Forget it, you're still a laowai

Corbett | January 1, 2010 1:46 PM

I noticed the other day that I was not thinking like a laowai. In Shanghai I have a lot of laowai friends, so we interact, think, joke in laowai ways, even though we have Chinese wives and Chinese friends and speak Chinese. But here in Taipei, my friends are pretty much all Taiwanese, so we do things and interact in non laowai ways.

This realization occurred to me while chatting with an old friend when a laowai he knew walks in and the conversation switches over to English. The guy, a Brit, had some important things to say about the state of international airport security - which apparently really bothered him - and I just shut off while he was elaborating, thinking to myself, "Who the hell is this nutty laowai?" Then I realized that this was a very non laowai way to think, since I had been on the receiving end of this scrutiny for so many years.

The next day I tried to explain this odd non laowai feeling to a group of Chinese friends who of course didn't get it since they by default are not laowai, hence proving the fact that I was indeed a laowai.

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (0)

---

Add a comment

---

---

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.