Popup Chinese

Advanced: The Anti-Foreign Crackdown

If you've been following the news, you'll know our title for this show refers to the latest "official crackdown" going on in Beijing: this time aimed at the apparent flood of itinerant foreigners in China to steal money, jobs and women from Yang Rui at CCTV. In unrelated news, if you want to buy some drugs, you can apparently still pick them up at Sanlitun.

As far as we can tell, the most immediate effect of all this commotion has been a clampdown on visas issued in Hong Kong and a tightening of the agency system many people rely on to assist with visa applications. But what is likely to happen long-term? This is a topic worth talking about, which is why in today's show Amber, Brendan and Echo take to the studio to chat about public enemy number one. In the process, we cover some of the more useful vocab you can use for talking about these developments with your own friends and colleagues.

jmainardi

said on

May 22, 2012

Brendan, have you noticed a difference in the way Chinese look at you or act towards you? Or is this mostly an online furor?

I know a group of MBA students who will be traveling to Beijing and Shanghai in late June/early July. Do you think their experience will be different than it would have been last year?

Echo

said on

May 22, 2012

@jmainardi,

I don't think ordinary people changed the way they treat foreigners. In general, Chinese people are polite and friendly to foreigners, and willing to help or make conversations with foreigners (who are polite and friendly too).

However, to those foreigners who are low-class, people are less and less tolerant. Here is a recently news of a Russian cellist pissing Chinese people off by insulting a female passenger on the train: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-05/18/content_15335485.htm

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

murrayjames

said on

May 22, 2012

@Echo,

As a foreign musician teaching at a Chinese music conservatory, I winced twice as hard at this news story...

My favorite quote: "How can such a morally ugly man play melodious music?" wrote netizen "Xing Zou De Kun Jie" on Sina Weibo.

mtpastille

said on

May 23, 2012

So this lesson is above my level, but I feel the need to mention that I actually briefly met this ill-famed Brit a couple of weeks before the scandal broke loose. Seemed like a pretty nice guy at the time.

Echo

said on

May 23, 2012

@murrayjames & mtpastille,

I think the first video is very doubtful too. However, the second one looks pretty real.

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

Brendan

said on

May 23, 2012

@jmainardi - No; I think it's really mostly an online thing. There is a certain, non-trivial amount of official flame-fanning going on, but I don't know how long it's likely to last or what effect it's likely to have. As Echo said, people really are pretty friendly here under most circumstances, and I don't expect that to change, barring maybe another Belgrade-embassy-bombing-level cluster event.

This whole thing may ultimately result in the level of crap that people are willing to take from foreigners, but having seen plenty of people here getting up to stuff that they would never dream of doing at home, I don't think that would be an entirely bad thing. Your students will be perfectly fine, I think, as long as they remember the Golden Rule. Or the variation attributed to Confucius: 己所不欲，勿施于人 -- "do not do to others what you would not wish done to yourself."

@mtpastille - Interesting. I had wondered whether "tourist visa" was a euphemism.

murrayjames

said on

May 23, 2012

@Echo,

For the record, I winced because the cellist is a total asshole, and gives foreign musicians in China a bad name.

Echo

said on

May 23, 2012

@murrayjames,

Yeah, there are so many foreigners in China now, so it doesn't surprise me that a few of them are 没素质. 但是我们不能让一颗老鼠屎坏了一锅粥，是不是 :)

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

jmainardi

said on

May 24, 2012

@Echo and Brendan,

Thanks for the insight. I have spent time in China and seen my share of bad behavior on the part of westerners - mostly of the Russian cellist and not the British attempted-rapist variety. I agree that it would not be a bad thing if Chinese people decided to stop putting up with that kind of behavior, as long as the pendulum doesn't swing too far in the opposite direction. Glad to hear that doesn't seem to be happening.

amber

said on

May 24, 2012

@jmainardi,

I guess most Chinese can see it in a right way. Just like Echo said, they are just several westerners. And China is a big country, so it can't change the nationwide attitude to foreigners. Chinese says,有朋自远方来，不亦乐乎. As long as the visitor is friendly, Chinese people are always nice. So don't worry. Of course we also have the word 犯我强汉者，虽远必诛. But that's between countries, not for this situation. Actually, I think it's good to point this kind of thing out and bring both Chinese and westerners to discussion. Because communication is always the most important thing, real problems always result from misunderstanding.

--Amber

amber@popupchinese.com

jmainardi

said on

May 26, 2012

@amber

Makes sense. My own experiences in China have been overwhelmingly positive and I'm sure this MBA group will comport themselves well. Hopefully by next month most of this will have flamed out anyway.

amber

said on

May 28, 2012

@jmainardi,

Yeah, I think so. Everything will pass away, if you know how everything work in mainland, haha. Every time when the government says 'fight for 100 days!',it means just 100 days, maybe less.

--Amber

amber@popupchinese.com

MoNigeria

said on

June 6, 2012

要允许中国适度流氓洋鬼子，民众应理解。

zgidwitz

said on

June 6, 2012

So has anyone been asked for their documents yet? I've been living in 五道口 and have yet to hear of anyone having encountering this.

trevelyan

said on

June 6, 2012

I've heard of a couple of incidents including cases of violence against foreigners, although they don't make the press for obvious reasons. The most bizarre was a sweep of Family United Hospital in Beijing, while the rest seem to be police stakeouts of bars late at night, mostly around Sanlitun and Gulou in Beijing, although apparently there was also one in Shanghai last week as well.

华金

said on

June 6, 2012

It goes without saying that Chinese people by in large are very hospitable to us foreigners, but I'll never forget one particular night in my first year here. Me and my friend were on the street getting some 烧烤，when suddenly two drunk guys came out of a nearby bar and started yelling abuse at us. At first we ignored them, until they headed over and one of them and aimed a kick at my face, completely unprovoked. I even ignored that, since he didn't connect properly, until he came back and had another go, this time at my privates. I'd never seen such putrid hatred in a man's face before. He wasn't just drunk and stupid, you could tell by his expression that he genuinely hated us for being foreigners and was driven mad by the sheer sight of us. That's the worst racism I've experienced anywhere, and I have to say at the time it made me question whether I really wanted to here. It really was very disturbing. I've experienced other incidents of more casual racism in my time here, though none as bad as that. My buddy who lived in Mongolia says attacks on foreigners were routine while he was there. I wonder where the xenophobia stems from.

amber

said on

June 7, 2012

@华金，

I guess it's from wrong education of history and these people's personal problem. This kind of xenophobia exits in everywhere, when I was in Vietnam, also some people there were not friend to me because I'm a Chinese, and it said that China invaded Vietnam several times, a lot of their famous travel spots even are named from the story of Vietnam people fight Chinese invaders. Of course not everybody in Vietnam hated me, most of them were very friendly. Actually I think the government's ambiguous attitude is also a problem here. On one hand the theme song of 2008's Olympic is One World, One Dream, on the other hand, in high school history textbook, television shows and films telling stories from 1840-1949, most foreigners are evil. So people who don't think at all will become xenophobia.