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From foreign devils to coveted white-guy faces
By Wan Lixin |
September 1, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ONE of the charms of the market is that any conceivable kind of service can be available, at a price.
At a toilet at Fudan University last week, I saw many small notices posted just above the urinal, offering to be ringers at exams.
Some single men long past marriageable age can now rent girlfriends while visiting their parents, as a tactic to silence parental kvetching.
And as the prestige associated with a Caucasian face steadily rises in China, "Rent a white guy" is now a frequently practiced marketing tactic, chiefly in China's second- or third-tier cities.
A college English teacher identified as Tim from the United States wrote recently in South Weekend of his experience of being rented.
Tim was cc'ed at several removes on an e-mail inviting a white face to a three-day junket in Shanxi Province.
At a sumptuous lunch Tim was joined by seven other expats, who were left in the dark as to the true purpose of their mission.
They traveled to provincial capital Taiyuan on bullet train, attended an opening ceremony, which the local newspaper reported as a gathering where "over one hundred Chinese and overseas media outlets joined in praise of Shanxi."
As a matter of fact, he did not see any foreign journalists at the scene.
Tim was also given several fancy titles, though none of them so dignified as that given to a British guy who was described as a member of the British Chamber of Commerce in China.
After being shown around a real estate project (the developer had invited them in the e-mail), they were treated to some well-known scenic spots, put up at fancy five-star hotels, wined and dined, and given free return train or air tickets.
Tim wonders: "Why does so resourceful a company need an ordinary expat like me to help polish their public image? And why does so ludicrous an imposture turn out to be so real?"
Such impostures are directed by the Chinese for the sake of conning other Chinese.
Tim was not alone.
In his "Rent a white guy: confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing," (July issue of the Atlantic magazine), Mitch Moxley wrote how he was paid US$1,000 for a week acting as a quality-control expert with a company in Dongying, Shandong Province.
No prior experience necessary for the role. The only requirement: a fair complexion and a suit.
"Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money," one expat briefed Moxley on the face job.
Their responsibilities included making daily trips to the construction site of the company, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, posing for photos with the mayor, and hobnobbing with local dignitaries.
Inferiority
One poor guy had to give a rehearsed speech as the company director.
Two of the guys were hired to stay for eight months, and during that interval they actually received some training in quality control.
In another incident, one Western dramatist/producer in Beijing was paid 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) for a 40-day tour in which he was required to negotiate with government and clients as a foreign businessman.
The TV dramatist and producer found his experience so amusing that he intended to make a comedy of it.
As a Chinese, I found such incidents more tragic than comic. They indicate an utter lack of confidence in our own culture - in our own race.
Ultimately this sense of inferiority can be traced to implicit ideological orthodoxy holding up the Western consumerist lifestyle as the ideal, against which all other alternatives would be judged as substandard, backward, wretched, or poor.
In some more enlightened "metropolitan" cities, the state of well-being is increasingly indicated by the possession of brands of clothes, cars, jewelry or food.
But a thoroughbred Caucasian has much more redeeming value.
One of my colleagues one day ran into an American family he knew and was chatting with them at the gate to his new neighborhood. A neighborhood "auntie" later exclaimed: "To think you are capable of such an intimate talk with American friends!"
The admiration is so intense, that even Chinese with some Western exposure are generally more sought after than natively reared Chinese.
Which partly explains why Chinese parents are eager to buy their children expensive overseas education.
It is depressing to realize how the image of "foreign devils" has been rebranded over the past century.
When foreign traders first set foot on the treaty ports in southeast China, they were told not to venture outside the open area and not allowed to learn Chinese, so as to contain their pernicious influence.
Evolving image
In 1902, American writer Eliza R. Scidmore thus described a trip through Canton in a sedan chair: "Street children jeer; larger enemies make faces and the cutthroat sign, and hurl epithets and invectives after one ... The foreigner is best hated in Canton of all Chinese cities."
Shanghai later rivaled Canton as prime location to conduct trade with foreigners.
According to "Tales of Old Shanghai" (By Graham Earnshaw), foreigners in Shanghai almost never bothered to learn the language of the natives - many Shanghailanders were born and raised in the city and never spoke a word of Chinese, and those who did learn to speak some were considered slightly weird. There was pidgin at that time.
Today the need to learn Chinese is even less compelling for many Chinese than the need to speak English better - and they derive no small satisfaction from their feat.
And this simple fact explains why so many are eager to "rent a white guy."
At a toilet at Fudan University last week, I saw many small notices posted just above the urinal, offering to be ringers at exams.
Some single men long past marriageable age can now rent girlfriends while visiting their parents, as a tactic to silence parental kvetching.
And as the prestige associated with a Caucasian face steadily rises in China, "Rent a white guy" is now a frequently practiced marketing tactic, chiefly in China's second- or third-tier cities.
A college English teacher identified as Tim from the United States wrote recently in South Weekend of his experience of being rented.
Tim was cc'ed at several removes on an e-mail inviting a white face to a three-day junket in Shanxi Province.
At a sumptuous lunch Tim was joined by seven other expats, who were left in the dark as to the true purpose of their mission.
They traveled to provincial capital Taiyuan on bullet train, attended an opening ceremony, which the local newspaper reported as a gathering where "over one hundred Chinese and overseas media outlets joined in praise of Shanxi."
As a matter of fact, he did not see any foreign journalists at the scene.
Tim was also given several fancy titles, though none of them so dignified as that given to a British guy who was described as a member of the British Chamber of Commerce in China.
After being shown around a real estate project (the developer had invited them in the e-mail), they were treated to some well-known scenic spots, put up at fancy five-star hotels, wined and dined, and given free return train or air tickets.
Tim wonders: "Why does so resourceful a company need an ordinary expat like me to help polish their public image? And why does so ludicrous an imposture turn out to be so real?"
Such impostures are directed by the Chinese for the sake of conning other Chinese.
Tim was not alone.
In his "Rent a white guy: confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing," (July issue of the Atlantic magazine), Mitch Moxley wrote how he was paid US$1,000 for a week acting as a quality-control expert with a company in Dongying, Shandong Province.
No prior experience necessary for the role. The only requirement: a fair complexion and a suit.
"Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money," one expat briefed Moxley on the face job.
Their responsibilities included making daily trips to the construction site of the company, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, posing for photos with the mayor, and hobnobbing with local dignitaries.
Inferiority
One poor guy had to give a rehearsed speech as the company director.
Two of the guys were hired to stay for eight months, and during that interval they actually received some training in quality control.
In another incident, one Western dramatist/producer in Beijing was paid 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) for a 40-day tour in which he was required to negotiate with government and clients as a foreign businessman.
The TV dramatist and producer found his experience so amusing that he intended to make a comedy of it.
As a Chinese, I found such incidents more tragic than comic. They indicate an utter lack of confidence in our own culture - in our own race.
Ultimately this sense of inferiority can be traced to implicit ideological orthodoxy holding up the Western consumerist lifestyle as the ideal, against which all other alternatives would be judged as substandard, backward, wretched, or poor.
In some more enlightened "metropolitan" cities, the state of well-being is increasingly indicated by the possession of brands of clothes, cars, jewelry or food.
But a thoroughbred Caucasian has much more redeeming value.
One of my colleagues one day ran into an American family he knew and was chatting with them at the gate to his new neighborhood. A neighborhood "auntie" later exclaimed: "To think you are capable of such an intimate talk with American friends!"
The admiration is so intense, that even Chinese with some Western exposure are generally more sought after than natively reared Chinese.
Which partly explains why Chinese parents are eager to buy their children expensive overseas education.
It is depressing to realize how the image of "foreign devils" has been rebranded over the past century.
When foreign traders first set foot on the treaty ports in southeast China, they were told not to venture outside the open area and not allowed to learn Chinese, so as to contain their pernicious influence.
Evolving image
In 1902, American writer Eliza R. Scidmore thus described a trip through Canton in a sedan chair: "Street children jeer; larger enemies make faces and the cutthroat sign, and hurl epithets and invectives after one ... The foreigner is best hated in Canton of all Chinese cities."
Shanghai later rivaled Canton as prime location to conduct trade with foreigners.
According to "Tales of Old Shanghai" (By Graham Earnshaw), foreigners in Shanghai almost never bothered to learn the language of the natives - many Shanghailanders were born and raised in the city and never spoke a word of Chinese, and those who did learn to speak some were considered slightly weird. There was pidgin at that time.
Today the need to learn Chinese is even less compelling for many Chinese than the need to speak English better - and they derive no small satisfaction from their feat.
And this simple fact explains why so many are eager to "rent a white guy."
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