Hands up: Are Americans naive or not?

“I don’t know why you should think I have a Chinese girlfriend,” seethed Malcolm, a young American teacher speaking to me in an office we once shared together in Shanghai. “She is a Canadian.” His beard bristled around his clenched teeth. “I think you should have just let that information come out naturally in conversation.” I said nothing and returned to writing on my computer. The silence in the room was rather stiff and would have required a chainsaw to cut.

In Shanghai many male Westerners have Chinese girlfriends or wives. That college that I was temping at during the summer vacation had loads of Westerners, oh at least twenty. Incidentally I was the only South African; we are still a rare species in Shanghai. And I am used to being either the only “foreigner” teaching at a school, or only one of three or four. Many of the blokes had either Chinese girlfriends or Chinese wives. A few of the men in Shanghai I know have gotten over the first wife and were on the next Oriental try-out. So it was almost natural of me to assume or think that perhaps his girlfriend was one of those gorgeous hei toufa de zidian (black-haired dictionary: a great, free way to learn the lingo is to have a Chinese partner; I don’t). The other blokes in the office were an Aussie and an Englishman. The Aussie had a Chinese girlfriend and the Briton, a man in his late fifties, had a Shanghaiese wife to whom he had been married for some fifteen years. The Aussie, the Brit and this Saffer got on perfectly well.

I regularly get asked if my wife is Chinese; it is a natural question here in Shanghai. The funny thing about that is the use of idiom. As a rule, in my experience, if I tell an American about my “partner” he will tend to assume I am gay as that is his understanding of the word partner. Then, when he hears that my partner is from Zimbabwe? Well, later, when I hear that it sounds like he had this picture of me going home every day to be seduced by a large black hunk, I just had to burst out laughing. Why on earth get offended?

Inevitably, I am inclined to think Malcolm’s negative reaction was racist; he was offended by me thinking he had a Chinese girlfriend … in a city where that is often the norm.

Two or three days later after that incident I breathed a sigh of relief as the hour-long lesson I had just finished had been very tedious; the material I was compelled to use was simply too difficult for the students. They were on a summer course because they were hoping to gain entry into the college, which is run from the UK, and had failed miserably on their entrance exams. They were faring no better now and many really should not even be attempting to do the course. I said to Malcolm, the only teacher around as I got back to the office: “Man that was a tough class. Unbelievably mind-numbing.” We teachers often let off steam with our colleagues or bounce problems off them.

“Well, Rod,” commenced Malcolm with the solemnity of a church minister as he walks up to the pulpit. “What about being grateful for work? Think of the work some people have to do, all the guys who just guard gates in Shanghai, the street cleaners … ”

I let him continue his sermon until he ran out of words, then just neutralised the tense atmosphere by replying, “Yes, yes, and the worst is being unemployed. Been there, done that, couldn’t afford the T-shirt. And I stood guard duty loads of times when I was doing my two year compulsory stint in the army.” (I didn’t bother telling him I fairly regularly write out gratitude lists as discussed in my recent blog, “What can we learn from depression?”)

Boy, was I glad we only shared an office for two weeks before I went back to my normal job in term time. I kept on hearing from British and Aussie mates in pubs (the best and virtually the only place to meet up with fellow Westerners and relax in the Jacuzzi of being able to speak your own language at a normal speed) that Americans are naive. Especially British people. I refused to accept it. But I keep on getting examples.

Joe is an American friend of mine, in his mid-fifties. He got thoroughly screwed here by a work agency for which I was also working at the time, Red Stocking. To my horror I discovered from him that his tourist visa had expired nearly two months ago and he was not sure what to do. “Didn’t you know that you can’t be in any country once your visa has expired?” I exclaimed, thinking my question was utterly unnecessary.

“I didn’t know,” he lamented. “I have never been out of the US before.”

I honestly did not know how to reply to that one. I regard the knowledge about visas being a requirement for nearly any country (unless you have an EU passport or the like) as a bit of common knowledge so well-known that it is common sense. The depth and the texture of the pooh you are in just varies from country to country except maybe South Africa.

“Why didn’t Tina sort out a work visa for you?” I asked Joe. She was the head of Red Stocking.

“She kept on saying she would.”

Then I sighed. I wished Joe, a very kind, gentle chap, had told me before that he was trying to get a work visa via Red Stocking as the agency was notorious for making that promise and doing nothing about getting a visa. Joe had been illegally working in China (without his knowledge) on a tourist visa and now was completely illegal in the country. He had a Chinese wife; he was lucky he was not deported. The usual law of countries is that once you are deported you cannot come back. Joe would never have seen his wife again unless he got her into the US, which she did not want to do. Joe had to pay a fine of about four thousand RMB, which is slightly more in rands and obviously that punishment is lenient compared to deportation.

I could tell several more stories about Americans and their insular thinking in Shanghai. But before the rotten tomatoes start getting pelted at me, let me get to a particular point. Many people love to generalise or stereotype. It seems we like to put nationalities and races in neat, safe boxes so we don’t have to think of them any differently. This does not allow for personal growth and interpersonal growth. Joe is my friend and it was a pleasure to attend his wedding dinner and be part of a small circle of friends and family.

Of course I catch myself generalising and stereotyping too. If a Chinese pushes in front of me in a queue — and they often do; anyone who has lived in China for a while can vouch for that — I think, “typical Chinese”, but then remind myself of all the Chinese friends I have made and some are among the most amazing people I have met.

It seems many people are conditioned for skin or “surface signs”, people’s facticity, usually skin colour or affiliation with a religion, to either like or dislike a group or a race, thus cementing our otherness rather than our togetherness.

So right now Americans are a challenge for me. Like China, the US is a mammoth country and people stuck somewhere in a huge country inevitably become insulated. They do not have to think in terms of outside cultures even though the world is globalising more and more. As we all know, both China and the US have insulated themselves in different ways from the rest of the world at different times in history. It is just a given that if I walk down a street in smaller cities outside Shanghai I will be stared at, laughed at, get that eerie “helloo” from groups of trishaw cabbies resting in the noon which comes across as mockery while they grin and stare.

In any store in Shanghai, if I ask for something in my intermediate level Chinese, the assistant, if she needs to check with a manager, will refer to me or any non-Chinese in a sentence like, “the foreigner wants to … ” never “the gentleman or the customer wants to, or the lady would like to know … ” I smile but it still bugs me. Yeah, it offends me and I try laugh it off. But why don’t I get offended when an American thinks I have a gay black boyfriend? My immediate, perhaps simplistic response is that it is so funny. But boy was our pal Malcolm offended. More about offence in another blog.