When we mentioned racial discrimination, we will automatically think of discriminable behaviors cross races. For example, the Asians are difficult to involve in the American culture with the imprinted Asian look and a totally different cultural background mentioned in the Leavers. However, racial discrimination do exists even among a same racial group. Sometimes that people who look down upon Chinese are still the Chinese.
Shanghai, one of the most developed cities in China, is a place where millions of people dreamed of living. I went there with my friends this summer for traveling. We planned to have dinner at a high-end restaurant. This is not a very often occasion, so we dressed up and expected to have a very decent dinner. The restaurant we picked was so popular that we need to wait. This was a very common phenomenon for the huge population of China. However, what made me feel speechless was that I was told by my friend to speak English with them in order to get in quickly. What’s more, we could enjoy a better service if we communicate in English. This annoyed me a lot. This is Shanghai, the inner land of China. Chinese is our native language, why speaking in English could be treated in a superior way?
Examples for issues like that are more than I expected. In China, we give superior rights to foreigners. For example, from the interviews, we could know that foreigners don’t need to pay for drinks in some bars. More foreigners, themselves will be an attraction to many Chinese. This is a rooted problem that has been existed for a long time. From the time our lands are colonized and controlled by western people, the injustice started to burgeon.
There is nothing wrong that we should always walk out and learn the things we don’t know from other cultures, but we shouldn’t worship things foreign and fawn on foreign countries. Of course, it’s not just a problem limited to Chinese, Korean, Japanese, it’s the same. What I mean is that as I’m Chinese, I have seen the growth of China from an economical side, but at the same time I have also seen the discrimination that we have against ourselves. This is not we expect to be strength. As all human beings, we are all created equal. There is no reason to encourage a stratified society.
Here is a video that may help explain: https://www.bilibili.com/video/av17289650/
Reference:
- Photo link– https://www.sohu.com/a/230100217_100085085
- Video link–https://www.bilibili.com/video/av17289650/
I found this post very interesting. I was engrossed to hear that Chinese people would prioritize foreigners over their own people. This is not something that I would have thought would take place, but the only reason I thought that this might happen as I was reading, was because the Chinese people might be trying to make a good impression on the visitors, so the visitors will be able to go back to their homes talking about how great China was. So essentially, they would be promoting the Chinese culture in other parts of the world. However, I do not think that it is necessarily fair that their own Chinese people would be treated any different. If anything, I think that consistency would be key because visitors would be getting a true Chinese experience, and feel just as comfortable as the Chinese people living there. I found it strange that new people would get things for free, as opposed to local people who have probably given the restaurant much more business before. Overall, I found this post something very enjoyable, and I learned about a topic I was completely unaware of before.
I agree with you. Chinese was colonized by European countries in 20 century and the superior status of foreigner might be a leaving issue from that time. Foreigners especially white would often draw positive attention from Chinese and some companies would hire white as model to call attention. That’s a problem that need to solve by building up the subjectivity of Chinese people.