MCLC: notorious expats

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: notorious expats
***********************************************************

Source: Business Insider (8/2/13):
http://www.businessinsider.com/unsavory-elements-by-tom-carter-2013-8

Here's What Those Notorious Expats Are Really Doing In China
By Adam Taylor 

When those of us in the Western world look at China, we often do so
through the prism of the expatriate, usually a young(ish) Westerner living
in one of the country's major metropolitan areas.However, these expats are
not 

always the most reliable narrators. Even websites that cater to expats are
full of stories of foolish, usually drunken, "laowai" humiliating
themselves in one manner or another.

Given how this community is a window into China — and perhaps also China's
window into into the West — they probably deserve study, and a new book
out this week in the U.S. attempts to do that.

Tom Carter, both an expat and "laowai" in China since 2006, chronicles the
expat experience as editor of "Unsavory Elements" (a Chinese nickname for
foreigners, perhaps one step above "foreign devils"). Featuring 28 essays
from foreigners, the book is meant to show some kind of unifying
experience amongst a relatively disparate community.

While most of the essays are by relatively established writers (the New
Yorker's Peter Hessler is one notable example), they offer a good glimpse
of the variety of the expat experience in China. Perhaps the seediest
story is Carter's own story, a snapshot of a his trip to a brothel in an
unnamed Chinese city (a story that was "so insensitive," Time Out Shanghai
felt forced to ask Carter about
<http://www.timeoutshanghai.com/features/Books__Film-Book_reviews/11883/Uns
avory-Elements.html>" his motives for writing it") but others offer more
family friendly fare (for example, Alan Paul’s road trip through remote
Sichuan province with his young family).

"Unsavory Elements" comes out in the United States this week and you can
buy it on Amazon. Business Insider spoke with Carter in an effort to
understand what he really things about the experience of foreigners in
China.

Business Insider: What made you want to edit this book? Your previous book
was photography-based, why the shift?

Tom Carter: During my 2-year, 35,000-mile journey across China back in
 ’06-’08, my backpack was constantly filled with books – more books than
anything else, which made my pack quite unwieldy – including the memoirs
of many of the authors who would later contribute to Unsavory. The
snapshots that I took during my travels ultimately resulted in the
creation of my own book, CHINA: Portrait of a People, which was well
received and inspired me to pursue photojournalism professionally.

But, as it happened, in the following years the photojournalism industry
basically collapsed (due in part to the decline of print media and the
advent of digital devices). While I was sitting around waiting for
interviews and job offers that never came, I started working on other
literary projects, such as this anthology, for fun. I conceived Unsavory
Elements as a tribute to all those expat authors in China that had
inspired me during my travels with their tales and prose. I reached out to
them to commission all-new stories – I did not know any of them personally
but everyone was accessible and receptive – and found I had a knack for
editing. It was an entirely organic, grassroots project that perfectly
exemplifies the unpredictable, fluid spirit of expatriate life in China,
where anyone can reinvent themselves, and where even if one door of
opportunity closes on you, another will usually open.

BI: Is there something unique about the expat community in China as
opposed to say, expats in Japan or France?

TC: I can’t speak on France – my only knowledge of the expatriate scene
there comes from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer – but I did used to live
in Tokyo. Gaijin and laowai share many quandaries, such as our host
countries’ deep-rooted mistrust and openly xenophobic attitudes towards
outsiders (“No Foreigners Allowed” signs are just as common in Shinjuku as
they are in Shenyang).

And yet, my impression was that Japan’s expat community has an air of
privilege and conceit to it; gaijin appreciate Japan for its opulent
comforts, its meticulous perfections, its soft-spoken sensibilities, and
seem to abhor the uncertainties and disquieting disorder of a developing
nation. They really are quite precious, those gaijin.

China’s expat scene [...] is like a great big rowdy saloon from America’s
Wild West days with dusty explorers, try-your-luck prospectors and even
the occasional outlaw laowai riding in from the hazy horizon to find their
fortunes in this final frontier … or simply to get in adventures that no
developed country like Japan could ever offer.

BI: Why do you think so many people move to China?

TC: China truly has become the new land of opportunity, where westerners
of all walks, defeated by this ongoing global recession, have replaced the
Chinese as the world’s economic refugees; a “floating population” of
blonde-haired, blue-eyed migrant laborers blown in by fate and free-trade
treaties onto the red shores of China, destitute and dragging plaid
peasant bags bursting with emotional and financial baggage.

I’m being lyrically sensationalistic here, but beneath my playful prose is
the harsh truth: America is seeing its end of days. China is our largest
foreign creditor – the Communist Party basically owns us – we’ve exported
most of our manufacturing base (that iPad you are reading this article on
was assembled by an adolescent from Anhui), and our “land of the free”
ethos has regressed to a totalitarian police state echoing Cultural
Revolution-era China.

The irony of this reversal of roles is not lost on me, nor on the nearly 1
million foreigners living and working in China today, an (unofficial)
number that has increased 10% year-on-year for the past decade. All said,
I am less inclined to think we are moving to China so much as we are
fleeing the west.

BI: Do you think the view of foreigners in China has changed over the
years?

TC: Mark Kitto, a contributor to the Unsavory anthology, writes a
humorously-vain account about how local authorities wanted to immortalize
his likeness into a statue – and as soon as they did they tore it down! I
think this story is an apt metaphor for China’s historical love-hate
relationship with foreigners, where one moment they are idolizing
westerners like superstars and the next they are fumigating us like some
invasive species (an analogy that Jonathan Watts touches on in his essay).

If you look back at history, China is one of the few countries that have
instituted systematic purges of “foreign devils” over the centuries, most
notably the wholesale slaughter of thousands of Christians during the
bloody Boxer Uprising and the Cultural Revolution persecutions of any
Chinese who associated with westerners.

Foreigners in China have advanced (some might argue regressed) over the
centuries from unremitting missionaries and exploitative opium operations
to backpackers and businessmen, but the purges continue to take place to
this day at the whim of the ever-capricious Communist Party, including
last year’s state-sponsored looting of Japanese businesses and vehicles,
and the campaign’s official government artwork of a fist smashing down on
the characters for “foreigners.” My anthology’s title “Unsavory Elements”
is a cheeky reference to one of the Party’s many pet names for us.

BI: Could you make out any common themes? Did anything in the stories
surprise you?

TC: The lighthearted tone of the book is emulated in part after my
backpacking days when I’d just sit around a hostel laughing and swapping
short stories with other travelers and transients about our various
adventures.

But beneath the fun reading I was surprised to find a subtext of heavier
themes shared by all the writers, such as how modernism and the country’s
break-neck development have done more to disrupt the society than enhance
it, yet, for all of New China’s pretentious pomp and steel-and-glass
glitz, there remains an undercurrent of thousands-years-old traditions
that will always define this culture and dictate their decisions.

BI: There are a lot of stories about the bad behavior of foreigners in
China floating online. In Unsavory Elements, some of the stories
(including your own) perhaps further the image of foreigners as, well,
unsavory. Do you think that the influence of foreigners on China is a good
thing?

TC: To be fair, the anthology is a well-balanced mix of family-friendly
fare – such as Alan Paul’s “National Lampoon’s Vacation”-esque road trip
across Sichuan with his family, and Susan Conley and her children using
street food as a means to acclimate – as much as the backpackers behaving
badly, or should I say Gweilo Gone Wild, contingent, like Dominic
Stevenson tossed in a Shanghai prison for drug dealing or Susie Gordon
during her decadent evening of ketamine, cocktails and karaoke.

Admittedly, my own story, about a boy’s night out to a brothel, has made
the most ripples: Time Out Shanghai called it “offensive and implicitly
exploitative”, which I accepted gracefully as their professional
interpretation. I was prepared for this critical fallout and decided to
martyr myself because, as the editor, it would have been disingenuous to
exclude a story about prostitution, which is rampant in China.

But then the Time Out review online was overrun by clique of “fem-pats”
(not my phrase; I borrowed that from one of the website’s comments; I
think it refers to those angry, lonely, single female expats in China who
are overlooked by western males seeking Chinese girlfriends) who, not even
having read the book, knee-jerkingly called for my “arrest and deportation
from China” because, they believed, I patronized an underage prostitute.
All things considered, I think China is more of an influence on the expats
who live here than we are on it…though, if my own story is any indication,
this “When in China” outlook can get us into trouble.

BI: Is there a danger when writing about the expat experience, of
"otherizing" China — playing up the weirdness too much, falling into
tropes?

TC: Absolutely. There are many “gonzo adventure” books out there – I don’t
want to name them because they are rather lame – about how “unusual” and
“mystifying” China is.

There are many “gonzo adventure” books out there – I don’t want to name
them because they are rather lame – about how “unusual” and “mystifying”
China is.

Commercial publishers, especially travel magazines, love to otherize this
country and its people, as it plays off the west’s ignorance, which is
unfortunate because beyond the obvious cultural differences, it is a
beautiful, traditional culture with a complex, rich history.

My photo-book CHINA: Portrait of a People sought to dispel the widely held
belief that the Chinese are a single, homogeneous race – there are over 56
different ethnicities of Chinese – so I am conscious about the tendency to
otherize China. And I think the final result of Unsavory Elements echoes
the comedic if not slightly tragic reality of our situation here as
outsiders: we, not the Chinese, are the weird ones.

BI: How has the book been received by the expat community? Has the Chinese
reaction been different?

TC: It’s been a mixed response from both demographics. We debuted Unsavory
Elements to a sold-out session at the Shanghai Literary Festival: over 250
attendees. But our session at Beijing’s Capital Literary Festival was only
25 people! Having lived in both cities, my interpretation is that the
rough-and-tumble expats in Beijing are more likely to go seek their own
adventures, whereas Shanghai’s colonialist-minded expats have less
opportunity, or inclination, to explore “real China”, and therefore prefer
to experience China vicariously. That’s just my cursory analysis.

As far as the Chinese, I can’t imagine many if any are aware of this or
other English-language books. China’s book market is growing fast,
however, so getting Unsavory Elements translated into Chinese is a
priority for my publisher. We’ve received positive reviews from all the
state-operated English-language new agencies such as China Daily and
Global Times, so there is obviously an interest in our lives here as
“waiguoren,” outsiders.

But truthfully, I think the Chinese government couldn’t care less about
what foreigners in China are up to or what we have to say so long as we
don’t speak it in a language that 1.3 billion people can understand, and
so long as we are not raising hell about the Three Taboo Ts.

BI: A lot of people featured in the book began as English teachers — do
you think that influences the relationship they have with the country?

TC: Indeed, many of this anthology’s most respected writers such as Peter
Hessler and Michael Meyer got their start as English teachers in China.
And yet there is this stigma surrounding English teaching where we are
utterly despised by the white-collar expatriate community and even by our
own Department of State. Whether this is due to our perceived status as
bottom-feeders detritivorously foraging Asia for any job that will hire a
white face, or because they think we are aiding and abetting America’s
successor, I don’t know, but the derision towards English teachers is
palpable.

I too got my start in China as a teacher (after responding to an ad on
Craigslist which turned out to be a scam and left me homeless and jobless
my first week here) and eventually wound up teaching 1,500 primary school
students entirely myself, a baptism by fire if there ever was one. I then
went on to teach business English to companies in Beijing. Honestly, I can
think of no other career path that places you so directly in the heart of
Chinese culture and society like teaching does, or gives you a better
ground view of the future of this country.

For this reason, I was adamant about including at least a couple stories
from the classroom, including Michael Levy’s account of being offered vast
sums of money by the principal of his school to write college entrance
exams for his students, and Matt Muller’s observational piece about being
in a class full of indifferent high school students with no ambition for
higher education. When read together, these stories offer a contrasting
glimpse into China’s widening economic disparity, from perspectives that
no executive and no journalist could ever obtain.

BI: A lot of the people writing in the book have since left the country,
and some — such as, famously Mark Kitto  — have said they intend to leave
soon. Do you perceive there to be an exodus of people leaving? If so, what
would you put that down to?

TC: Regarding the so-called exodus, I don’t believe that more foreigners
are departing China than arriving. Sure, certain western corporations are
looking for the next burgeoning nation to exploit now that China’s economy
is on a downturn. But good riddance to the expense-account expats. Of the
laowai who are leaving because of pollution or whatever, in the past year
it’s become a kind of trend to publish your “Why I’m Leaving China”
goodbye letter. What most people don’t know is that Mark Kitto, who is to
be credited, or blamed, for starting this trend, never left!

And this fact speaks volumes about our love affair with China, a love-it
or hate-it kind of place, to the point that even when we want to leave, we
really can’t. I had this happen to me too, where after living here for
four straight years I moved to Japan for a year, and then to India for
another year, but each time I found myself drawn back to China. I now
concede this is where destiny intends me to be.

But of the authors in this anthology who have left, such as Pete Hessler
to Egypt and Jon Watts to South America, the fact that they can continue
to write so passionately about China is a testament to how close to our
hearts this culture and its people are.

BI: After editing the book and hearing many stories, what advice would you
give to a young man or woman about to move to China?

TC: Read. There really are so many inspirational memoirs and travelogues
about China, including all the ones penned by the contributors of this
anthology, which will give you a good understanding of what you are
getting yourself into. But I feel a bit hypocritical proffering this
advice, as I myself had not ever read a single book about China prior to
moving here – I came on a lark because I wanted to travel the world and go
on adventures but didn’t have any money to do so – and was completely
oblivious of Chinese culture and its history. I learned as I went along,
total immersion, which upon reflection was not the easiest way, especially
in a challenging country like China. Reading memoirs, and learning from
the first-hand insight of others, can help ease your transition.