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Review focus: Gweilo, Kwailo, foreigner, Chinese, cantonese
Asian Business Code Words Index NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company Asian Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine
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There is an old story in China that reveals a great deal about traditional Chinese attitudes toward other people. This is the story of the "Master Baker" - Master People Maker (God!) in Western terms. As this story has it, the Master Baker burned the first batch of dough he tried to cook, and produced black people. He undercooked the second batch, and produced pale-faced Caucasians. Finally, on the third attempt he got it right and produced the Chinese. Ever since, the Chinese have looked upon themselves as the "chosen ones," and viewed all other people with a jaundiced eye. For more than four millennia the Chinese image of other people was similarly prejudiced by the fact that its borders were continuously being breached by relatively uncivilized tribes given to mayhem and destruction. When the first Caucasians appeared in China they were automatically included in the category of outside barbarians who had not had and never could have the full benefits of Chinese culture. Over the centuries, the behavior of many Caucasians in China and around its borders did nothing to convince the Chinese that they had been wrong in judging all foreigners as barbarians. Among the colorful terms the Cantonese Chinese came up with in reference to foreigners was gweilo (gway-ee-lo), a Cantonese term that means foreign devil or foreign ghost. The North China equivalent of this term was yang gui zi or ocean ghosts. Another common slang term used to denote foreigners (generally Caucasian foreigners) is da bidze, which means big nose, and is pretty much self-explanatory. Obviously, all of these terms were derogatory, reflecting the overall Chinese feelings of superiority to outsiders - superiority not only in a material sense but in a philosophical and spiritual sense as well. Times have changed. Gweilo is still commonly used in the Cantonese region of China and elsewhere, since it has been spread around the world by Cantonese immigrants. But the connotation has gradually softened to where it is now used more or less in the sense of foreigner, much like gringo in Mexico and haole in Hawaii. (I've always gotten a huge charge out of the fact that haole actually means white pig.) Foreigners themselves have helped to change the image of gweilo by using it in reference to themselves and other non-Chinese, originally because it was one of the first Chinese words that foreigners learned, and they appreciated the humor involved. Now it is also used simple because it is a convenient way of distinguishing between Chinese and non-Chinese. It is certainly a lot more expressive than the regular Mandarin Chinese term for foreigner: waiguoren (wie-gwoh-wern), which literally means foreign country person.
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Boye Lafayette de Mente is one of our regular monthly columnists at the 
| This month's column is excerpted from NTC's Dictionary of China's Cultural Code Words, by Boye Lafayette De Mente available from NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company |
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