25. "Laowai!"

In the early days of this millennium, I graduated university in England and set out for a new life in China. Here, I share the quiet stories of my journey, a chronicle of discovery and displacement, woven into the fabric of a land vast and unfathomable.

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In China, you never forget what you are.

Walking the streets, I was a presence that could not be ignored. Faces turned, fingers pointed, voices called out in gleeful recognition. “Hello! Laowai!” The words rose from shopfronts and bicycle lanes, from clusters of schoolchildren and middle-aged men smoking outside noodle restaurants. Sometimes they were cheerful, sometimes wary, but always there - an almost involuntary reaction, as if to confirm what their eyes had seen.

At first, it baffled me. No one had ever openly announced my foreignness before, let alone with such enthusiasm. In Britain, to single someone out in the street - no matter how different they looked - would be unthinkably rude. But here, the sight of me provoked something visceral. I was not just a person; I was a spectacle.

My initial response was irritation. The calls reduced me to a category, a two-character label that meant foreigner. No matter how long I stayed, how much Mandarin I learned, how well I understood the nuances of life here, I would always be a laowai - something apart. It was a humbling realisation, one that gnawed at me on those days when I longed for anonymity.

Yet, over time, something shifted. The longer I stayed, the more I began to see the world as they did. Foreigners were rare, especially in the quiet neighbourhoods beyond Guangzhou’s commercial centre. Even after just a few months in the city, I found myself reacting the same way. If I caught sight of another foreigner walking through my local market, I’d instinctively wonder - Who are they? Where are they from? What are they doing here? In a place where I had grown used to knowing every foreign face, a new one was an event. Perhaps I was not so different from the people who called out to me in the street.

One afternoon, not long after my visit to the Temple of the Five Immortals, I was making my way towards my usual noodle shop, still mulling over the conversations of that morning’s lessons. The small eatery had become a fixture in my routine. Its plastic stools and steaming bowls of broth were as familiar to me as any café back home, and the boss lady now greeted me with a nod of recognition whenever I arrived.

As I turned the corner, I spotted a group of businessmen seated outside on low stools, the top buttons of their shirts loosened, sleeves rolled up, heads bowed towards their bowls. They were in the middle of an easy, bantering conversation when one of them caught sight of me. His chopsticks froze mid-air.

“Laowai!” he bellowed, nudging his companions. “Hey, look! A laowai!”

His friends turned as one, their expressions shifting from surprise to amusement. One of them grinned and waved in my direction. I had seen this scene play out before: a foreigner appears, and suddenly, he is the momentary centre of attention.

But this time, something came over me. I stopped in my tracks, eyes widening in exaggerated surprise. I spun around, scanning the street with an expression of mock panic.

“Where?” I asked in Mandarin. “Where’s the foreigner?”

For a second, they were silent. Then, as realisation dawned, their laughter erupted in unison, rolling through the street like a firework display. One of the men clapped his hands together, another wiped his eyes. The first man, still chuckling, leaned forward.

“You understand?!” he asked.

I smirked. “Of course,” I said. “I’m Chinese.”

The table roared again, and one of them pounded his fist against his knee. They gestured for me to join them, but I waved it off with a grin and continued into the noodle shop, feeling, for once, as though I had broken through something invisible.

It was a small moment, but it stayed with me. Not because of the laughter, or even the pride of pulling off a joke in another language for the first time, but because, for that brief exchange, I had turned the dynamic on its head. I was no longer a passive recipient of the laowai label; I had played along, shaped the narrative, and in doing so, had become something more than just a foreign face in the crowd.

With time, I would come to see the calls of laowai not as insults, but as markers of curiosity. For most people, my presence was still unusual enough to warrant comment. Some of them had simply never seen a foreigner before, not in the flesh. In villages tucked beyond the reach of Guangzhou’s urban sprawl, the sight of me could send children running to fetch their parents, just to confirm that I was real. An old woman once reached out to touch my face, testing to see if the thick stubble on my unshaven face was real.

There was a fascination to it, not unlike the way Western travellers had once described their own encounters with the unfamiliar. The first Jesuit missionaries to China in the 16th century had written of how crowds would follow them through the streets, inspecting their clothes and marvelling at their hair. Centuries later, in some pockets of the country, the reaction had hardly changed.

In a way, I had come to expect it. What had once felt intrusive now seemed inevitable, even logical. If I had been a Chinese villager, living my whole life in a world that rarely saw foreign visitors, I might have reacted the same way. The weight of my foreignness would never leave me, but I had learned to carry it differently.

Later, as I slurped up the last of my noodles, I thought about the moment outside, the businessmen still laughing, still talking about the foreigner who had claimed, however briefly, to be Chinese. It had been an easy joke, but one that had disarmed something; a small, fleeting equaliser.

And as I left the noodle shop and stepped back onto the street, I found myself listening for the next call of “laowai!”, not with irritation, but with something close to amusement, wondering whether I might turn around and ask, just for the fun of it, “Where?!”

A Moment of Gratitude

If the words of Ill Grandeur have resonated with you, consider buying me a cup of tea. In China, tea is more than just a drink - it is a symbol of connection, warmth, and reflection. A one-off tea is a way of sharing in the journey, supporting the story, and keeping the spirit of discovery alive. Every cup helps bring the next chapter to life.