Dec. 2020; The Few Bad Apples

I have to be deadly honest now, and say that, as a westerner living in Shenzhen, I do get some perks here and there. I’m not saying it’s all hearts and flowers, but from time to time you do get treated differently, for the better, than some others are. From shops to cinemas, trains to teashops, people mostly try their very hardest to understand you and speak to you the best they can. Now this is something I should be rather ashamed of, my lack of the language after living here for a decade. But still people will try their best. Body language goes a long way. And people are (generally) super friendly. I’m not sure if this is because I’m clearly not a local, or just because they are friendly to everyone. But I do know that if I tried to strike up a conversation with a random stranger in London they’d think I was a weirdo/creep/mental patient and quickly leave me well alone. Here people are more than willing to shoot the breeze about pretty much anything. “What flavour is your baozi?” “Vegetable.” “Tastes good?” “Yep, tastes good.” “HAHAHAHAHA.” (Just how many times has someone said “hello” to me, and when I reply hello back they laugh like it’s the funniest thing ever said.) If I go out for street bbq I can pretty much guarantee some friendly fella will waltz over at some point and ask me to gambei with him, and quite often be invited in joining them to eat, drink and be merry. People offer me cigarettes every day. Even though I’ve never smoked, I should really make a habit of accepting these and keeping them to sell on to school kids. And one thing I just can’t help but adore, is when someone calls me handsome. Now, I KNOW THEY”RE JUST BEING POLITE but it’s nice, it makes me blush a little bit, but it definitely sprinkles a sparkle on my day. (The first time someone called me handsome here I spent 2 minutes looking for their guide dog.)

Another instance I find myself greatly thankful for is peoples openness. I regularly walk around small urban neighbourhoods with my camera, ready to snap away at opportune moments of interest. And in the years upon years I’ve been doing that here, I’ve only had one really unpleasant experience, and that was just some extremely drunk moron who thought foreigners weren’t legally allowed to take photos in the street, and actually just wanted to fight me. I’m from London, and believe me that there are more than a few neighbourhoods there that I wouldn’t dare to even take a camera to after dark, never mind try to take photos of the residents therein. I love that most people here are unconfrontational to most. In my decade here I’ve only seen a handful of punch-ups, and to be fair they are always over as soon as they’ve begun. Mostly it’s just a lot of shouting, calling into question the reputation of the other ones mother, and friends feigning the humorous hold me back hold me back routine.

But one thing in contrast with this, and this year has truly highlighted this to me, is how non locals can also be treated far more unfairly. The terrible events of this year have absolutely shown peoples true colours, in both good and bad ways. Many people were somewhat ignorant and only read half the news, and “more imported cases of Covine” were in the news daily. Imported. That means brought into the country. It doesn’t mean brought into the country by a foreigner. Unfortunately a rather large amount of people took it as so, and the clear divide started to show it’s ugly head. It began with people refusing to get into the same elevator as me. That’s fine, I actually liked that part. I can’t stand being squashed up in a tiny metal box with some kid picking his nose and some geezer chewing those damn beetlenut things. (*Side note; those beetle nut things men chew stink like a bears butthole. I wish more people would understand that in a confined public space, such as an elevator, it’s really not the done thing to stink the place up with that crap. If I lifted a leg up and squeezed out a king kong sized fart they’d consider me rude, but nobody bats an eyelid at those edible turds. I wish those things were never discovered.)

Then it turned into nobody standing near me in the metro. Another plus in my opinion. People would give me a clear meter or so, and for once I had a comfortable amount of personal space. Fantastic. And if I managed to get a seat you could guarantee that nobody would sit beside me. But then it got a little nasty. Walking down a busy street was like Moses parting the red sea. If someone saw me approaching them on the pavement they would cross the street. I was even forcefully prohibited from entering a mall, just as every local person walked right in. The only reason was, I was a foreigner, and foreigners might have the virus. White people were starting to be treated like black people usually are, and we didn’t like it. As a photo group, we had trouble with teams of local security guards, aggressively screaming at us to leave an open neighbourhood, and threats of bringing in the police. That one very nearly got violent. The worst was when a guy, in my own apartment complex, walked up to me and tried to spit in my face and kick my dog, swearing incessantly about foreigners. I completely understand that not everybody reads the facts, but this wasn’t about misunderstanding, this was peoples prejudice coming out. And unfortunately, it was a global thing. Us against you. Attacks and assaults of Asian people were happening all around the world. Countries that usually pride themselves on their openness and acceptance of all nationalities and ethnicities were showing just how racist some of their people truly are. Thankfully it now seems that things have gone back to relative normality here. The end isn’t in sight yet, but it can’t be far away.

One expression that’s been used quite prevalently used over recent years is “foreign worship.” I find this one rather perplexing, is it being aimed at the worshippers, or the foreigners themselves? But up to a point, it’s kinda true. Look in fashion magazines, advertisements for cars, clothes, make up, the majority of faces you see are white people. But why? I don’t get it, in the west you don’t see 90% of our magazines full of Asian faces. I know several professional photographers here, who work daily with models for adverts. The (mostly Russian and Ukrainian) models here can earn a fortune, some several thousand for a few hours, or more, while Chinese models are often times paid far less. Who drives this demand for white faces? The industry or the consumer? The supply or the demand? All faces, of all colours, are beautiful, not just the white ones.

Speaking of worship, Christmas is just around the corner, but celebrations for it may well be dampened down again this year. Over the years I’ve spent here, festivities for Christmas have ranged anywhere from mediocre to almost non existent. A couple of years ago it was like Christmas was prohibited. Several companies who had planned and organized large Christmas parties were told from the authorities above to reschedule them and label them as “Spring festival” parties. No overweight, white bearded men in red suits were to be seen, even the malls were without decoration. But in a way, I can kind of understand big brothers reasoning for this. Most people see Christmas as a time to eat too much, take a few days off work and spend a ton of money on gifts for people. And if there’s one thing people in China love to do, it’s eat and spend. In other countries we’ve had the culture of Christmas for a lifetime. People singing Christmas carols, Christmas movies, Christmas sweets and puddings and drinking boatloads of booze. In countries all around the world it’s the most celebrated holiday of the year, and I can see how people here would love to join in on it a little. But the issue is, A) it’s extremely close to spring festival, and might take the winds out of its sails a bit, and B) it’s primarily a religious holiday. It’s foreign worship at it’s clearest, even though the religious connotations have been lost to many.

Over the past couple of years there’s been a thing labelled as the “great foreign exodus” from China. Tens of thousands of foreigners have left, vowing to never return. Some willingly, unable to deal with the mounting bureaucracy and restrictions, visas, the internet, freedom of information and so on. And many unwillingly. The huge clampdown on suspected illegals in places like Guangzhou was wide open for all to see. I’m sure it was done with the countries best interests at heart, but was it motivated by prejudice? I saw the sheriff roll in to town and clear up the African and Indian neighbourhoods, but I never heard of them banging down the doors of the wealthy white folks. But I’m all in favour of kicking out the rubbish. Illegal is illegal. And I’m not shy to say that when I first arrived here 10 years ago, a lot of the foreigners here were just trash. Drunk teachers, showing their white faces at the happy giraffe kindergarten, waving around a few flash cards and singing twinkle twinkle little star whilst the overpaying parents look on in adoration. People who’d never taught a single lesson in anything before were now allowed to be the ring master of a room full of little people. I couldn’t count the amount of crazies, misfits and just plain losers I’ve met here over the years. People who’d truly struggle to even find a job in their own country used to be able to rake it in here. Thankfully most of those are gone, at least in my eyes. The foreigners you meet here now are usually pretty normal, often working in things like I.T and technology. But when it comes to kindergartens and the like, there’s still quite a few of the undesirables left here, trust me on that one.

It may be something we try to hide, try to paint over or pretend doesn’t exist, but people have prejudices. Sometimes we just don’t like a group of people, for any reason or no reason at all. And for someone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of thought, shouldn’t that be ok? Surely if you believe in freedom of thought, then bias, racism, prejudice, is your right? So what, we can all hold hands and love one another, just as long as you believe in what I believe in? Surely this can’t be what we believe now? That’s not freedom, that’s the exact opposite in fact. One thing I do know is this; If a person meets, for example, an English person for the very first time, and say that person is an asshole. Not all people have the capacity to think to themselves “wow, that guy was a real asshole.” No, they’ll think “That English guy was a real asshole.” All of us, wherever we are and wherever we are from, have the obligation to act as ambassadors from our own countries. One reason that some people have no love for foreigners here is that the one’s they’ve met have been those real assholes. And this goes both ways. Just look in the news at the reputation Chinese tourists have as a result of just a few idiots misbehaving. Most tourists from China, 99.9%, are absolutely adorable, polite, sweet people, just wanting to enjoy their time away. But it’s the few bad apples that make the news and spoil it for everyone, not the nice majority. It’s our duty, our absolute obligation, to act as ambassadors for our country. China has graciously adopted me for the past decade, the least I can do is show it, and it’s people, the respect it deserves.