More Evidence on Laowai

Last month saw another outbreak of the venerable laowai debate over on H-Net Asia. Andrew Field, one of the editors, summarizes. And here is one of the many debates on Forumosa more specific to the Taiwan context. I take the view that laowai is mildly offensive when used in your presence because it is an insider term directed at other insiders.

A comment by Ma Ying-jeou using a related term I think provides additional support for my view. Bruce Herschensohn, a conservative US academic has been widely reported in the Taiwanese media as saying that if elected, Ma Ying-jeou would move toward a "One country two systems" solution for Taiwan. Ma, who has consistently opposed this type of proposal because it is ballot-box poison in Taiwan, was understandably annoyed and described Herschensohn as a "laomei 老美 who doesn't understand what is going on."

I don't think there can be much question that an exasperated Ma reached for a dismissive and even pejorative term to frame Herschensohn's comments for Ma's constituency. The key I would argue is the prefix lao which, at least in this context, has overtones of contemptuous over-familiarity with the pathetically misinformed outsider American. Laowai works in similar ways.

Ma's characterization of Herschensohn is of course in itself exasperating because it shows Ma abusing that familiar trope of "those foreigners who are incapable of understanding us Chinese." Yet more evidence, in my view, that despite his jogging and excellent English, Ma is not the friendly internationalizing 'just like us' kind of guy that much of the foreign community thinks he is.