A Minority in the Midst of Billions

By Jason Harper

I’ve had “minority” friends for as long as I can remember. I cringe when writing that word. Minority. It’s such an inaccurate word, a worthless word, a meaningless word, a word with so much cold classification and prejudicial power.

  Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood, the families living nearby varied from address number to address number, house color to house color, and big-sized abode to small-sized bungalow. I classified those who lived in them based on whether they were kids or grown-ups, if they knew about Star Wars or not, whether they had a big, scary dog or a fat, fluffy cat, or if they were (in a pre-teen’s simplest terms) nice or not.  These were my categorizations and prejudices.  But I never considered any of them to be a “minority” (even though most were).

  This “minority” label began to bother and me more and more while growing up, and I became troubled by the stories they’d tell me about the endless discrimination that accompanied their “minority” classification.  I didn’t want to accept it.  Friends were friends! Skin was skin! Nice was nice.  Race was meaningless to me; it didn’t matter how they looked, it only mattered how they were.

  Throughout my life I’ve been lucky to have met many people and become friends with folks of different address numbers, various house colors, kids and grown-ups, people who had big, scary cats or fat, fluffy dogs. I gravitate toward folks who are nice, kind, gentle, smart, fun, funny, etc. and avoid the rest.  Most of these friends just happen to be “minorities,” according to modern American prejudiced classifications, and often treated poorly because of it.  All the things they’ve told me about the nasty looks, unequal treatment, and the outright discrimination they suffer on a daily basis appalled and enraged me, but I could never do anything about it or even fully understand it; I could only listen, fuming over something I could not comprehend and didn’t want to accept. I couldn’t grasp the gravity of their encounters because I’d never experienced anything like it for myself—no one had ever treated me in such a callous, ignorant, racist way.

  Until I came to China.

  I teach EFL Composition and Research Writing at an international university south of a city called Zhengzhou in the Henan Province.  Over my year and a half here, I have experienced discrimination time and time again. After being obscenely overcharged while dining at restaurants, getting deliberately ignored by taxi cabs, being aggressively pushed aside while waiting in line, getting denied rooms at hotels, or finding myself suffering sneers, snickers, and stares while walking in public with my Chinese girlfriend Sparrow, I’ve come to realize what it feels like to be a minority and to be discriminated against.

  I was very excited to move to China for many reasons, and one of them was that I’d be able to have a diet strictly of real Chinese food. Not like the cheap buffets or American-Chinese restaurant fare consisting of sloppily prepared, tasteless, and often misspelled things like “kung pow chicken”—but a diet of dishes prepared from recipes centuries old, local cuisines cooked in mom-and-pop shops, as well as exotic street food freshly fried and served from carts parked next to rusty, rickety rickshaws.

  Upon first arrival, I eagerly patronized the street vendors and non-tourist restaurants as often as possible. Most menus were in Chinese, and since I’d not yet learned how to recognize 宫保鸡丁, the characters for gōngbǎojīdīng (Kung Pao Chicken), I’d occasionally find a place that had a menu with English subtitles, mostly in bigger cities like Beijing. I started out just going alone, as I didn’t know many people here at first, and had a few rather interesting dining experiences eating things after solely relying on the menus’ translations, not always sure what the dishes were.  But the first time that I’d gone out to eat with some new Chinese “minority” (wink-wink) friends I’d invited to dine with me, they asked the nǚfúwùyuán for a Chinese-language menu. When reading over and comparing dinner items of interest, I noticed that the prices on my English-translated menu were twice as high, sometimes ten times higher, than the prices on the Chinese menus.


  When complaining about it, I was told that “This practice is common,” by Wei Wei, a student from my writing class. “Keep your vigilance; you are a foreigner.  You are a target.”

  As I became familiar with the fantastic food here, I also became familiar with the economy and the going rate for many things.  A 600ml bottle of Coca-Cola® is 2.5 RMB (about 36 cents1); a dinner including a medium-sized bowl of potato noodles with bits of beef and a variety of vegetables, two pieces of shāobing2, and a bottle of jasmine tea costs 3.5, .5, and 2.5 RMB respectively, or 6.5 RMB total, which amounts to just $0.95 for a big, filling, and delicious dinner out. A haircut at most places in my city costs 5 to 10 RMB ($0.73 - $1.46), which includes a wash, a cut, a wash again, and styling. Last winter I bought five Ralph Lauren oxford shirts (priced in the US around $100 each) for $40 total, and later flew roundtrip (business class) to Shanghai for spring break at a cost of just $80.

  But I had to learn these prices over time and object vehemently if there ever was a problem with a price. However, before I got a grip on the “system,” I was often overcharged for all of these things (and many others).  But why? Because I’m “a foreigner.”  I am a target.

  Targets are also avoided.  Empty taxis often pass by me, even during the day, even in big cities, and even if I wave money in the air to try to get their attention.  I sometimes shout or go out and stand in the middle of the road when I’m in a hurry. Every once in a while a taxi pulls over nearby only to allow a Chinese person to get in. One evening, after an education conference in Zhengzhou, two other American males and I tried to hail a cab. We were all wearing symposium attire: ties, trousers, new Ralph Lauren oxford shirts…but we still could not get a cab. One gentleman in our group, Peter, is nearly fluent in Chinese. After over an hour, a cabbie finally stopped to pick us up. This also happened in Shanghai; I’d stood for almost an hour waiting for a taxi, “Mr. Cab Driver,” a song by Lenny Kravitz,3 looping in my head.  When I finally got one, the guy who picked me up (he spoke English) explained that I had to wait so long to get a ride because I am a foreigner.

  Waiting in lines here is a nightmare, even for the populace.  This is well known.  But as a foreigner, I’m consistently nudged, wedged, moved around, ducked, dodged, flanked, and pushed or passed on by. I remember waiting in line at a subway stop in Beijing, and a woman older than my grandmother jostled me around to get on the train. It was like I’d been hockey-checked.  When push comes to shove, foreigners, or Wàiguórén (“Outside-Country People”), are often considered as annoyances.

  Hotel rooms are cheap relative to US economy (a 5-star, full-service hotel in Zhengzhou costs less than $90 per night, whereas a night in Wichita’s Motel 6 out on Webb Road costs $43.994, about half as much, and the Wichita Hyatt costs $145-$1805). But when a Chinese friend books a room, it costs dozens or even hundreds of RMB less.  What’s more, some hotels in China will not allow me to reserve a room, even if I offer my passport and Resident Expert Permit as identification. If they finally do agree to allow me to stay, they unabashedly charge me much, much more money and offer an apology for the “inconvenience of the higher cost” (but never changing it), then collect my money with a smile.

  Before leaving Wichita and the United States, WSU English Department’s own adorable and most excellent Professor Darren DeFrain told me he had spent some time in China a few years back and offered the usual (yet solid) advice about culture shock, language barriers, undrinkable water, unfamiliar foods, treacherous transportation, and even underground earthquakes (a warning that became a tragic reality on May 12, 2008)…all of these were things I already knew a little about and therefore could anticipate—anyone who has traveled abroad knows about such things and could expect many more.  He also told me he had spent some time in China a few years back, then mentioned that he often got stared at when he was here. Not just started at, but just plain ogled.  Dr. D. went on to say that I’d probably have my photo taken (voluntarily or not) by the locals countless times. I didn’t believe him, but after I’d finished my first month, I’d been photographed or video-recorded.

  This unwanted attention has also has affected the people around me. Whenever walking out in public with my friend Sparrow, we are the object of stares, glares, jibs, jabs, jibes, and sneers every time.  She silently suffers an array of hurtful, disapproving looks and sometimes outright diatribes that are lost on me by way of my poor spoken-language translation, but certainly clear to me nonetheless.  I can read their faces and eyes—as well as Sparrow’s—whenever she and I are out together.  It’s dreadful; it’s sad; it’s infuriating.

  Sparrow quietly endures this, never telling me what they are saying, never explaining why they say anything (even though I know), and never frankly showing or telling me how she feels about it all. She puts up with this wordlessly, but it becomes pressure slowly building and brewing, just as pressure increases and swells between the Earth’s tectonic plates, all unnoticeable to the naked eye, all happening quietly but dangerously under the surface.  On the surface, she feigns tolerance. 

  Yet that powerful pressure lies beneath, a dormant but imminent earthquake of immense magnitude, its tectonic plates grinding and their constant strain amassing, all of which could transform into a catastrophic upheaval that surely will fatally crush our relationship.  Our quake lies languidly underneath our earth—the public sidewalks—that we dare tread upon, a disaster looming closer and closer with each footstep every time we venture out among her fellow Chinese, the Middle Kingdom People, the Zhōngguórén.  To try to relieve some of this strain and to show I know about these worries and am aware of what I think she feels, I often ask her if she wants to talk about it (a very American thing to do), but she just purses her lips, steels her eyes, sighs, then forces a wan smile and tells me to ignore it, to forget about it, that it doesn’t matter, (a very Chinese thing to do).  But it does matter to me, I know it matters to Sparrow, and it’s very clear that it matters.

  I miss my “minority” friends, the folks who are nice, kind, gentle, smart, fun, and funny. I often think of the stories they’ve told me about the nasty looks, the unequal treatment, and the outright discrimination they’ve suffered on a daily basis, and it still enrages me. And although I feel I still don’t fully understand their plights back home in 美国6, I can now feel ready try to grasp the gravity of their encounters, because I’ve now experienced what being a minority is like for myself.

  I am a foreigner in China and will always be; of course I’m viewed as a minority in the midst of billions.  Minority.  Is it a worthless word, a meaningless word; a word of cold classification and prejudicial power? If I choose to continue living here, I must comprehend and accept the fact that I’m often going to be overcharged, rejected by taxis, shoved around in lines, refused a stay in hotel rooms, and sometimes the subject of scorn.  I am a minority.  What else should an Outside-Country Person expect?  If I stay in China, I would have to accept this minority classification as part of my life and hope that I could find, keep, and cherish some kind of support from a Zhōngguórén like Sparrow. 

  But recently, I found that I must face my fate alone for the time being.  After quietly enduring all the pressure she could tolerate, and after defending me, herself, and us for so long, Sparrow’s fortitude finally broke.  The unmentionable tension building between our two faults—of her being Chinese and me being Wàiguórén—became too much for her to take.  Sparrow has flown away, freeing herself from the prejudice that my minority status carries with me, and thus relieving all the pressure she’s been bearing so bravely.  I will miss her deeply; the aftershocks I feel every day in the wake of her absence have not yet stilled, and I cannot help but feel that the fault that lay beneath the rupture of our relationship is mine.