Alternative meaning for 他们/你们

[Demonic_Duck]

I went to the 麻辣烫 stall across the street from my house today, and was talking to the vendor, when a middle-aged lady sitting down suddenly said “他们也吃这个？” I asked her “‘他们’是谁？”, already having a pretty good inkling of the answer, and she clarified: “你们也吃这个吗？” I asked her, “您是说外国人吗？” and she replied in the affirmative. I told her “入乡随俗” etc.

 

I should add that she was asking out of friendly curiosity, and I wasn't in any way offended by the situation, but it struck me once again just how different the Chinese mindset is with regards to foreignness.

 

Anyway, do you think dictionary entries for “他们” should be amended?

 

他们 tāmen

1) [代] 称不包括自己和对方的若干人

2) [代] 老外

[淨土極樂]

Nothing new, honestly. We have the 'us-them' differentiation in Russian, as well. 'We/our' when said by a Russian native means Russians/Russian. Foreigners are commonly called 'they'. Exactly the same as in Chinese.

 

Though personally I try my best to avoid such wording, as I think it's a bit xenophobic/isolationist. But still, it's extremely common in both Russia and China.

[Lu]

I'd think it's not necessarily 老外 but rather 他者, 'the other'. She could conceivably ask a similar question if she saw a child eating something children usually don't like, or a blind person read a book, or a 外地人 drink import beer at a fancy bar.

[淨土極樂]

Here's a bit on the us-them phenomenon.

[Demonic_Duck]

@ 净土极乐 (post #2): Hmm, that's very interesting. I just know it wouldn't ever be used like that in English, unless it was by someone with definite xenophobic tendencies.

@ Lu: I may be wrong, but I suspect that's not the case, at least for the two examples you mention. I think in that case she'd say “小孩”/“盲人”, unless the subject of the sentence had already been defined. On the other hand, if I was black instead of white, I could quite imagine her asking the same thing, but with the subject instead referring to 黑人.

@净土极乐 (post #4): Also interesting, but I wouldn't say there's any significant aspect of devaluation/dehumanisation that goes on in the minds of most Chinese people when they think of foreigners as “others”, and more often than not it seems to be rooted more in curiosity than fear.

[淨土極樂]

Such wording can also be used when talking about another family or community, etc. Basically ingroups and outgroups.

[Lu]

I agree it's not fear, but there is an amount of dehumanisation, I suspect. To me it seems like it's on the same level as '哇，你会用筷子' and 'Ni h...' 'Wow your Chinese is so good'. Basically, surprise that the 'other' (the talking monkey) does something that 'we' (the normal people) also do.

(I don't want to speak badly of Chinese people here, because to many of them foreigners just are something really weird and unusual.)

[hedwards]

To be honest, I don't believe there's a place on the planet where people don't do that. With the possible exception of that last uncontacted tribe.

 

Depending upon the culture people's expectations can be more or less elastic, but people are just bound to be surprised when somebody that seems to be a member of an out group may actually be in part a member of the in group. It's pretty much human nature to assign people to categories based upon how similar they are and how different they are.

 

I generally ignore the comments about my Chinese unless they provide me some clue about what I'm doing well and what I need to work on. If I want to know how well I'm doing, I pay more attention to whether I'm understanding all of the responses and whether they believe me when I say that I don't understand. If I'm getting in a bit over my head, that's usually an indication that my production skills have improved beyond what I can really comprehend. Which is a good thing in the short term.

[Shelley]

"last uncontacted tribe." who when eventually contacted would have a very good reason to take an "us and them" stance.

[Demonic_Duck]

To be honest, I don't believe there's a place on the planet where people don't do that. With the possible exception of that last uncontacted tribe.

You're missing the point.

 

A Chinese person walks into a pub and orders a steak and kidney pie with mashed potato. An English person sitting nearby remarks to the server, "oh, so they eat steak and kidney pie too, then?"

[hedwards]

@Demonic, how am I missing the point here? I just said that this applies everywhere, so I'm not sure how providing an example of it happening somewhere other than China demonstrates that I've missed the point.

[Demonic_Duck]

The example I provided is absurd. That would never happen in England, unless the English person was a xenophobic moron and was deliberately trying to cause offense.

[陳德聰]

I can confirm that this happens in the reverse in the city where I live.

This is considered bigoted behaviour, but we tend to give people from more homogeneous cultures a pass because they "don't know any better". It's naive to believe that this does not happen in "the West". People still tell me to "go back to China".

[Demonic_Duck]

That's why I put the "xenophobic moron" caveat in there. What I'm saying is that a good proportion of people in China who are clearly not xenophobic morons, but simply curious, nevertheless act towards foreigners in a way that would be considered offensive in many other cultures. I'm not trying to make any value judgements about the west being better in this respect.

 

That said, if someone told me to go back to where I come from, I'd certainly take offense, there's really no ambiguity about whether it's intended to cause offense. I prefer benign racism to hostile racism any day.

[Lu]

But then, are you just saying that many well-meaning Chinese people are not used to foreigners and thus often display benign racism? That's no doubt true, but it's not really news.