Hey Foreigner!

Something I hear a lot from new expats in China is "did that guy just call me a foreigner?!?" Yes. Yes he did. And yes, you are a foreigner. Get over it. Maybe in our society its rude to point out the obvious in such a way, calling people foreigners. In fact, its often somewhat racist, indicating that someone isn't from around here and doesn't belong. But in Chinese, its just what it is, and can even be a term of respect. It depends on the vocabulary, doesn't it.

There are three different ways of saying 'foreigner' in Chinese (that I know of):

老外 (Laowai)

Laowai is the term for foreigner used in the title of this blog that you are reading. It literally means 'old foreigner', where 'old' is a term of respect (isn't it funny how the opposite is implied in English). If someone calls you a laowai, you shouldn't be offended, because you are one. When someone calls you this, it's almost like you're an honoured guest. 

外国人 (Waiguoren)

Waiguoren literally means 'foreign country person'. It is neither particularly respectful or disrespectful, but neutral. It is what it is. A foreigner is a foreigner, whether you show respect or not. It might be offensive or it might not be, it depends on the tone of the voice of the speaker, and the context of the conversation. Usually there's nothing offensive about it, unless you hear other keywords in the same sentence such as "stupid", "ugly", and "should go home".

洋鬼子 (Yangguizi)

This is the one you should watch out for and be offended at if you hear it. Try not to pick a fight. It literally means 'foreign devil' and is a pretty rude word, not to be used in front of children. I was discussing with my workmate once, that it might be a cool name for a sports team, The Shanghai Yangguizi, with the team mascot being a demon wearing a basketball singlet, say. But then, the word is more inappropriate than that and could have gotten people in trouble.  Pity. It would have been pretty cool.

Today's Mem:
In America foreigners are referred to as 'Aliens', which the rest of the world take to mean, 'a creature from another planet'. In Chinese, such a creature is called a 外星人 (waixingren), which is literally 'foreign star person'. I would much rather be called a 'Laowai' any day.

The character 外 (wai) can be broken into two radicals, which mean 'dusk' and 'magic' respectively. 

And A Word From Our Sponsors...

... Well they're not exactly sponsoring me, but if I give them a mention on my blog, they'll give me 5000 free hits of web traffic. If you're in America, and you're reading this as a recent post, chances are high that you were directed here because of them. Give it up for MaxVisits.com! And give it up for random free stuff! Yay.

Anyway forget about that and read the rest of my blog already. Pphht. Yes I know, I'm a sell-out.

Today's mem is for 自 (zi4), meaning 'self'. It just so happens that this character looks like a photocopier. So when you see it, just remember this chick photocopying herSELF and you'll remember what the character means. SELF. 

Technically ths is just a character and not a word in it's own right. If you want the word that means self, it is made of two characters: 自己 (zi4 ji3). The second character represents the woman who just jumped off the photocopier.

PS: Chinese is awesome. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't make a blog about it. If this picture offends anyone, just let me know politely and I'll take it down. My Chinese wife didn't seem to disapprove, and she disapproves of almost everything I do, so I figured it'd be okay. --Brad

Shanghai Subway

While obviously not as fun as motorbike taxis, the Shanghai subway is the epitamy of convenient public transport. My expat friends have told me that they prefer it to the subway systems in London, New York, and Paris, which apparently smell bad. Heck, all I knew before was the Wellington bus system which has buses half an hour late on a good day. To a small-town Kiwi like myself, the Shanghai subway is exceptional! If you miss the train, dang, gotta wait another 3 minutes for the next one. Woe and betide.

The London subway, my English friends tell me, has so many suicides that passengers are desensitized to it. They would often hear an announcement that there's going to be a 15 minute delay because someone jumped in front of the train again, and the first thing they think is "dammit, why can't he jump off a bridge instead? Now I'm late for work". But I never heard such an announcement in Shanghai.

...Oh wait. I can't understand Chinese. So technically it could have been happening while I was blissfully unaware (there's a perk to not understanding the local language), but I don't think so. Most stations have a fence to stop you from doing that anyway.

One can go all over Shanghai via subway and never learn to drive in ten years. There's just no need. Just bring a book, or an ipad or something, because you may be spending two hours on the train every day. I suppose you could look over the shoulder's of other people and get a few silent clips of a movie out of context, or an annoying ipad game without the volume turned off so everybody on the carriage has to listen to the sound of exploding spaceships, but its better to read a book or listen to a podcast or chinese lesson or something.

Remember the beggars I told you about? They like to spend the day on the subway even if they're not going anywhere. They walk up and down the trains begging to the passengers, and once they've covered a train they'll get off and jump on another train, and repeat the process. They must travel all over Shanghai doing that - paint the town red, underground! Other people like to hang out in the subway station, simply because of the free air conditioning during the intense summer heat. "It's nice and cool at the subway station boys! Bring your sleeping mat, let's go!"

Today's mem was a reminder I made for myself about the tones for the word di4 tie3, meaning 'subway'. It works, because you really can transfer from line 4 to line 3, but you have to remember the order in which the numbers come.