Rent-a-Foreigner in China
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
One of the most endearing things was when somebody would try to test out their very limited knowledge of English on me at random, they'd often seem quite proud of themselves and I was always happy to oblige.
(Incidentally my girlfriends home province is also Xinjiang!)
I hope she told him... and his reaction?
And for those that don't know, it's not a small city (urban population: 2.7 million, metro population: 4.7 million). I had some young kids there tell me I was the first westerner they had ever seen.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_popu... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by...
If you look at the metro area numbers, Shijiazhuang is 26th in China according to your first link, with about 4M in its metro area (assuming "Built-Up area" is the metro area, of course; it's hard to tell from this Wikipedia page). Tehre are 12 more cities with 3M+ in the built-up area.
For the US there seem to be 10 urban areas that are at 4M or more (see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar...). Obviously fewer than 26, but not an order of magnitude less. There are 14 urban areas with 3M or more people.
More interesting would be to just flat-out compare list positions. #26 on the list of US cities by actual city population is Baltimore. On the urban area list it's San Antonio. Neither one is what one would consider small (nor large, of course).
As for density of US cities, Cambridge is administratively a suburb of Boston, but has a population density of 6400/km^2. At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... it's the 5th densest city on the list. Boston itself has a population density of 5100/km^2, which is less dense.
OK, so maybe Cambridge is weird. But Somerville is right next to Cambridge and has a density of 7400/km^2. Oh, and for economic interaction purposes, Cambridge and Somerville are a lot closer to downtown Boston than many parts of Boston proper. Similar for Chelsea (6100/km^2). Everett (4700/km^2) and Malden (4500/km^2) are up there too.
Other Boston suburbs are a bit less dense: Brookline is at 3300/km^2, Watertown at 3000/km^2, Arlington at 3200/km^2. The interesting thing is to compare those to places like Chicago (4500/km^2) or Los Angeles (3100/km^2). Those are cities that annexed their suburbs, unlike Boston, so if you just compare the "city" population you're comparing apples to oranges. Comparing the population of the "densely zoned/settled area" would be useful, but no one seems to publish that. I assume it would be possible to get that information from census data, though...
Of course as long as we're talking about cities that annexed various surrounding stuff, Houston is at 1300/km^2 and so is Dallas. ;) Which just goes to show that comparing "city" stuff is hard, because cities are just so different from each other.
I'm probably in 100s of pictures too. Last dozen in a square in Dalian, though. :)
My girlfriend and I instantly became the attraction. They approached us hurriedly, squeaking with excitement, took our pictures, had us pose for them, then they took turns posing with us, one by one or in groups while someone else was taking the picture and directing us. This went on for multiple rounds. It really, really made their day.
To this day I'm not sure if they mistook us for celebrities or they were just excited to see white people in general. It was hilarious.
"One guy told me "I will kill you", but then he told my girlfriend "Thats the only sentence I know in english and I don't know what does it mean"."
ROFL. You made my day ! :)
It makes me think though of a Chinese intern that used to work for me. She would make comments about how "good looking" white people were from time to time, and how she thought Chinese people were ugly. When she would see pictures of my kids she would say things like, "You have the cutest children ever; Chinese kids are so ugly."
On top of this there was another Chinese intern who was quite close with her, and obviously interested in starting a relationship, but while she liked him she said she could never be more than friends because he was ugly. In reality he was a very normal attractive young Chinese man. He was friendly, well educated, well groomed, but he never stood a chance with her because she was repulsed by her own race. I found the whole thing to just be very sad.
Let people like whomever they like for whatever reason they state or function under.
It's like a flavor preference in food. Preference for one flavor over another, whether indigenous or not, is not sad.
I wish I knew why this happened and how to fix it. It's a giant problem that should not exist.
Whereas a lot of pasty white folk want tanned skin :)
I honestly don't know if you're white or not, but I will go with the high probability guess that you are white. Mainly because no person of color would ever say what you've just said. So yeah, easy for someone who doesn't have to deal with their skin tone to say what you've said.
The entire culture of America, and most European countries is heavily biased against Asian men. It is sad that her only negative against him is that he's Chinese. Asian men are still having to deal with the fallout of William Hung and every other caricature of Asian males that _still_ show up on network TV because people are cool with making fun of the nerdy Asian guy. So don't tell other people that we should ignore race when the society and culture tells us otherwise.
Also it's fucking offense to relate dating "non-white" people as a flavor preference.
I hope you realize you're not far from advocating people should only date within their ethnicity and intermixing is bad.
Clarified dating oreference
What I find about your comments is that you are totally trying to erase race out of the issue then saying it is fine to date only _one_ race. I'm confused by that.
And personally, you only want to date people with <X> trait, that's fine. No one should stop you from doing that.
You don't want to date <Y> because <something stupid>, that's also fine. But don't expect not to get called on bullshit like that.
If you consider the possibility that these may very well be related (and there is AMPLE evidence to show attraction to wealth, power and status exists), then yes it does become quite sad. Because now we see people's personalities and status be judged on the basis of skin color as a proxy of status/wealth/power, rather than merit. And that's a step even worse than judging someone on the basis of their wealth instead of merit.
Of course there will be people genuinely attracted to e.g. wasps, just as there are people genuinely attracted to asians. That's completely fine and a personal preference as you say. But I've met Chinese people who aren't like that and who indeed will say Chinese people are 'all ugly', and any white person is a model. From that and other things they'll say and how they'll behave it's apparent that it's not about a personal preference, it's usually driven by racial (I dare so racist) notions about the world.
It's particularly apparent when these 'preferences' extend beyond beauty, i.e. when white people are considered more intelligent or more capable, especially in a context where the opposite view exists about blacks. South Korea for example is notorious for such racism and the weak legal system which has very very few legal frameworks against racial discrimination.
Definitely quite sad in my opinion.
If it makes you feel better: I dated a white girl (I'm not white) who would constantly say the same about white people. Kids that I thought were very cute just didn't seem cute to her. She wanted more color in them, darker hair, darker eyes, etc. We broke up but are still friends.
I also dated another white girl who had not dated any white guys after high school. We also broke up but stayed friends. Then she met a white guy on OKC, but after the first date wasn't excited about him. He seemed like a great guy, so I encouraged (pushed hard!) her to accept a second date. That went better, and next thing you know, they're married and have a kid... she couldn't be happier now.
Our brains work in so weird ways.
I think, to be specific, it's more cultural influence.
Perhaps she was in love with the idea that non-Chinese meant not being exclusively Chinese herself - she felt perhaps she could open up to another culture and escape her own.
Alternatively, maybe she just had the hots for you?
The whole WMAW dynamics is complicated.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/lif...
“I’ve been Miss Brazil, Miss Poland, and Miss America, and I’m still pissed I was never Miss Canada,” Lora, a model from Toronto whom I met in Beijing, told me recently. “Some Polish girl got it instead.”
Oh. My. God.
I do wonder why does this seem to happen universally in the world? Why does apparently every culture think whites are pretty and blacks are ugly? I think it's more than European colonialism. It seems to be ingrained even in children.
The following example from Mexican children comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrMUnw4Xt-k
I could translate it if anyone's interested, but they basically show kids a white and a brown doll and ask them which one is good and which one is pretty and they all uniformly point to the white doll.
It does suggest they will work for less money, and if you're looking at demographics, blacks actually do tend to make less than whites in many places.
You can easily debate the merits of that, but I don't think you can draw a straight line between price and beauty here, as there could be many other factors at work, such as basic economics (supply and demand). i.e. - there could be a supply of 200 black people and 2 white people, making the whites more valuable simply because they are scarce.
I mean I agree with you, but I don't think you can directly jump to those conclusions based on this.
I believe he has a right to be feel outraged. I do too.
This is a great example of capitalism's effect on morals: When a major investment looks risky, capitalists, instead of letting it fail and saying, "invisible hand, market, evolution, that's the way the cookie crumbles, that was a learning experience" compromise on their values and say, "Well, if I resort to playing into and supporting people's lowest tendencies with regard to race, then maybe I can recoup this investment."
In this case, it's their huge investment in housing that obviously nobody wants. They should just let it fail, but instead, they'll stoke and validate people's basest suspicions in an attempt to get their money back.
I would feel like shit if exploiting and perpetuating racialism made me millions.
I dont think its about looks, its about status. White people atleast in India are considered to be rich and successful while black people who are from Africa are poor. I assume its the same in China.
First of all, India's full of racist and sexist bullshit. Evidence of this is arranged marriages in the papers and job ads that specify appearance or sex. There's a long way to go before all members of Indian society can truly have political and social equality.
Second of all, I hotly contest that genetics or appearance has no bearing how you're treated in India and only your social class does. If you're dark but wealthy, you're still seen as inferior to someone who is white and wealthy. And besides, when people first see someone, you can't immediately always guess their social class by their appearance, yet people will still use their appearance to decide how to treat someone.
In Mexico we have a very widespread and very invisible racism, institutionalised centuries ago by the Spaniards (to be fair, the Aztecs before them weren't that nice either). Mexicans can't see it like fish can't see the water they swim in. India has the same problem, and Indians try to deny it by saying that it's not about race, but about class, just like Mexicans do.
I agree but to be fair, forget the white and black people, we hate others Indians too. Different religion, different language, different caste, we hate them all.
> that it's about social class,
Well if you saw the video they say the white guy is a model or a contestant from US show, so he is not just an average guy from the street so they are selling success/status aka social class.
This creates a perception that whites are rich and successful while blacks not so much.
History of how black people tried bleaching our skin or straightening our hair. I still cringe that my wife wears weaves from time to time because I always remember the history of why black women do that; how it all started. I comfort myself by trying to think that they've taken & owned the weave in the same way black people have "taken" the N-word into their own identity... sorta....kinda...maybe...... it's complicated.
>>This is not true
You can't really claim that America's history & media has nothing to do it. You can debate to what degree, but to dismiss it completely is impossible.
If the preference were an idealized optimal algorithm, perhaps; but people are adaptation-executers. The simplest rule is 'lighter skin means richer', and so when one runs into an African, it's not necessarily perfect. (Although given how many poor African immigrants there are in China now, I'm not sure that's a bug rather than a feature.)
Mainstream America not only tells whites "this is how to be beautiful." It doesn't even come up with a standard for blacks on how to be beautiful, implying that they can't be beautiful.
There are lots of ways to take this. For example, you might say, "well on the bright side, blacks didn't have to worry about needing to look beautiful, so that's freedom for them." That's a tough argument, and requires operating at a very enlightened level.
On the other hand, you can look at some of the bold black women of the 90s like Beyonce, etc. who asserted their own standards of what beauty is for black women. You could still critique that by saying, "well, America only lets black women have a standard of beauty when rich people in Hollywood can monetize it." And I believe that would be largely correct.
It's disgusting that anyone is monetized for their skin color, black/white/etc. And the real answer is to make people think for themselves and decide about whether to live someplace based on the facts or other criteria, not whether some investor could higher foreigners to show up in a commercial. The real answer here is to make people literate about the effects of advertising so we can't be fooled. It breaks my heart to see Chinese society getting made over in the image of some of America's crappiest tendencies.
The recent liberal development of the sentiments "everybody is beautiful", "everybody defines their own beauty" and the like is a naive attempt to mitigate a demonstrably deadly social poison by advocating that we spread it thin enough that it just becomes water. The actual solution is to identify that it is poison and abolish it.
I think you might benefit from reading "Maxims or Myths of Beauty? A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review" http://www.jonathanstray.com/papers/Langlois.pdf , Langlois et al 2000.
The three maxims that the paper names are all either of the "should" form or not at all related to "importance" -- the first claims relativity from person to person, not importance, the second asserts a "should", and the third is totally unrelated to actual social conditions (the "life" in "attractiveness is not important in life"). So the paper seems to exist for its own strawman, but I'll have to read the whole thing...
I know this because I grew up seeing this change happen in India. Today in India everyone (obviously an unfair generalization but still) wants to conform to the white standards of beauty. This wasn't always the case. In south india, I gradually saw the change happen; each generation of film actors was more light-skinned than their predecessors.
And if you read the classics of Indian literature, a lot of the protagonists are dark skinned. The funny thing is even a lot of the Indian gods and mythological characters are portrayed as being dark skinned in the myths, but modern paintings, TV serials and movies portray these characters with light-skinned actors!
I think there are two factors in play
Firstly the average white is probably richer that the average black globally and so would give a better impression for plugging real estate. That could be negated if you can get a high status black guy to promote your thing.
Secondly people tend to use white for good and black for bad I think due to the association with daylight and seeing things. Light shows up bad stuff which hides in the dark.
I dont know about the ugly factor but atleast in India being white is associated with being rich. White people are rich while blacks who are from Africa are poor.
> India is one of the most racist societies in the world probably.
Source?
I think that most people here will agree that white people are on average better off from a financial perspective.
For that you only have to look at how much the average person from "the West" consumes compared to for example the average Southeast Asian.
Edit: I guess I'm supposed to have a serious response to this. Uhm, I don't have one. This is bat shit insane and should be mocked and laughed at. Not discussed and analyzed. Or better yet, how about we talk about how goddam offensive this is.
There's no need for cultural sensitivity here -- shit is straight-up racist.
This is hiring a model temporarily. Anywhere in the world, hiring a model is explicitly hiring more for appearance and less for skills.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/04/24...
(the reason is that the funeral is regarded more as a goodbye party for the deceased than a mourning ceremony for the ones left behind)
Most funerals I've been too really did need something to liven them up.
It's not anything new, it's just that more people have caught on and jumped into the game.
If a musician or dancer, two roles mentioned in the article, then making a living out of it is the definition of success!
I've also met some non-dancers non-musicians that do it full time. But less misrepresentation, more connection to a career and as a consultant. For example, a chef that visits restaurants when they're opening; while not famous, gets his photo taken enjoying what he's doing.
So, back to teaching English I guess :-)
Manufacturing proof that "pretty women like men who own this" sounds like a winner, honestly.
I wonder if there is some data around this?
Vice covered this recently [1]. Available on HBOGO [2]
[1] Rent a White Guy: Sneak Peek (VICE on HBO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPW83Bzv-dA
[2]
Egyptian Tomb Raiders & Rent a White Guy ( Season 3 Episode 8 )
http://www.hbo.com/#/vice/episodes/3/30-egyptian-tomb-raider...
Once, after our hibachi chef was finished cooking our meal, someone at the table asked him if he was Japanese. He looked around and in a hushed tone said "No, we are all Korean."
On another note: this looks fun. Where can I sign up?
Though, what's even more common is cultural appropriation of material goods. E.g.: http://whitegirlsandindianheaddresses.tumblr.com/
This isn't the same thing as what OP posted, yes yes I know. Rather, these are all instances of the same larger thing.