Chris Azure (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} garunya) wrote,@ 2006-07-18 01:07:00 |
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A Ghost in the City
Taken fromaliettedb. Apparently it's International Blog Against Racism Week.
If you want to take part:
1. Announce the week in your blog.
2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAS icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAS icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so, or askoyceter to do so as she has agreed to make a custom one for everyone who asks, or go to her LJ and take one of the general-use ones she put up.
(I would do this one, but it seems more appropriate, given my subject matter, to just use my default icon here)
3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race on TV, review a book on the subject, etc.
And begin:
I suppose it might seem strange that growing up as a white person in Hong Kong, I never really felt out of place. Maybe it's because I grew up with a Chinese stepmother, or maybe it's just because I moved there at a fairly early age, but living there always seemed pretty normal to me.
A lot of you will have heard that in Hong Kong, Westerners and Chinese don't really mix. To an extent that is true. Western expats do tend to segregate themselves off from the main part of HK society, and will associate mostly with other foreigners (and Westernised Chinese people who also hang out in the Western crowds). I think I was slightly different from most (though I was by no means the only one) in that, while I did hang out with the western crowd, I also had a lot of local HK friends - which was a bit easier because I'd meet them on the chat BBSs (and later the internet), and then a whole bunch of us would meet up. Always fun.
As far as just roaming around the city in general - while I don't understand much Cantonese, I would sometimes hear Chinese people saying something in Cantonese about the "gwailo". They would always be pretty shocked when I turned around and swore at them in Cantonese (swearing, directions and numbers are really the extent of my Cantonese).
Another thing visitors to HK often mention is getting stared at in Hong Kong, or people never choosing the seat next to yours on the bus. I never really felt such a sense of that. Now some people in Hong Kong do stare - most of those seem to be middle-aged or old men - but they would stare at other Chinese people too, not just those of us who stood out from the crowd (though I think we got it more often). The bus seat thing never seemed to happen to me.
Just a two hour train ride up to Guangzhou, however, and it's a completely different story. I got on a bus there, and pretty much every passenger turned around and stared at me the whole time. Sometimes people would walk up to me and stare at me as they walked around me, being sure to glimpse me from every angle, apparently. A very strange feeling that takes a long time to get used to. It happens many places in China, but not Shanghai (and I'm sure some other places, but Shanghai's the only one I've actually visited that was like this).
There's also a sort of reverse-racism you get in Hong Kong sometimes, particularly noticeable in the discos/clubs of Wan Chai. Basically, white people would get into these places with no cover charge (along with some rich-looking Chinese) - presumably we'd spend more when we were in there, I guess. Other Chinese people would have to pay a cover charge to get in. Not sure what the deal was with other types of East/SouthEast Asians, but they had to pay too. I know this because once this Mongolian girl wrapped herself around my arm as I was headed to one of the discos, just so she could get in free (because whoever the white people were with would also get in free). It was all kind of strange, and there have been many articles written about the extent of this discrimination. Indians in particular had a lot of trouble getting into these places, and I think they pretty much experienced the most discrimination in Hong Kong as a whole. (I think the SCMP did an investigation about house-buying that came to the same conclusion).
That's really all the racism I experienced growing up. There was none at all in my school. Well okay, there was also the whole thing with my ex-girlfriend, where her mother was very unhappy she was going out with a gwailo (despite the fact that she too went to an international school), but that was just an odd experience all around.
There are other types of racism in Hong Kong, such as the treatment of the many Filipina/Indonesian maids in the territory, and also prejudice against mainlanders (ie. those who've recently immigrated from China to Hong Kong as opposed to those who grew up in HK), but those are things I've only really read about, and have no first-hand experience with.
Taken from
aliettedb. Apparently it's International Blog Against Racism Week.If you want to take part:
1. Announce the week in your blog.
2. Switch your default icon to either an official IBAS icon, or one which you feel is appropriate. To get an official IBAS icon, you may modify one of yours yourself or ask someone to do so, or ask
oyceter to do so as she has agreed to make a custom one for everyone who asks, or go to her LJ and take one of the general-use ones she put up.(I would do this one, but it seems more appropriate, given my subject matter, to just use my default icon here)
3. Post about race and/or racism: in media, in life, in the news, personal experiences, writing characters of a race that isn't yours, portrayals of race on TV, review a book on the subject, etc.
And begin:
I suppose it might seem strange that growing up as a white person in Hong Kong, I never really felt out of place. Maybe it's because I grew up with a Chinese stepmother, or maybe it's just because I moved there at a fairly early age, but living there always seemed pretty normal to me.
A lot of you will have heard that in Hong Kong, Westerners and Chinese don't really mix. To an extent that is true. Western expats do tend to segregate themselves off from the main part of HK society, and will associate mostly with other foreigners (and Westernised Chinese people who also hang out in the Western crowds). I think I was slightly different from most (though I was by no means the only one) in that, while I did hang out with the western crowd, I also had a lot of local HK friends - which was a bit easier because I'd meet them on the chat BBSs (and later the internet), and then a whole bunch of us would meet up. Always fun.
As far as just roaming around the city in general - while I don't understand much Cantonese, I would sometimes hear Chinese people saying something in Cantonese about the "gwailo". They would always be pretty shocked when I turned around and swore at them in Cantonese (swearing, directions and numbers are really the extent of my Cantonese).
Another thing visitors to HK often mention is getting stared at in Hong Kong, or people never choosing the seat next to yours on the bus. I never really felt such a sense of that. Now some people in Hong Kong do stare - most of those seem to be middle-aged or old men - but they would stare at other Chinese people too, not just those of us who stood out from the crowd (though I think we got it more often). The bus seat thing never seemed to happen to me.
Just a two hour train ride up to Guangzhou, however, and it's a completely different story. I got on a bus there, and pretty much every passenger turned around and stared at me the whole time. Sometimes people would walk up to me and stare at me as they walked around me, being sure to glimpse me from every angle, apparently. A very strange feeling that takes a long time to get used to. It happens many places in China, but not Shanghai (and I'm sure some other places, but Shanghai's the only one I've actually visited that was like this).
There's also a sort of reverse-racism you get in Hong Kong sometimes, particularly noticeable in the discos/clubs of Wan Chai. Basically, white people would get into these places with no cover charge (along with some rich-looking Chinese) - presumably we'd spend more when we were in there, I guess. Other Chinese people would have to pay a cover charge to get in. Not sure what the deal was with other types of East/SouthEast Asians, but they had to pay too. I know this because once this Mongolian girl wrapped herself around my arm as I was headed to one of the discos, just so she could get in free (because whoever the white people were with would also get in free). It was all kind of strange, and there have been many articles written about the extent of this discrimination. Indians in particular had a lot of trouble getting into these places, and I think they pretty much experienced the most discrimination in Hong Kong as a whole. (I think the SCMP did an investigation about house-buying that came to the same conclusion).
That's really all the racism I experienced growing up. There was none at all in my school. Well okay, there was also the whole thing with my ex-girlfriend, where her mother was very unhappy she was going out with a gwailo (despite the fact that she too went to an international school), but that was just an odd experience all around.
There are other types of racism in Hong Kong, such as the treatment of the many Filipina/Indonesian maids in the territory, and also prejudice against mainlanders (ie. those who've recently immigrated from China to Hong Kong as opposed to those who grew up in HK), but those are things I've only really read about, and have no first-hand experience with.
