Sep 2006 Beijing

Since my last blog about the subway, I've now regained my consciousness of and respect for people – I’ll now stand up for them all - old men and women, parents with babies, sick and crippled people, even you (though I can't guarantee you'll get my seat). All of them! For God's sake, I did not come to this country to take some poor Chinese person's seat on the subway. God knows they've endured it more than I have.
And that brings me to another point... Us laowai just don't deserve it all - the special treatment, the foreign expert tag when all we do is know a foreign language, the 'Ni de Zhong wen shuo de hen hao' (你的中文说得很好) (when it certainly ain't even close to 'hao'). Why don't you just laugh, and hit us with some reality – "Ha, ha, your Chinese is really pretty bad, isn't it? Too bad they don't teach you in schools like our schools teach English. But I got to say, at least you give it a go, and I'm really pleased to see it.”

And for all you people who have never been a laowai in China gotta realise why we seem to complain and winge and go on about our lives here. I think the main reason is it because it can in fact be a real nuisance!!!! It's damn hard to know what the hell is going on, when if you ask "What's the weather like?" they'll tell you, “It’s not raining." When if you ask a Chinese for directions, they’d usually prefer to give some dodgy answer than admit they don’t know (then send you to God knows where!) Don't get me wrong (you have to think laterally!), I'm not simply bagging Chinese, not at all. It's our fault in fact, the Westerners, because we're so used to calling a spade a spade, we just find it incredibly difficult, frustrating, and on many occasions even completely futile, to understand what really the fuck is going on.......

So why do we stay?? And why do foreigners tend to spend longer than their originally intended stretches in this country, when often they just came with an idea to check out China, and not spend 5-10 years in the Middle Kingdom? When I was in Indonesia telling people I'd been living there for more than six months (I stayed for eight, in 2000) people would be so impressed. When I say I've been in China for almost a year, they consider me a baby. And they're right. The way it dawns on me is that since even the smallest thing can be the almightiest challenge (for example, it took me over six months to realise I was using the wrong washing powder), us foreigners get so excited at overcoming the challenge, that we think - "Yes! I got the washing powder. It took me six months, but I got it. Come on China, bring it on, man! Give us all you got! I can beat you."

For all you Chinese with poor English (and by the way that is NO reason not to use it!!!!!!!!!!) don't be fooled. 'Beat' does not mean I'm gonna beat up China, it does not imply it's my enemy or I don't like it. I'm saying China provides an almighty challenge to a foreigner, and that I'm gonna rise to it - I'm gonna take it on and deal with it and overcome it. And you know what, it's gonna make me a tougher, more resilient, and better person for it. So for all those laowai who've toughed it out and risen to the challenge, I salute you - you are the bomb! And to all those Chinese who don't understand what I'm saying, I salute you too, because I can relate (all too often I've felt exactly the same way). And to all those laowai, who just use China as a tool to make yourself feel special and important, please be real – fuck off and go home.