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Comment by jdm2212 | Hacker News Reader

China's great if you have a decent amount of money -- labor's cheap, so all sorts of stuff (food prep, transportation, delivery services) that's heavy on labor is dirt cheap in China even if it's unaffordable in the West.

But racism... speaking as a rich white guy who was treated as nicely as you'd generally expect, even I could tell it wouldn't be fun to be an ethnic minority there. Chinese ethnic minorities visiting Beijing are themselves something of a tourist attraction; tour guides leading Westerners around point and stare and talk about those minorities sort of the way you'd point and stare and talk about a wild animal you found roaming the streets. Thing is, 95+ percent of China is a single (self-identified) ethnic group so there are just fewer encounters with minorities.

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> Chinese ethnic minorities visiting Beijing are themselves something of a tourist attraction; tour guides leading Westerners around point and stare and talk about those minorities sort of the way you'd point and stare and talk about a wild animal you found roaming the streets.

On a related note, in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China saw fit to have the flag be brought in by 56 children wearing the traditional costumes of the 56 officially-recognized ethnic groups in China. They were all Han.

>They were all Han.

dumb question: is it possible to tell?

Err it’s easy to tell a Han from Uyghur, Chinese Kazakhs and many others closer to Russian and Middle-East origins.

Yes. Here's a picture of the what the Uighurs look like. The ones currently thrown in concentration camps and into forced labour:

https://muslimmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/uyghur.jpg

With Tibetans it's harder to tell for western eyes, but they look a bit more like native Americans do/did:

http://162757811.blogspot.com/2015/06/stop-genocide-tibetan-...

But you were an ethnic minority too when you were in China right?

I never understood this line of thinking though - the way you describe it sounds like it was out of pure curiosity rather than racism. It's interesting seeing the difference of how people define racism based on who they are and where they grew up.

For example - racism in Australia can be seen through racial slurs and physical violence from the moment they start interacting with others (preschool) up to adulthood. Or it can come in many subvert forms in the professional workspace. Contrast this to where I hear of racial minorities coming into Asia who for the most part get treated at best above everyone and at worst out of curiosity (e.g. staring)

I wasn't a local ethnic minority, which makes all the difference.

And "curiosity" doesn't quite explain it. It's curiosity plus lack of respect. Local political bosses are undoubtedly subjects of similar curiosity, but everyone respects (and/or fears) them enough to be courteous.

>China's great if you have a decent amount of money

Besides Scandinavian countries where the social security net is amazing comparably, isn't that the same in most of the world? I'm not sure being poor in China is worse than elsewhere?

In most of the developed world, even poor people's labor is expensive enough that it's rarely affordable to just pay someone else to do something for you exclusively (e.g., private chef, private driver). In China, to say nothing of India, that's another story. There, you have professional class types making Western salaries but also a billion-odd people living on dollars a day which allows an aristocratic lifestyle that would be unimaginable in the developed world.

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