打打美国佬

I was on a bus many moons ago in Hangzhou.   A man held a child in his arms a few feet from me.  The bus on that day was not particularly crowded.  I had been on the bus only a few brief moments  when the child, probably around three casually pointed at me and without looking at his father asked.

这是什么东西？

Dad replied with a simple,

他是老外。

I was a bit surprised that a child that young could so easily discern the difference between a “laowai” and himself.   But he did.

With an equally casual air I commented to the dad something along the lines of,

“I’m not a laowai but a 外国人“。

And therein lays the rub.

A laowai is an outsider.    A lot of folks consider it a slur.   Nigger, chink, what have you.  But I’m not here to throw off any angst or over the top indignation.    

It’s natural for what are basically ethnically monolithic societies to develop words for other people not like them.  The Japanese have a word for laowai.  It’s called gaijin.  They even have a somewhat polite version….gaikokujin.   However, I was rarely if ever called gaijin when living in Japan.   

Whereas in China, I was called laowai on a daily basis.

Except when I lived in Guangzhou.  

The humor of it all is for the first year of my stay in China I was called gwailo so damn frequently I 

simply thought it was Mandarin.    It wasn’t til I moved North that I actually first heard the word laowai.    

Within a society so heterogeneous as America but also one that goes out of its way to avoid offending one ethnic group after another, the word laowai is a slur plain and simple.   And just as plain and simple, in other countries it is not.    One is tempted to say a free press is the difference, but if true than what of Japan?    Are the origins of “laowai” racist?  I think so.  But history changes context(if you don’t believe me have you noticed there are now a few Southern Black Americans supporting the Rebel Battle Flag?)

After awhile I stopped being so damn sensitive to the perceived slight, or rather I just stopped perceiving it to be an insult.  I simply came to realize it’s simply another word for foreigner, and let it be.  After all, there are other ways to express ones feelings of a laowai.   If one digs deep enough into the archive you can find the story of when I was going to a club an while on my way up in an elevator a local girl gestured in my direction to her friends(in Mandarin of course), that “those kinds of people” like this club.  

Usually when I’m spoken of it is simply in passing(“he’s handsome”, or when seeing me wear shorts in 65 degree weather “foreigners are not afraid of the cold”).    But this time I just couldn’t let it slide and mentioned something like “Chinese like this club, too”)

In sum, if you still find yourself offended by something as widespread  and innocuous as being called a laowai, than it is probably time for you to go back home.   Or you can just realize it is part of the “cultural experience”.  Short of someone like a Yao Ming making a public service announcement on Chinese TV, this nickname for us foreigners will never go away.

But wait a minute.

What of 佬外？

As in 美国佬.

As in 打打美国佬!

One can say we are being semantical about things, but 佬 and 老 mean the same thing and have the same pronunciation.   And they even have the same tone.

But as they have different characters than by definition they must have different meanings!

And they do.

So I went to Pleco.  Pleco defines 佬 as  “derogatory”.

And it defines 美国佬 as a derogatory word for American.   (I’ll leave it up to my readers from other nations to come up with China’s derogatory expression for your country.)

Is it possible the word that ticks off so many foreigners is actually佬外 rather than 老外？ Yep, could be.  Than why is it if you ask a Chinese to write the character for what they just said they’ll write 老外？

To my knowledge 打打美国佬 came into popularity during the Korean War.  Remember it is not called the Korean War by the Chinese, but the 援朝抗美 .  “Aid Korea and resist America” War.  My wife’s grandmother taught her a song that was popularized during the Cultural Revolution that ended with the phrase 打打美国佬。

Chinese online chat groups are saturated with the phrase 美国佬。

Here are a few:

美国佬这么猖狂

My loose translation would be “The American’s are so savage”.

让美国佬有苦难言….”let the American’s suffer misery

The funny thing about translating this if you try is everytime a translating SW sees 美国佬 it simply translates as “Americans”.    The proper translation should probably be something like “those American son of a bitches”, or “American bastards”…. “those motherfucking Americans”….

The internet is peppered with these phrases, all in a fairly denigrating and condescending manner.   America, because of its status and quite simply, because it stands in the way of China reclaiming its destiny, bears the brunt of that vast swath of bored Chinese citizenry with nothing else to do but go on line and post (or write a blog like me!) something about how America’s days are numbered, etc.

Now, could I go online and find something about “Chinks”?   I’m sure I could, so I looked it up.

There’s a cowboy clothing shop named Chinks.  A high school in Illinois called the Chinks, which changed its name.   

If one wishes to argue 老and 佬 are semantical I won't argue.

To the Chinese they are different simply because the characters are different.  End of story.   When a whole nation is taught the phrase 打打美国佬 an argument can easily be made that racism in a violent context is homegrown and comes from the top down.   Keep in mind I've also many times been called 外宾 or foreign guest.   But its been awhile.   It's the context of our times I guess.   Methinks this narrative is here to stay, and for a very, very long time at that.