Becoming a Celebrity Just by Being a Foreigner Abroad
Want to feel like a famous celebrity with people racing up to take photos of and with you? With teenage girls giggling hysterically when they see you? With eyes becoming wide with awe as you walk by?
All you have to do is hop on a plane and arrive somewhere where the majority of people look, dress, and act nothing like you!
We forget about this, sometimes, in America.
We forget how racially and ethnically diverse our country is, and we take for granted that it's rude in our culture to make anyone feel singled-out because they look different.
But a country like China is another story. According to 2010 statistics, China's population is 91.5% Han Chinese. In contrast, the 2010 Census calculates Boston's population as 47% White. What this means is that when you walk down the street in Boston, you see all different colors of humans. When you mosey around in China, however, 91.5% of the people around you are ethnically Han Chinese.
Now, this figure includes the large, cosmopolitan cities of Shanghai and Beijing, so can you imagine how many foreign-looking people are in the other cities and towns? Yep: very, very few.
Case in point: Chongqing, China. Chongqing is one of the biggest urban areas in the world, boasting over 32,000,000 inhabitants. However, within Chongqing, and even more so in its suburb of Yunyang where my friend is working, foreigners are so rare that they instantly achieve celebrity status.
One evening in Yunyang, we all went out to Hot Pot to eat with some local teachers. We decided to take a group photo to document the evening and called a waiter over to take the photo. Between his excited giggles, the waiter's hands began shaking so hard that he couldn't press the camera button.
"I'm sorry!" he choked out, "I'm just so, so... NERVOUS!"
It took several long, fumbling minutes before the camera at last flashed and the waiter was able to make his trembling way out the door.
Dinner was delicious, and we got up to leave. Suddenly... Oh! Paparazzi! The entire staff of the restaurant had gathered in a giggling knot, clutching their cell phone cameras in our direction. As they snapped our pictures, I pulled out my camera and took these photos. :)
One bold employee sidled up to us and asked shyly: "Can we take a photo all together?"
Feeling very famous, we agreed. What had we done to deserve this honor? We'd been born with slightly different genetics, in a culture far across the ocean. What an accomplishment!
For us, this experience was fun and rather funny, but such moments elicit a wide range of reactions from other travelers and expats. How do YOU feel about being singled out for looking different abroad?
Want more about Race and Travel? To read about having really cute screaming children in Ghana run after you shouting "White woman!" click here. For an article on race in Japan, click here.
The author, Lillie Marshall, is a 6-foot-tall National Board Certified Teacher of English, fitness fan, and mother of two who has been a public school educator since 2003. She launched Around the World “L” Travel and Life Blog in 2009, and over 4.2 million readers have now visited this site. Lillie also runs TeachingTraveling.com and DrawingsOf.com. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter, and follow @WorldLillie on social media!
A woman came up to pose her small children with us! The little girl kept trying to run away before the picture was taken, and her mom kept dragging her back. We caught a ton of people slyly taking pictures of us throughout the day, too….and lots of people stopped to stare at me every time I took a picture of something! If that’s what it’s like in a huge city like Beijing, I can only imagine what it’ll be like when we hit the countryside in a few days!
My sister participated in a university olympiad in China in 2009. I had read that people would ask to take our pictures (as has also happened to me in India and Morocco), but I received celebrity treatment in the Beijing airport on my return home to Spain. Two university students were assigned to escort me through check-in (they tried to get me bumped with no luck...and too bad, it was the worst jet lag of my life!) and to the gate. I took it as their being ambassadors for their country and trying to be hospitable to guests.
I definitely do not get that treatment in Spain!
I am a scandinavian model so I am blond,white,have blue eyes and quite tall so everytime in Thailand everyone wants to touch my hair and I hear a crazy amount of compliments and get a lot of looks and stares and people asking to take a picture of or with me.Many are really interested in where I am from and I'm constantly mistaken for brasilian or russian,it's strange but I do understand it because most of people there are really tiny and dark
Interesting!
Personally, I hate it. When I was in Gambia for a few months I was unable to go anywhere without people following me. In our village it took about 2 weeks for people to stop following me during the day. During the night my skin color was a problem. Because of my white skin I was "shinning" for miles and people would stroll along. For my evening strolls I startet to cover myself up completely just to be alone for a few minutes.
Outside the village kids always ran after me and adults shouted. Some came up to chst me up.
As much as I loved their friendliness, after awhile I just wished to have their skin color and the feeling of beeing a zoo animal away :(
Yes, it can be incredibly stressful!
The fact that you find your whiteness stressful speaks to your white privilege and white fragility. You chose to put yourself in this situation. Have you thought about people with dark skin that are jailed, in their own country, just for being dark? They probably feel like more a zoo animal than you ever will.
Very important point! Thank you for this key reminder.
How funny is that?
Pretty funny!
When we were in Bali, Indonesia at some temples all these Muslim girls were taking our pictures and asking to take a picture with us in it! It was crazy, but we did! It made their day, and it made our day making them happy!
Love it!
I'm not sure how I feel about being famous just because I look different. I remember just before visiting Hiroshima (in April 2004), someone told me I would be mobbed by schoolchildren in the vicinity of the Cenotaph looking to meet foreigners. And that was the case, as the schoolchildren (probably for a school assignment) asked me write my name and country. It seemed like some sort of game to meet people from as many countries as possible. I actually love the attention I was gettting. Something similar happened to me several months later as I was visting the Ayutthaya Historical Park in Thailand, but the "being mobbed because I'm a foreigner" situation really wasn't exciting that time because it wasn't new.
Wow! That must have felt cool to feel so popular. I think I would have been a little bit annoyed. I wouldn't mind maybe if people asked me about once or twice, but after reading this article it seems as if they were constantly asking you.
I personally hate pictures! I don't know why I just do, but I think it would exiting to be so famous.
Being unique is fun! It's like how short people are considered "fun sized". Standing out in the crowd doesn't mean much to me.
"Fun-sized"??!!! HAH!!!
Wow! That must have been fun. I would have laughed so hard. :D
I went there they didn't do that to me because I look so asian but I did have a lot of people starring at me when I put on my sun glasses,my nike shoes(now worn out)and my puma sweat shirt and was struting down the street with my i pod touch.:) I guess they thought I was very american then because I was wearing expensive brands to them and was totaly showing off.Ha ha ha I made them look like paupers.
That must have been fun for you Ms. Marshall. Now you know what the celebrities feel like in America. My Chinese teacher is married to an American, so whenever they go to China, people swarm around them and take pictures. Her husband is too kind to say no to the pictures, but my teacher is always nudging to move on.
Was it really weird that you got to take pictures with the whole staff? It must have been really cool to be famous by just walking into a restaurant.
Yes and yes!
I would LOVE for people to take my picture. Didn't you feel wierd though? People just staring at you? I would've been intimidated but I'm glad you took their picture. I like what they were wearing!
I think that minor celebrity is a big part of the reason I enjoy being abroad so much. It doesn't hurt being told I look like Hugh Jackman either. Except when they follow up by saying we both share a large forehead >_>
It happened a lot in Korea. I think it's cute for the most part, although some of the girls I dated hated the attention.
HA!!!! Hilarious!!!!
I can remember that happening to me also quite a few times in China when I went there last year. I've never felt like such a celebrity in any other country! Remember especially as we were sitting in a restaurant in Beijing, we noticed with my friend a little girl and a her family kept looking at us. Took her half an hour to build up the courage to come ask for a photo with us :)
So cute! :)
Our Chinese are friendly to foreigners. The price of commodity in Chongqing is also reasonable. Have a nice time there. U can also go to Tibet. Sceneries there are quite amazing.
We just had our first big day in Beijing yesterday, and definitely got the treatment! It was crazy to see, even in huge tourist destinations like Tienanmen Sq., that we were literally the only white people there! Even funnier, when we sat down on a curb to get our bearings with out GPS app, a woman came up to pose her small children with us! The little girl kept trying to run away before the picture was taken, and her mom kept dragging her back. We caught a ton of people slyly taking pictures of us throughout the day, too....and lots of people stopped to stare at me every time I took a picture of something! If that's what it's like in a huge city like Beijing, I can only imagine what it'll be like when we hit the countryside in a few days!
Hilarious!!! Keep us posted on the small town celebrity treatment after the Beijing experience!
Flashbacks to Macau for me. Love Asia!
Ah, so you love being a celebrity foreigner!