China is massive. It’s the most populous country in the world. And almost everyone is Chinese.
The diversity I’d come to know after three years of living in Manchester was long gone. Chongqing is a city in which the sight of a non-Chinese person out in the wild is an event. If not for me then certainly for the locals.
Chongqing people like to stare. It was an odd characteristic that greeted me not long after stepping off the plane. A mixture of curiosity and a very different understanding of politeness equalled a city where you could often be sure to have a pair of eyes drifting over you most of the time.
It started as a strange quirk, like a simulation of fame. Some people would ask for photos, others would take them without asking. Random people would strike up a conversation with the little English they knew. Some people would insist on adding you as a friend on WeChat. Once I even caught someone having a glance over when I was at the urinal. People would compliment my Chinese, even if I’d only said “thank you”.
There were sometimes perks. Chinese-owed bars like foreign customers as they tend to drink a lot more than locals. Owners would sometimes throw in a free drink or let your party hang around after closing. Sometimes Chinese girls would show a perfunctory interest and would start a conversation. Foreigners are always in high demand for work and the opportunities to make extra money would sometimes present themselves.
The initial few months in China were a whirlwind where I was surprised every day. Living a second life in a country where you were sometimes treated by strangers as though they knew you could be exciting, even if I felt like a complete imposter. Then the months wore on and the drawbacks began to display themselves.
Having strangers constantly staring at you begins to grate. It stops being a quirk that you laugh about with your other foreign friends and soon becomes a part of daily life. Trips to the shop or a simple walk would be accompanied by an intensity as they couldn’t be completed without at least one “you ain’t from around here are ya” look from a stranger. I had days when I couldn’t take it and began challenging people on the subway or in the street.
Things became even worse when I was in the company of my girlfriend. The staring is a mystery, it’s not clear why people in Chongqing do it. Noticing eyes flickering between me and my girlfriend on the subway, bus or even on the street felt like a violation and an attack.
It became a difficult situation to handle. The most consistent offenders were middle aged or older men. Most seemed to lack any self-awareness that what they were doing was wrong, and when called out they rarely had any follow up words. They would look away silently, or outright deny that they had been looking. I was a battle to figure out how to handle it.
Sure, I could snap at every person whose eyes rested on me for an extended period of time, and I sometimes tried. But it was pointless. An exhausting game of whack-a-mole without an end. It made me paranoid and would leave me anxiously twitching at every head in case there was someone staring. Ugly thoughts would sometimes swim round my head. It wasn’t healthy.
I learned to accept it. There was no alternative. This was a city that had bred a generation that felt, thought and behaved a particular way and resisting that reality was doing me no good. I knew little of the background of the eyes that met my own. I could not know if they had negative thoughts about me or not, most likely they didn’t. I had to accept where I was and recognise that it was a small compromise for the life that I was enjoying. People weren’t bad, or aggressive or outright insulting, they were just curious people whose social etiquette was dramatically different.
It would be tempting to call this racism. It has the smell of it. But I can’t really accept that. I lived a privileged life in Chongqing. For long periods I was paid significantly more than my Chinese colleagues for doing the same job. Being a white male meant that I didn’t have to suffer any of the much opaquer discrimination that black foreigners are sometimes subject to. Even some job advertisements explicitly state that black people cannot apply. I would have been able to get jobs that a black person with superior teaching experience and qualifications wouldn’t be able to get just because of my face. And if I constantly had older men gawping at me, I’m sure it was significantly more intrusive for foreign females.
Staring is bad in Chongqing, and though it is something of a phenomenon in China, it was almost non-existent in many other cities I visited. Even in smaller places. The times when I found myself in a more international city like Beijing or Shanghai were welcome moments where I could once again enjoy fading into the background unnoticed and be reminded that this was reality.
Attention can be fun in small doses. Being foreign seems to increase your perceived attractiveness by at least 2 points. Suddenly a curious number of people were telling me I was handsome. If that didn’t signal that something was amiss then being compared to Bruno Mars, Charlie Puth or Logic definitely was. People are friendly in Chongqing and they are sometimes interested in you just because you’re different. And though it’s a compelling illusion that you are actually special and worthy of the attention, of course you are not and it does well to frequently remind yourself of that fact.
Quickly, it became obvious that the unwarranted attention was exactly that. It was fun at times but wholly meaningless, though, inevitably, the odd person does come along, lapping the attention up and treating the city and its residents like there was a throne waiting for them. God forbid their awful ordinariness that they were plagued by in their home country were to be exposed over here. Everything would fall apart.
There are a couple of distressing factors that crop up as a foreigner in a country where difference is less accepted, but to pretend that I did not benefit because of my race and gender would be dishonest. For me, being a foreigner had some disadvantages, but I lived an enjoyable, happy life here and was more than happy to shoulder the tougher times.
I even dislike the word ‘foreigner’. I am just a person living here who happens to not be Chinese. Most Chinese people I have met are absurdly welcoming and warm, but even if I were to live here for 30 years and truly call this country home, I would always be a foreigner. That’s just the way it is.
