My girlfriend took me to a club in her hometown in Urumqi, Xinjiang.
Multiple times random people came over to shake my hand and congratulating me for - basically - being a foreigner. 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".
I had a very similar experience - I'm also quite fair due to Albinism which I think raised far more attention than the average white person over there! I had many people wanting to take their photograph with me, constant staring and quite a few girls approaching me on the street/subways/shops.
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!)
As a foreigner in Nanjing, I always get similar reactions from people. Especially night clubs are very friendly, free drinks, priority for vip and etc.
But if you take a 2 hour train ride to Shijiazhuang, you'll get stares all day. :)
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.
Not a small city by US/EU reckoning. There are 30+ cities in China with populations more than 2.7M in the urban area. That is an order of magnitude more than the US. The children in China grow up with a concept of scale that overshadows what we intuitively grasp in the US and EU (and most of the rest of the world, for that matter).
Comparing the "urban area" numbers is a bit misleading because the structure of cities is so different in different places (even in the US, where for example Chicago officially annexed various suburbs over time while Boston did not).
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.
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).
Good points, thanks for the feedback. Apart from raw population number comparisons here, I personally find the "urban" metric more interesting because that represents the population groupings already in densely-configured spaces. With density comes greater efficiencies across a broad spectrum of measures (energy, face-to-face interactions, waste management, etc.) and those efficiencies, prudently managed, hold out the future promise of unlocking compounding economic advantages. There are of course downsides to dense populations (pollution management, real estate speculation, etc.), as well.
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.
Yeah, I get zero stares in Shanghai or Hangzhou, but in nearby Shaoxing foreigners are few and far between enough that I get plenty of looks. People who haven't spent time in a "tier 1" city generally have not seen foreigners in the flesh.
During May Day or other Chinese holidays when out of town folk come into the city, you can get stares even in Shanghai. Last time I took my kids (mixed Chinese) to the World Expo, not only was almost everyone in the line staring, but many many people from the country side continually came up and wanted to take photos with them.
This reminds me of my time to the "Floating Markets" near Bangkok. Pure tourist trap. On one of the "islands", there's a group of Japanese (I think) tourists looking disinterested at various trinkets.
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.
VICE did a segment on it on their HBO show recently. The people in the segment definitely could, one got 2 offers a day. But noone knows how long it'll last.
Its poorly documented but "everyone knows" that around the peak of the previous housing bubble, female models were hired to sunbathe at neighboring condo units during open houses. Hiring attractive people to make an area/company/whatever more attractive to increase sales commissions seems to correlate with bubble era operations. That would imply a relatively short lifetime for the business model.
That's really clever. The same concept could probably be used for cars. You could probably stretch it a little further. If you're selling really expensive sports cars you could hire models to pause, stare and smile at the client during test drives around the neighbourhood.
Manufacturing proof that "pretty women like men who own this" sounds like a winner, honestly.
To an extent. It is mainly a source of income for those time rich but money poor.
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.
Something similar used to be possible by working for chinese companies without any skills, just to be shown around ("company must be successful internationally if it has foreigners on the team"), but supposedly this was a temporary thing (going out of fashion when I heard about it in 2008).
An associate of mine has been doing this for the past 10 years and he makes a pretty good living doing it. He's done everything from pretending to be a manager of a restaurant to pretending to be a business partner of a desktop support company looking to close more deals. Most of the time he doesn't even say anything. The business owners will put him in an office, place a whole bunch of fake degrees from American schools on the wall and they sign because there is a silver haired white man who fits the stereotypical Western CEO mold.
It's not anything new, it's just that more people have caught on and jumped into the game.
I did this once for fun (I live in China). Total compensation was around 500-1000$ for one day if I recall correctly. I didn't have to speak to anyone and just sat at a table eating food. It was a fun experience but I wouldn't do it professionally.
“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.”
Dude, rent-a-foreigner is not the preferred nomenclature. Models that serve, please.
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.
It's funny because it's inverted though in that the Chinese doing it think whites are better than Chinese, for business promotion at any rate. I'm not sure treating 'the other' well is the same type of problem as treating them crappily.
I disagree -- hiring a minority employee almost always means hiring a person who is qualified to do a job and who will work hard for a salary (sounds like hiring a non-minority).
This is hiring a model temporarily. Anywhere in the world, hiring a model is explicitly hiring more for appearance and less for skills.
The most odd and/or concerning thing here is that the buyers are naive enough to be fooled by a few white people standing around in otherwise empty buildings. I'm sure those random expats they rented aren't exactly top actors either.
maybe it's an expression of 'face' or a signal that the business owners know what they're doing because they had the wherewithal to hire foreigners to stand around?
This happens all over the world: not just China. Take Abercrombie & Fitch for example. The only difference is that, when only "white people" won't do it, then go for fit models, sub-celebrities, etc.
It's not exactly the same thing but there is a similar kind of attitude in Japan, where foreigners are kind of used to promote products or services - giving it a "cool" factor that a Japanese person would not have (presumably, because I find that silly in the first place).
"And if you truly can't squeeze out the funds, but still want to project an international atmosphere, I suggest using black people. They have a very open personality yet are quite cheap."
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:
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.
>why does this seem to happen universally in the world?
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.
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 think the fact that they are paid less, in the context of the video, implies there is less demand for them (probably much less as I assume they are also in shorter supply. Could be wrong about that though). If there is less demand, and their value in this context is their appearance, that means their appearance is seen to be less valuable in impressing customers. Hence, the conclusion that black people are seen as less good looking than white people.
> the conclusion that black people are seen as less good looking than white people.
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.
I'm sorry to be so dismissive, but I've heard Mexican people say the same bullshit, that it's about social class, not about race (as if that made it any better).
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.
The visa rules are pretty strict in China about having skills & qualifications. I only have anecdotal evidence, but the Africans in China that I have met are ambitious and educated. Either they're qualified professionals (okay, that may just mean a bachelor's & ability to speak English, which is as much as you can say about many Americans here) or they are students here to study.
That is not the point, its about the perception people see on TV and newspapers. Most Indians/Chinese dont interact directly with whites or blacks but they see all the white people from US/Europe all rich and successful while reports from Africa which is overwhelmingly black, show poverty and disease.
This creates a perception that whites are rich and successful while blacks not so much.
It's the line before what he quoted which says
"Now it is true that the price of white people is more expensive... but it makes the place feel classier."
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've always assumed this was because America/Europe's culture has influenced everyone else's. Pretty much everyone watches and is heavy influenced by american TV. We know what ideas and images American media portray(think standard blonde barbie doll image). Then speeches like this have to happen - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPCkfARH2eE ...and articles like this must be written -
http://thehairpin.com/2014/09/white-beauty-myth
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. Even ancient Chinese had a strong preference for light skin tone. My understanding is that darker skin usually means a person is more exposed to sunlight, presumably from farming work, which is an indicator of lower social status.
That should be specific to a dark brown Chinese person; not to an African American. Since we know the average Chinese person does not have dark brown skin, seeing such a person would make you wonder why that is. e.g., we know dirt/mud is brown and generally shouldn't pick up a hand-full off the ground and eat it... but people still like the image of chocolate deserts. The color red represents danger is an almost universal way(assuming it's because seeing blood is usually a bad sign for all humans and animals)... but people don't look at a red rose that way.
>>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.
> That should be specific to a dark brown Chinese person; not to an African American.
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.)
That's part of the problem, but it goes deeper, too:
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.
"Beauty" has always been entirely socially constructed. There is no such thing as beauty, even when Beyonce "creates it". It is an invention of men as part of the larger social construcion of gender -- hence "what beauty is for black women" rather than black people in generally -- that is monetized more by make-up and fashion companies than by Hollywood. It's a myth.
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.
The abstract seems to deliberately construct a misrepresentation and uses it as motivation for the paper: "Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life." The authors go on to imply that those maxims are meant to assert that something "is the case" when they are obviously asserting a "should be the case". Kind of silly, no? Unless there really are maxims that assert "looks are not important in life at the current moment in time, you will never be judged by your attractiveness today" -- but I've never heard any of these.
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...
This phenomenon is not limited to Asia, Africa or South America. In Europe, especially in southern countries, girls with blonde hair and blue eyes are admired explicitly. In US/Canada as well, how many women color their hair blond/red?
> Why does apparently every culture think whites are pretty and blacks are ugly?
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.
It's definitely colonialism and the effect of modern western media.
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!
My sister-in-law from the Philippines was amazed that our drug stores have an aisle dedicated to darkening your skin (Tanning). Back home, that aisle is full of skin-whitening products.
A friend got married in Shanghai in 2008, a month or two before the Beijing Olympics. I went to Beijing for 10 days after the wedding, and there were lots of tourists from the Chinese countryside in Beijing. Lots of people stopped me and wanted photos of themselves shaking my hand, asking my Chinese-American friends to step out of the frame. Once or twice I thought maybe I had been mistaken for an Olympic Athlete.
At Japanese weddings there is sometimes a white man dressed as a priest. I guess that Asian restaurants in the West often have a similar 'Hire-an-Asian' policy to make the food seem more authentic.
Asian restaurants usually have all Asians running them, although I'm from the Northeast US where we have lots of Asians, maybe it's different elsewhere? I think maybe the UK has a dearth of East Asians. Actually when they say "Asian" they typically mean Indian and Pakistani.
You're right that generally "Asian" would be used more for countries like India/Pakistan than China/Japan/etc. but, at least in the south of England, there's no dearth. Oriental restaurants and takeaways that I've seen have nearly all been run by east Asians (I couldn't 100% say I always know from which country, but imagine largely inline with the cuisine they're serving) - in Oxford, London, Cambridge, Peterborough, Northampton.. and that's been my same experience pretty much anywhere else I've been in the UK. But could well be different up north for example.
In my city, there are several "Japanese Steakhouses" and pretty much all of them have a staff made up of mostly asian employees.
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."
Ive noticed almost all sushi places, ramen places, teppenyaki places, etc in San Jose area are primarily owned by Korean businessmen and women (used to work at a few of them back in the day and can confirm at least part of that)
I actually just finished the book last week, after sitting on it for a year. I honestly have no idea how I feel about it, but something about his writing style kind of makes it stick with me, even though I think I disliked most of it.
In my mind at least, this is both quite odd and yet fascinating at the same time.
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.
It's not sad. People can like whatever they like or dislike whatever they dislike. It's easier to understand if you neither see her nor him as Chinese, nor foreigners as foreigners, just see them as people with different attraction characteristics. Thinking that her preference is sad is the other side of the bias coin.
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.
No, it is not just a matter of flavours. It's a deeply ingrained and institutionalised bias that happens all around the world. You see it in Mexico, in India, in France, in China, in Nigeria: white is pretty. Sweden and Norway are widely regarded as the ultimate in beauty.
I wish I knew why this happened and how to fix it. It's a giant problem that should not exist.
On the great social level it could result is some problems -the same as if everyone decided they wanted to become doctors. Individually there is nothing wrong with such preferences. In China and Japan lighter color meant not being outdoors, meant not working the fields meant someone of means. That's where it comes from and existed way before any modern contact with Europeans.
This seems one sided. Many white guys love a darker tone. What about Brazil turning out supermodels? I couldn't list or count any, but every time I hear something about models there seems to be a Brazil reference.
Really? I can't think of a single one from Brazil besides Giselle Bundchen. And she definitely has some German in her. I think the vast majority of super models are European, especially Eastern European - Czech, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, etc.
Then why do so many people go to tanning salons? It's a signal you had time for leisure, you could spend time at the beach, you didn't have to work. So its not tanness itself people are attracted to but what it signals. In Asia, its the opposite, being pale, means you don't have to do manual labor, work the fields, so people look to seem paler so as to appear of higher classes.
No it's actually harder to understand if you take race out of it since it's exactly the only reason why she won't date that other intern. This argument is also missing the data point on whether she dates other Asian men with features similar to Chinese men so you believing it's just "attraction characteristics" is simplifying the argument as though race is not some incredible influence for our attraction of others. And where do you think her perception of her own race as "being ugly" comes from?
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.
People in other continents have always had preferences of one type or another, whether it was strength, height, color, etc. Who cares why people have preferences. While she, the person in the comments, does not date chinese (or specifically thinks local Han are ugly), there are also people who will only date people of their own race. There are also people who only date Africans, or any other particular ethnicity for any variety of reasons. It's not a problem. You see a problem where there is none.
I hope you realize you're not far from advocating people should only date within their ethnicity and intermixing is bad.
How could you possibly infer that I advocate people should only date within their own race? She didn't even say she only dated white people, she said she didn't date Chinese because she is totally put off by them.
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.
Ok, so I think we basically agree in principle. People can like or dislike people for any reason, when it comes to personal attraction. The reasons can be superficial, or otherwise, but in the end it doesn't matter and it's really no one's business --with perhaps the exception of parents while their progeny are underage, but even then it's questionable. So you think her abhorrence is stupid, fine, we agree she has the right to think her unchoice are ugly and undesirable. I'm sure there are just as many Han women who think whites, blacks, browns, etc., are disgusting, for whatever reason, who cares. They can observe any preference they want.
"People can like whatever they like or dislike whatever they dislike." -- Imagine if the above woman was a white guy publicising his thoughts on another group being ugly. People cannot like/dislike whatever they like/dislike, they are only allowed to dislike their own. This touches on black usage of the so-called n-word, and the white guilt - privilege and self-loathing. People do like/... whatever they like/... , but god help them if they say so - political correctness. You can get away with saying you dislike something like a sharia based culture, but anything more subtle than that and you're in trouble.
It really doesn't matter who is saying it, whether majority or minority within a jurisdiction, obviously she's majority in her jurisdiction, still does not matter. Doesn't matter if jew or gentile thinks a particular ethnicity is physically ugly or ugly in manners, etc. Just don't act prejudicial in other spheres, especially commerce. When it comes to the heart though, anything goes. You can like or dislike any one or any group for any reason and you should not be castigated for it.
Only it's not a surprise that this 'flavor' in personal attraction correlates to a group of people who are the most powerful and dominant and wealthy in the world: white males.
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.
> 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."
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.
Perhaps by "ugly" she meant that she didn't like the idea of all the baggage that came with same-culture relationships.
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?
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[ 41.6 ms ] story [ 3047 ms ] threadI hope she told him... and his reaction?
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!)
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. :)
"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 ! :)
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.
Manufacturing proof that "pretty women like men who own this" sounds like a winner, honestly.
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 :-)
It's not anything new, it's just that more people have caught on and jumped into the game.
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...
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.”
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOzUHnPJvU
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-CKxRWiMoY
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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."
I'll probably re-read the whole thing later.
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.
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.
On another note: this looks fun. Where can I sign up?