Xenophobia?

[Dawning Emulsion]

Perhaps a controversial topic to post in this particular forum, but this is a feature here in the UK anyway...

I tend to find that Chinese people tend to stick with themselves. I go to a 'multi-cultural' 'cosmopolitian' university... or so it claims anyway... The melting pot for the world's intellect? I think not... Each ethic group tend to stick together and one that is almost always commented on is the Chinese, or more specifically, the HKC people sticking together.

It's the same in halls, the HKC ppl all cook together, talk to each other in Cantonese, which is fine. I do it too and it's nice...until of course it gets to the point where they continue to talk to me in Cantonese almost completely ignoring my international friends. One worse case scenario is when they don't even say hi...

Talking to BBCs (British Born Chinese), or ABCs (American Born Chinese) or those who've mixed well into the foreign culture, they sometimes wonder at how I manage to get on with the HKCs because some of them don't even bother greeting them anymore. The BBCs and ABCs find the HKCs rather intimidating.

Maybe it's me being penickaty, but I sometimes find I'm asking myself, why spend so much money studying abroad if you make minimal effort to make international friends...?

I've always been sorta stuck in the middle, not a BBC, but have been mistaken for one on several occasions. Bridging both sides isn't always easy, but I've somehow managed it.

Questions remains though, is it xenophobia? insecurity? or just natural?  

[Darkaznstargoddess]

[ Message temporarily off-line ]  

[Cat-Whiskers]

Seen way too much of this in Canada, even at my university where people are supposedly to be able to "look beyond the skin colour and apperance"... yeah right stare

I myself have a diverse group of friends ranging from caucasians to CBCs (Canadian born Chinese) to HKC to Japanese to Mainlanders etc etc. My policy is that, I'll always speak the universal language that everyone in the group can understand. If one of my friend understands Cantonese and English and the other understands Mandarin and English, I'll speak english all the time, I don't care what dialect they use to communicate to me, I'll always respond in english. If nothing else, it's common courtesy. To speak in a language in which one of the particitants in the conversation cannot understand is to openly exclude that person. It's rude.

As for xenophobia, I think the reason as to why it seems that us Chinese displays a seemingly stronger sense of it is due to the 5000 years of isolationism that's bred into our blood. Europeans... they have different cultures and races that dominates at one time and then gets dominated, they mix and mingle, where as for us, the Han are dominant most of the time. We've developed an automatic response system that would reject anyone who's different (my theory). Even I sometimes still have problem with this, as I prefer to hang out with my Asian friends than the Caucasians...

Another thing could be the cultural gap. I know that most of my CBC friends feel comfortable around Caucasians but are not as comfortable when they're around Asians who were not native to North America. I know I'm more comfortable around Asians because sometimes when one of my Caucasian friends does something I can't seem to understand why he does it.

Anyways I'm just rambling now, so I'll stop.  

[Minielf]

I've encountered the similar problem in Australia, and its become especially prevalent given that Vietnamese, Malaysians, native born Chinese, Australian born Chinese from all sorts of provinces are all present. What I've found is that some Chinese, and Asians for that matter, tend to become westernized and speak almost totally English and have a lot of causasian friends, pretty much like me. Whereas others stay almost totally in their native cultural roots, speaking cantonese, viet etc, and having pretty much friends of the similar culture. I know both types pretty well, because my school has a large percentage of Asians, and so you get to see both groups present.  

[Yozoh]

I don't know.. I'm more of one of those people who are bridges. I have many friends who are/speak Mandarin, Cantonese, a few Koreans, of European origins.. But mostly Mandarin. At the same time, I have my own ring of friends and we're all pretty much all kinds of ethnic groups and having only a few things in common (Born somewhere in Canada and speaking English).

What's the weirdest of them all, is that I am unbelieably cold, shy, UNopen, and at the same time popular among the most of the chinese people in my high school. Oh yea, I speak 4 languages fluently, maybe that would be why, non?  

[wiim]

Hm, I wonder why tamcharles isn't in here causing a stir? xd  

[Tokioka]

Yeh, where is tamcharles? He's the excessively intellectual person, right? xd

Well I'm a BBC and at my school I actually find it easier to just talk to english people, not the chinese ones. I guess I kinda see myself as 'one of the lads', as I'm interested in the same sorts of things as other british guys. I'm actually not very friendly with the other chinese people for some reason, and the only other eastern guy I'm good friends with is japanese. Hmmm, you could just say that I've either integrated quite well, or I have a british mind inside a chinese person's skin. 3nodding  

[cold_blooded_chick]

Isn't that the case with all immigrants in other countries, well most of them anyways~ We feel attracted to our own kind~ We even learnt baout this in geography~ 3nodding