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Comment by arbuge | Hacker News Reader

This is weird. Definitely not my experience at all. I visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu in China in 2012 and I felt extremely welcome wherever I went. I might also add that in Chengdu, a city which sees considerably less foreigners than the other two, I felt like I was being treated like somewhat of a celebrity, with people smiling at me everywhere, and random passer-bys on the street trying to impress me with their renditions of "Good Morning" or "How are you?". Once I had a visibly excited team of students randomly stop me on the street to do an interview with me for their class project, and on another occasion a large group of young people all wanted to take a picture with me one by one.

Needless to say, I loved it.

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2012 is a very long time ago by Chinese standards. Xi only became the general secretary in November of that year and the president in 2013. Most of his authoritarian and nationalist policies have only really kicked into a higher gear from 2018. The xenophobia got even worse after the coronavirus hit, and I can't imagine it has improved much since I left in 2020.

Also, I don't know what makes you think that Chengdu is off the beaten path - it's a massive tourist destination, in particular because of its panda reserve, presumed proximity to Tibet and the global renown of Sichuan cuisine (home of mapo tofu, hotpot etc).

Thirdly, this coddling of foreigners is exactly the kind of racist behavior that I find to be degrading. It might feel superficially nice to be treated like you are special or unique, but really it means you are not being treated with respect. They are treating you like a child, or a curiosity. If you visit some of the indigenous communities of China then you will often see the Han majority treat the ethnic minorities in the same way, as if they are just props for photos or some kind of weird creatures to be gawked at. It's gross, imo.

Thank you. I had the same experience as GP in 2010 except I absolutely hated it. Can you imagine if people in the US treated Chinese tourists like that?

I never saw it that way. Your comment definitely opened my eyes.

Some things to keep in mind:

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Western expats in East Asia tend to be quite polarized about their country of residence, and expats in poorer countries even more so. Over time, the tint of novelty wears off and the warts begin to stand out. Poorer countries have more warts.

For folks like myself who are extra sensitive, the negatives get an outsized representation, while the positives and neutrals get filtered out. It took me years of to develop the habits to compensate. I'm far from where I'd like to be, but I'm learning to accept that as well.

This is especially true in places of higher density. If you encounter 1 bad apple in a place of 100 people, vs 10 bad apples of 1000 people, the ratio is the same, but subjectively the latter feels ten times worse. It’s the price you pay for living the city life.

And when you have an under-stimulated career, the idle mind becomes the devil's playground.

We let collective narratives plays a greater role in colouring our opinions (as opposite to direct experience) than we'd like to admit. In this day and age, I don't think it's especially controversial to say that we get more dopamine hits from internet discussions than having a stroll down the street. Ultimately, unless we consciously intervene, the chemicals get to decide what we let ruminate in the back of our minds.

The idiosyncrasies you used to brush off or find amusing are now small but cumulative signs of impending doom. What we get right in direction we get wrong in magnitude. The sprinkles of verifiable truth can often as easily fuel our biases as they moderate them.

All the cities you mention are tier one Potemkin cities.

Try go to the country side to see the real China.

For the racism part, I wouldn't say that signs with "no foreigners" in shops are common, but I have seen them a couple of times during my 5 year stay in China.

As someone who’s lived in China since 2012 up until the present day, things have changed markedly in the last few years, and especially since ~April of last year once it became clear that China was handling the pandemic better than the rest of the world.

Most people are still ok, but some fraction of the population has a mixture of fear and hatred of foreigners. They think foreigners are dangerous because we bring the virus. Far fewer places accept foreigners than before.

I love my life and my friends here, but walking down the street in a village and having a guy wearing an official-looking coat scream at you to “fuck off” has a way of souring one’s mood.

China has changed an awful lot even since 2012.

Can you imagine saying “ni hao” and asking for selfies with random Asian people on the street in whatever western country? It would be racist and demeaning as hell. That’s what they subjected you to, and you felt “special.”

I experienced this a lot in India, some part of eastern Europe and Balkan. Most of them asked nicely. Told me that they come from a very small town there is not much chances to meet foreigner. And I usually ok with it. Don't find it is racist. It is just curiosity of other culture.

I mostly give them a pass because they weren’t being malicious, just curious. I’ve spoken with plenty of people who literally had never talked to a foreigner before. Perhaps half the country has still never even seen a foreigner.

It’s definitely taken too far sometimes though.

It really depends on your race as a foreigner. Black and Indian foreigners will be treated worse than white foreigners. Asian foreigners…it really depends how Chinese they look.

It seems to get worse every year also. My first visit in 1999, foreigners were quite welcomed. Then it simply got more mundane from there. My visit twas chengdu in 2006 was fairly like you stated though.

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