advantage of that ignorance. And as you said that method is sometimes the better way to go if you can live with the mark up.
Glad you enjoyed your time here.
J.
Wow, I can totally relate to the Starbucks thing – it was like home base for me whenever I was lost in Shanghai.
P.S. Love your blog! :)
Very interesting post. Hope to hear more about your China experience at the Tech 501 Club. Welcome back!
[...] The perils of being Chinese in China [...]
[...] While Starbucks is sometimes seen as a monolithic coffeeslinger to the upwardly mobile masses, the coffee chain’s branches abroad don’t entirely conjure up home. Though it’s mostly a deliciously familiar task of navigating between tall, grande, and venti, be it NYC or Shanghai, I felt alienated at times without my standby sugarfree option and decent English magazines. (I wrote about how much I adored Starbucks in my post about being culture shocked.) [...]
[...] August 8th 2009) who outright lied to escape his screwup, capping off a troubled relationship with China’s service culture. I wrote an incensed email to the chain but never received a reply. Some servers are merely [...]
[...] of Beijing’s Ya Xiu market. I dropped thousands of RMB thanks to ineffectual bargaining while my culture-shocked nerves were worn down to an irritable jelly. Thankfully, my second chance at travel — a stateside [...]