Being a Laowai in China

By Katy

Last weekend Tom, Hector and I went back to Shanghai to go to Disney, partly to return some shirts that were too big but also just because we could. We got to the hotel pretty late after some difficulty with finding it. Even though the hotel was on booking.com they had written the Pinyin for the hotel incorrectly and so it took some investigating to even find it all. Unusually for China, Google maps saved the day. However, when we got there we were told we could not stay there. This was at about midnight. Hector was asleep. And at first we got pretty angry for being treated differently to Chinese nationals.

However, on reflection we came to the conclusion that it was more incompetence than racism. We didn’t have our passports at the time as we are currently renewing our Visas. So even though we had all the necessary paperwork this seemed to confuse the staff. All they really want to see is the stamp in your passport saying when you got to China. So because they couldn’t see this they panicked. For some reason many Chinese people seem unaware of the travel ban for the vast majority of foreigners, perhaps as it doesn’t affect them. Thankfully we have a great HR department and they were able to smooth things over. They wanted a copy of our Visa page which had been right in front of them the whole time but never mind.

The whole thing inevitably got me thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement. There haven’t been any protests here but it has certainly made the news. Of how it must feel to encounter racism all the time. It is easy to think that America is the only country that has the problem and I found myself thinking that Britain does not have that kind of problem. But of course that just shows my white privilege – that I could be so unaware of racism in my own community. I have spent the past week or so unfollowing people with views that I just cannot support. Saying that ‘All lives matter’ and therefore completely ignoring the problem. To use just one example I’ve seen, we don’t say ‘Save the trees’ we say ‘Save the rainforest’. Comparing the murders of white people by criminals to the murder of black people by those that should have been protecting them. Saying that the protesters are selfish for protesting their human rights when the life of a nurse (white in the picture) did not matter. Again, it crossed my mind at first that the protests were badly timed. But on reflection I think they are right and necessary when this has been allowed to go on for so long.

I remember watching a Fresh Prince episode about Carlton being pulled over by the cops and crying. That it can be as relevant today as when it was made just shows how much change is needed.

One way we are directly affected by the ban on foreigners is our school not being able to recruit more staff except for from within the country. With the recent outbreak in Beijing there is even more reluctance to allow foreigners in. I say outbreak – currently there are about 200 cases in Beijing and it has not spread beyond Beijing except for single cases here and there. We won’t know until 2 weeks later if it really hasn’t spread but it really does contrast other countries who are reopening with much higher numbers than this.

Everyone in our office is coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know when we will see our families again. We are all separated from parents, children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters. None of us thought that we might not see these people for more than a year. The theme music of our office has become ‘Welcome to the Hotel California’. Although we technically can leave, we could not come back while the borders are shut and so we all feel trapped. It is incredibly hard to not know when we will see each other again. So to our family we love you and we miss you and cannot wait to see you again.