Imagine you are sitting at a bar towards the end of a fun filled night. As you are enjoying your drink, a woman comes and sits next to you to strike up a conversation. She tells you something along the lines that her friends ditched her. Being polite, you probably smile and say hi, maybe even engage in a bit of harmless small talk. Soon, however, you are joined by two other guys. You say hi to them and even offer to cheers them (a usual winner around here), but they seem slightly less receptive. Next thing you know, you are outside and one of your new “friends” is trying to bash your head in with a board he just tore off a fence. The attack is soon thwarted by the boss of the bar, but you are left to wonder, in probably shock, (excuse my language here) what the fuck just happened.
Sound crazy? Well, it happened to a guy I know this past weekend. To make matters worse, he now has to deal with getting a chipped tooth fixed in China. Sure, people get into bar fights all the time, but this one was particularly worrisome as it was a completely unprovoked attack. I’ve seen many foreigners act like assholes in bars and come very close to deserving the scraps they inevitably start, but last Friday’s incident sets a pretty bad precedent in my mind.
Will it get to the point where being polite in a bar becomes a dangerous activity? Unlike a number of nightlife patrons in this country, I would rather not spend my night wearing sunglasses and shaking my head to techno music. I’m a social person: I like to have fun, mingle, meet people, and..yes…even dance. The bar scene in Hangzhou is pretty decent, and my regular hangout in particular is usually filled with happy drunks, the kind who get up and dance on tables instead of throwing punches at each other.
But over the last few months here I’ve been sensing an increase in negative attitude towards “foreigners”. I’m not sure if this is a growing phenomenon or simply something I’m now catching onto with my increasing Chinese comprehension and my decreasing naiveté. What used to be excused as curiosity or ignorance is increasingly appearing as mockery and belligerence. Is the honeymoon over for “foreign friends” in China?
This trend is particularly worrisome for expats and their beloved bar scene. Bars around the world are well known as breeding grounds for alcoholic-fueled combat, but the problem for us here is that we stick out like sore thumbs and make pretty convenient targets. As a “foreigner”, you can never fit in. If a Chinese guy looks the wrong way at someone else’s girlfriend, tempers might flare. If a “foreigner” does it, China’s national pride has been offended and a fiasco ensues. This whole nationalism angle seems to rear its head quite often and can easily make a minor situation a lot less minor.
Growing up in Canada, this whole protect the tribe thing is pretty foreign to my way of thinking and I cannot, as much as I try, accept it. I judge people by their character and their actions, not their skin colour or place of origin. Last Friday’s attack was more likely than not fueled significantly by the fact that an “evil foreigner” dared to be nice to a Chinese woman who approached him, not vice versa.
The problem, in the end, lies in the inability of many of these people to understand the concept of individualism. If one creepy “foreigner” mistreats women and sleeps around without considering consequences, that must mean all “foreigners” do this. Individual personality traits are quickly blown into generalizations of ridiculous proportions. You are a “foreigner” first and foremost, with all the baggage that entails. Somehow 5 billion people are reduced to one large, broad stereotype. Resistance is futile.
Of course, I am not knocking the many wonderful and open-minded people I have met during my time here. They are the ones I will remember when I go back to Canada, although incidents like Friday night cannot help but taint the memories a little.
Somewhere deep down inside I have a feeling I might be leaving China at just the right time, as the “foreigner as curiosity” mentality gives way to something as yet unknown and perhaps a little more volatile. Let’s just hope this is not replaced with a destructive “foreigner as scapegoat” approach, what with the wrong people getting richer and the wealth gap increasingly freakin’ unreal. Anyone who thinks they are special or loved as a result of their 老外 status is just in complete denial: you are an interest, an investment, and you are currently being protected as such.
However, I want to cut the pessimism right here and end things on a nice positive note. I’m including a picture of 西塘 (Xi Tang), a fascinating water town (think canals and foot bridges) in northern 浙江省 (Zhe Jiang province). I went there for the day, invited by the family of a bright middle school kid I tutor. It was suprisingly relaxed and picturesque, considering it is crammed right into the endless industrial sprawl that is quickly turning Nanjing/Shanghai/Hangzhou into one giant development zone. Of course, my student and I had an unofficial competition going to see who could max out their digital camera’s memory capacity first. I won.