The Foreigner Card

As a foreigner living in China, I possess what I call the "foreigner card." Every foreigner possesses this card to some extent, but it's used in different ways and for different purposes by different foreigners. Some play their foreign card in order to gain special privileges that Chinese don't have, resulting in a comfortable life but not fitting in with the culture very well. Others try not to play it, and try to be as Chinese as possible, fitting in, but end up neglecting their American/home culture. It can be played on purpose, but sometimes it's played unintentionally, as excuses are made for the foreigners because they don't understand the situation or how to act in a culturally appropriate way.

Let me give some examples of times when my foreigner card has been played.
This weekend I went to Metro, the German import store, because I needed to buy syrup, not found in local stores. After discovering as I was checking out that the computer couldn't read the bar code, the employee set aside the syrup and scanned the rest of the items. When she read the final price, not including the syrup, I told her that I did need to buy the syrup. She replied that the computer wouldn't read the price. I responded by asking what I needed to do, because I did, in fact, need this item. It was the whole reason I came. She said I could go back to where I had picked it up, and could write down the bar code number, which I did. When I came back, she finished with another person, then personally put in the code. It didn't work. I asked her, again, what I could do, because I really did need the syrup. The next solution was to go back to that section, again, and get a person who worked back there. I ran back once more, explained the situation to another employee, who took off the whole big label with the bar code and product name, took me back to a third employee, who walked with me back up to the front to make sure it would work. All three people were very helpful, and I'm not sure that a Chinese shopper would have received that same service. It was worth it for the syrup that day, I decided. I don't always insist on this happening, and in fact, usually I don't. But I kind of needed the syrup, in case you didn't realize! In this example, I played the foreign card on purpose in order to achieve what I wanted.

Another example comes from a few weeks ago. I attended a wedding with some friends. I didn't know either the bride or the groom, but the friends I went with knew him, and that's how weddings work here, apparently. We arrived and were seated at a table near the family that we knew, the family of our friends, which happened to be near the back of the room. After sitting for less than 2 minutes, we were told to take our things, because we were changing tables. The hosts took us up to one of the front tables, right next to the immediate family's table. Did we deserve that front table? No. Did we do anything to try and get there? Definitely not, but our white faces caused us to be moved closer to the front. I don't know if this was to honor the family of the bride and groom by making sure their guests all knew they had foreign friends, or if it was to honor our friends because they were the ones who knew us, or if it was to honor us. But in any case, I'm fairly confident that we were moved closer to the front because of an unintentionally played foreign card.

This summer when I had some friends visit, one of them got sick while we were with Chinese friends. Some of my Chinese friends whipped out their Chinese medicine, which B wasn't excited at all to take. I kept telling them that he didn't want medicine, he just needed space and time, but that wasn't an adequate answer for them. Finally I remembered some really helpful advice another American friend gave me once, and I told my Chinese friends that he wasn't accustomed to taking Chinese medicine, so he didn't want it. This reason made complete sense to them, and they immediately stopped trying to force him to take the meds. Playing the foreign card here, intentionally, meant getting out of doing something that would be common to Chinese.

I know that I will never be Chinese - I will never look Chinese, I will never speak like a Chinese national, I will never act completely Chinese. However, I also don't want to play my foreigner card to get out of situations that put my out of my comfort zone just because I'm not comfortable with it, when it won't do me any harm. Part of living here is the adventure of it! It's good for me to do things that I've never done, or not be able to do things that I typically think I should be able to do. There are some things, though, that I feel like by doing them (or not doing them) compromises my identity as an American and becomes an attempt to forget that I am. I am an American, I'm proud to be an American, and I'm also proud to be living in China and proud of China.