are Chinese people really that unfriendly to foreigners?

[adrianlondon]

Since only 20% of USA citizens have a passport, and hence 80% don't travel abroad, there must be something here worth visiting.

North Korea should be more popular than it is, then ;)

[imron]

Isn't the fingerprinting done only at immigration when you arrive?

Yes, I thought that's what we were talking about. From Skylee's post:

2) not happy with being treated like a criminal at immigration;

[chrix]

I hope though that Skyee will be consistent enough and avoid Japan as well (I think the Japanese were quite happy that the US reintroduced fingerprinting, because Japan had had to abolish it decades ago when the foreigners wouldn't stop complaining)

Even though I personally don't mind too much, I do think the US should think about the image it is projecting abroad by the way it is treating visitors... (including the visa fee, leading many countries, incl. China, to retaliate) But at least American citizens are also subjected to interviews by an immigration officer.

The EU, on the other hand, does not. In all these years, I've only been asked once by a Dutch immigration official which flight I was taking, but all these other times, I didn't get to say more that "Good morning/afternoon/evening"

You decide which way of treating your own citizens is better.

[skylee]

I hope though that Skyee will be consistent enough and avoid Japan as well (I think the Japanese were quite happy that the US reintroduced fingerprinting, because Japan had had to abolish it decades ago when the foreigners wouldn't stop complaining)

No, I am not consistent. I go to Japan every year. Because 1) I don't need a visa; 2) it is an easy trip and Japan is close to HK; 3) I like the place. Travelling in Japan hardly takes any effort or planning (unlike going to Korea where communication is still a big problem for me).

I also visit European countries frequently mainly because 1) I don't need a visa; 2) I like the place; 3) travelling on public transport is easy.

Actually I think the US immigration does more than fingerprinting tourists. But I have never been there. I hate to subject myself to any form of humiliation 自取其辱.

I just want to point out that when one asks if Chinese people are so unfriendly to foreigners, he should also consider how Chinese people are treated in foreigh countries / by foreigners. When one says how annoying it is that Chinese people often say "hello" to foreigners or are curious about foreigners, similar things happen to Chinese people when they are abroad.

[chrix]

Well I thought you were referring to fingerprinting? Because I know many Europeans who can get worked up about this quite a bit .

Besides that I don't see much that is humiliating in the way the US treats visitors at its borders, though you could say that the fact that they interview every single person trying to enter the country is. Many immigration officers are actually quite warm towards visitors. Some of them even came to the country as immigrants themselves and have been in the foreigner's shoes so to speak.

(The visa process is a different thing. I don't know how they treat HK applicants, but I know from some countries that it can be pretty tough, but I would be surprised if this were true for HK given your GDP levels)

[aimei]

Besides that I don't see much that is humiliating in the way the US treats visitors at its borders, though you could say that the fact that they interview every single person trying to enter the country is. Many immigration officers are actually quite warm towards visitors. Some of them even came to the country as immigrants themselves and have been in the foreigner's shoes so to speak.

Agreed. I grew up near the Canadian border, so I've seen our border agents at work and they didn't seem any less friendly/unfriendly than any other country's that I've seen (I've been to Canada and Europe a few times, and China for some perspective). As for the interviewing thing, well the U.K. does the exact same thing! I got interviewed both times that I landed there, as did everyone else. I also got a very in depth interview one time when I was trying to cross the Canadian border with a bunch of classmates on a school trip for my college French class. They individually interviewed all of us and kept asking all of us what criminal convictions we had (how's that for being treated like a criminal!). There were quite a few foreign students with us, and they all got taken aside from the group by some anal guard who was literally yelling at them, and eventually had to wait in some little room to be interviewed one on one by this guy for a LONG time. My point is, I think U.S. customs officials get a bad rap, when most other country's agents do the exact same things. The guy who said that a lot of our agents are former immigrants themselves is also correct, so a lot of them will be more empathetic than you would think.

[chrix]

The UK might be a special case because they're not part of the Schengen treaty (that's why the UK has been able to grant visa-free entry to Taiwanese people, unlike the rest of the EU), so they might have different procedures in place. Maybe Scoobyqueen can tell us if the German authorities interview her regularly or not?

But that UK border agents started interviewing EU citizens would be news to me, I usually fly through Heathrow at least a couple of times per year and have never been questioned nor has anyone else in the citizen queue....

[aimei]

But that UK border agents started interviewing EU citizens would be news to me, I usually fly through Heathrow at least a couple of times per year and have never been questioned nor has anyone else in the citizen queue....

I'm American though, and flew in from Minneapolis, MN on NWA to Gatwick. This was in 2002. When I flew from the U.K. to Ireland, no one asked us a thing.

[chrix]

yeah, sorry, couple of times might have been Gatwick too (BA had some flights from Gatwick to Houston)...

Yeah, the US policy is though to interview EVERY foreigner without exception. I don't know if they interview EVERY citizen as well.

As I'm a EU citizen, I can only attest to how various EU border agencies treat EU citizens, namely usually just quickly checking your documents and sending you on your way... Even during the Great Liquid Scare of 2006, UK border agents didn't conduct interviews even though their rule changes were an immense pain...

AFAIK, Ireland and the UK have some kind of bilateral border agreement, which has led to a relaxation of border checkpoints...

[jbradfor]

Yeah, the US policy is though to interview EVERY foreigner without exception. I don't know if they interview EVERY citizen as well.

Yes they do. Or at least I've been interviewed every time.

Now I can't speak to the depth of the interview of non-resident vs resident. ["Foreigner" sounds so, ummmmm, excluding ] For me, it's usually been 3-5 question, where did you go, business vs personal, how long, etc. But no fingerprinting!

[Music&MeForever]

I just want to point out that when one asks if Chinese people are so unfriendly to foreigners, he should also consider how Chinese people are treated in foreigh countries / by foreigners. When one says how annoying it is that Chinese people often say "hello" to foreigners or are curious about foreigners, similar things happen to Chinese people when they are abroad.

Well said, skylee!

[Lu]

Well I thought you were referring to fingerprinting? Because I know many Europeans who can get worked up about this quite a bit .

Besides that I don't see much that is humiliating in the way the US treats visitors at its borders,

I haven't tried to go to the US myself since before 2001, but I've heard from others who have. Apparently when you apply for a visa (this was a student visa), you have to submit your financial situation, they check your background, the background of your family; if you want to call the embassy for questions, you need a credit card and it costs $20 upfront, before you can even talk to anyone; and yeah, fingerprints-taking at the border. All this from an affluent western European country. I don't even want to imagine what it's like for Asian people. And even before 2001 guards at the airports had huge guns.

The actual boarder guards may be friendly enough, but by the time you get to them the system has made sure you're aware that to the US of A, you're a potential criminal for wanting to go there.

[skylee]

Hear hear.

[wushijiao]

I haven't tried to go to the US myself since before 2001, but I've heard from others who have. Apparently when you apply for a visa (this was a student visa), you have to submit your financial situation, they check your background, the background of your family; if you want to call the embassy for questions, you need a credit card and it costs $20 upfront, before you can even talk to anyone; and yeah, fingerprints-taking at the border. All this from an affluent western European country. I don't even want to imagine what it's like for Asian people. And even before 2001 guards at the airports had huge guns.

Hmmm....Well, September 11th was committed by people who overstayed student visas, of course. This was obviously a gaping flaw in the US’s security policies, and, unfortunately, the US went massively overboard, of course.

I’ve studied abroad in two countries (and one SAR), here is what they required:

-fingerprinting (Hong Kong, Chile)

-written criminal background checks (Chile)

-Providing extensive financial information (Hong Kong)

-health checks (Chile, China- including blood samples)

-Registering with police/authorities (China, Hong Kong, Chile)

-Random police checks or encounters with intelligence services (China)

Were some of these procedures fairly cumbersome and annoying and expensive? Yes. Are they somewhat understandable? I think so (at least, I might implement similar things if I were them, so I can at least see where they're coming from).

Certainly, the procedures for visas, especially student visas, can seem troublesome and make you feel like an enemy/terrorist/potential illegal alien/ hostile foreign force….etc, but I don’t think it’s all that reasonable to judge a country/territory based on their procedures.

As far as the original question, “What is their attitude towards foreigners?”, I’ve always found Chnese people to be some of the most hospitable of any nationality I’ve encountered. I don’t say “nice”, because I think genuine niceness and genuine friendliness is basically determined on an individual level, but on the cultural level, Chinese people are generally very hospitable and curious.

I really think that a lot of your experience depends on your own attitutude, since in any encounter, there are at least two people. Some people realy dislike people yelling “hello” at them all th time (including me, at times). Others, such as my friend’s dad- a incredibly outgoing guy who taught ESL for 40 years in San Fransisco- came to China for the first time, and when someone yelled “hello”…he’d go over and try to strke up a conversation in English or using his Lonely Planet Mandarin 101. He had all sorts of great experiences, and he was incredibly enthusiastic about his travels in China, and he thought everybody was extremely friendly. I thought…maybe they were extremely friendly because he was! (I know that might sound like a cliché, but it’s maybe worth bringing up).

Edited June 13, 2009 at 06:55 PM by wushijiao

[Music&MeForever]

wushijiao! you read my mind! (This means you're extremely intelligent, too )

As far as the original question, “What is their attitude towards foreigners?”, I’ve always found Chnese people to be some of the most hospitable of any nationality I’ve encountered.

he’d go over and try to strke up a conversation in English or using his Lonely Planet Mandarin 101...

I thought…maybe they were extremely friendly because he was!

Exactly! Chinese are proud people, but not arrogant and generally kind to who treat them kindly.

[Lu]

Hmmm....Well, September 11th was committed by people who overstayed student visas, of course. This was obviously a gaping flaw in the US’s security policies

You are being ironic, right? Let's not forget that Charles Manson was inspired by a Beatles' song, therefore, all Beatles songs should be banned?

China does random police checks on foreigners. That's also unfriendly and cumbersome. But is that the kind of country that the US wants to be compared to?

[katyjo]

I am on the west coast. I think most people that work in a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown do not speak good English, especially if you go into the little hole in the wall places. Then of course it would be different, if you go into the larger places that cater to tourist types. Chinese speaking only waiters might not be to feel confident of their English to serve you. I think old fashioned Chinese may find Americanized Chinese folks who are so Americanized that they have lost their Chinese language and roots shameful. Chinese in China like foreigners a lot. My blond friend was treated like a star. She was asked to pose for picture, like they have never seen a real blond before. This was in Shanghai. More and more non Chinese are learning Mandarin. Chinese people are always very impressed that foreigners can speak Chinese.

[wushijiao]

But is that the kind of country that the US wants to be compared to?

That’s a good point. I’ve always thought the US should try to adopt the most sensible and fair policies regardless of what other countries are doing (although I think it’s worth pointing out, that I think people, regardless of nationality, tend to rationalize and justify their own countries discriminatory visa policies (and all countries visa policies are discriminatory, to some extent), while criticizing other countries objective flaws. Perhaps that’s because we’re generally surrounded by our “own” media that reinforce our values, biases, and interests, while we rarely hear from people who are unhappy with those policies).

In the US case, many universities, educated people, people living on the coasts, and people who have substantial contact with foreigners, and elites (Colin Powell, Thomas Friedman..etc) were all fairly appalled by how far the pendulum had swung in favor of “security” in the US’s dealings with the outside world after September 11th. But, because many people were scared (and manipulated, to some extent) and because huge amounts of the US population live in the “heartland” of the country- were views and ideas from foreign countries have basically no impact- “security” and getting tough on terrorism tended to win out. Although I feel that it is worth reiterating that there were genuine problems with the old system (I think somewhere around 20% to 30% of illegal aliens in the US are people who overstayed their visas, or student visas, like the September 11th guys). How you try to fix a broken system without alienating the 99.9999% of the non-terrorist population isn’t an easy problem to fix.

I think that writing about this, even though it strictly deals with the US, is somewhat relevant to this post. One of the things the US and China have in common is that they’re huge, continental-sized countries, with their own strong domestic medias, TV shows, cultures, histories, historical narratives…etc. Many people in both countries have few chances to interact much with foreigners. As a result, some Americans and Chinese tend to have fairly misguided ideas about the rest of the world. This doesn’t mean that they’re bad people per se. In fact, I think some of my favorite travel experiences in both China and the US have been in places that tend to have little interaction with the “outside”. (When I first came to China (in Henan), after a while, and once I overcame some of the most immediate stages of culture shock, I was kind of taken aback by how much some aspects of Chinese society reminded me of my experiences traveling in the American Mid-West and in the South, mainly in its good aspects of extremely warm hospitality, an emphasis on pride, unpretentiousness, simple living, good food, traditions, family values, patriotism…etc, while also some of the more negative aspects were also there: semi-rigid hierarchy, a soft xenophobia, slight distrust of outsiders, and so on. I think the metaphor with the South, especially, makes a bit of sense (although it has its limits), since many people from the South feel that they have been victims of discrimination and that the mainstream media laughs at them and treats them unfairly (with crude stereotypes), while denying the amazing amount of economic progress and social change that they’ve achieved in recent years. (Of course, to what extent the stereotypes of the stereotypes are self-constructed and self-perpetuated in the South or in China is open to debate) Later, I saw that Peter Hessler made a similar observation about the cultural similarities of America and China in Oracle Bones). Although one could add, at the risk of tremendous oversimplification, that some of the southern and eastern coastal areas of China – famous for scholars, architecture, commerce, and a more cosmopolitan outlook- tend to seem a bit more like Europe.

So, I guess that just means that it’s best to have a high degree of flexibility and patience when dealing with people, and try to see things from their point of view.

I have basically no knowledge of Chinatowns, but I’d suspect that they’re somewhat different from China itself, since the predominant culture in the PRC is northern Chinese culture, for better or for worse.

Edited June 14, 2009 at 06:06 PM by wushijiao

[chiefwebber]

Actually Chinese people are extremely friendly to foreigners, for the most part. I lived in China for about 4 years. I had thought that some people would resent the fact my wife is Chinese, but almost all the guys I met there were incredibly friendly. I did notice that people from the Guangdong (Canton) area including Hong Kong tended to be the least friendly, and the Cantonese restaurants in the USA are too for the most part (and the food is awful). On the other hand real Chinese food in mainland China is great. China is not perfect, but in terms of hospitality it couldn't be much better. Really I think in the USA we could learn a lot from them in this area.

[Lu]

I think the citizens of most countries don't know much and don't care much about their own country's visa rules, since they themselves are never bothered by them. Visa rules only start being relevant when you are a foreigner, or when you know someone who runs into the visa rules. This goes for the US, Taiwan, China, Holland, anywhere. This is also why the organizations that supervise this can be so badly run: the only people who are going to be troubled by that are the people who can't vote anyway.

In Holland, a lot of people are going to agree if you say that people shouldn't be able to import brides in great numbers, especially not uneducated ones who don't learn the language and never leave the house. Sounds fair enough. But the result of this is that people who spend some time abroad and fall in love with someone from a not-so-rich country have to jump through all kinds of hoops to be allowed to marry and bring their spouse home. This, in my opinion, is not fair. But most people only see how the rule is going to stop the Scary Muslims from importing more Scary Muslims, and that's why it's still there.

As to most illegals in the US having overstayed their visa: yes, of course. There are two ways to get into the US (afaik): through the desert, or with a visa. The visa option is vastly preferable. Virtually none of those overstayers ever harms anyone. To solve this 'problem', I think one should first assess what exactly the problem is. Is the country overflowing? (Not really, is it.) Are there not enough jobs for all those people? (But apparently they're making enough money to keep themselves alive.) Are they criminal? (Not really, from what I know.) If there is no real problem, then maybe the current system isn't that bad.