red, white & tan (& racist)

Chinese always exclaim to me that my skin is so red and ask me if I have been in the sun too long or am allergic to something. This is just my normal skin color (lol) and it's not exceptionally red, just maybe when compared to theirs.

We're kind of opposites in what we think is appealing and looks good in terms of skin color. Chinese always want to be more white. It's actually really hard to find any skin care products here that don't say "whitening" or "bleaching" on them. They carry parasols on sunny days to avoid getting tan. When I explain to them that Americans like being tan, that I like being in the sun and that we have such places as tanning salons they just get confused.

There are a couple of non white foreigners in town as well, and the Chinese's reactions to them are a little nuts. One of my students actually told me once that he was afraid to meet a black person because they might shoot him. WTF.

There are two Americans, one with Libyan heritage and one with Mexican heritage, that the Chinese call black. They tend to be a little wary of both guys before they get to know them, strictly based on their skin color.

And then we have a new foreigner from Jamaica. Clearly, she is fully black. Being from Jamaica, where of course most people are black, she has never experienced racism before and I feel terrible for her. She's having a bit of a tough time of it. People stare at us enough as foreigners, but being black on top of it, especially in a small town, makes it so much more intense for her. Children are sometimes afraid of her.

I tutor a student that I would call very open minded and western thinking that actually told me that she doesn't like my friend just because she's black. She also told me that my friend seems too sensitive about her skin color, even though she doesn't like her because of her skin color (make sense of that one!). She has had class with my friend and found her to be a nice enough person.

My poor friend is also having some issues with her work visa because of her skin color. Our school's owner is telling her that the government has denied her work visa because English is not her native language (it is). All of her documents (passport, degree, resume, etc.) are in English. He told her that unofficially, they're denying her just because she's black.

I asked a friend in Xiamen if that could be true or if she'd have better luck in a bigger city. My friend in Xiamen used to handle all of the visa paperwork for her school's foreigners, so she's a good resource for questions about stuff like that. She basically told me that my Jamaican friend is just SOL. And here we thought parts of the States were bad.