I wasn’t talking about students but random kids on the street. Almost everyday “mommy look! Waiguoren!” type of thing. Im really not that sensitive to it but I get it when the news media gives different attitudes on coverage .
And of course its because I’m white. Almost everyone in Taiwan is Asian (keyword almost ). You see a white dude and make the assumption he’s a foreigner you are going to be correct 99% of the time it seems. And if they’re wrong and you really are from here just laugh it off as an anomaly. No big deal as long as people are kind to one another
Dont take offense to it.
Taiwan is not a mixed culture place like Canada, Australia, UK, or US.
Weiguoren is simply their word for non-chinese. You are not Chinese and you look foreign, so you are interesting. Kids mean no harm by it.
In any positive circumstance, a mixed-race half-Chinese with some remote connection to Taiwan will become 台灣之光, whereas in a negative context the media will refer to an ABC with parents from Taiwan as 美國人. This selective application of racial nationality is what bothers me. I am not against race-based nationality per se, but please be consistent rather than paint rotten behavior in foreign colors.
Is 外國人 offensive? No. But lets not pretend its polite. It means foriegner, specifically outsider. Whats so great about insistently being treated as an outsider? Not a lot. I prefer the word laowai, less formal, more direct and kinda funny. I can accept that but wai guo ren? No thanks.
I am not sure if Laowai is better than Waiguoren. You are being reduced to your immigration status in circumstances where said status is entirely irrelevant.
The litmus test is whether a local would simply be referred to by name, functional title, or honorific, i.e. Huang Xiaoming, Manager Huang, Mister Huang, or simply Mister. When the service staff in a restaurant radios “兩個老外，6號” to their coworker assigning tables, but uses 位, 先生, or 小姐 when dealing with locals, then you know what’s up. The same is even more true for professional situations.
Yeah but for fuck sakes this culture is bizarre even when it comes to names I can’t tell you how many times I casually ask someone what their name is and I get this awkward hesitant reply and some guy asking me to call him ‘Mr Wang’ or ‘Little Wang’ or ‘Wang Brother’ or all this idiotic nonsense…but hey culture and all that
Sure but given the two i much prefer laowai. Wai guo ren is like pretending to be polite about something which just isnt polite at all. At least lao wai gets straight to the point.
I don’t think so, because us is a country with mixed races. But is it illegal that using the word of foreigner, (added: when the person is a foreigner or strongly suspected/supposed to be a foreigner)?
