Certain places, people and accents are the target of national mockery. In China, Shanghai is notorious for looking down on and making fun of everyone else. They are all 乡下人/xiang1 xia4 ren2/ country bumpkins. But now, almost 1/3 of residents in Shanghai are not native. I suspect hardcore Shanghai natives will be rolling in their graves. But the demographic change has significantly changed native’s attitudes. But I think there is still a tinge of the old attitude deeply rooted in our hearts, mine included. My experience below is a vivid example of it.
Ever since I began to set up my own business, I have been flooded by calls from people posing as staff from the Bureau of Tax, the Bureau of Commerce and so on. (I wrote on a blog post about it here). But what stands out from the experience is I consciously used accent as a barometer of whether one is a cheat or not. The danger of doing that is I nearly got duped by a man speaking standard Putonghua. In the past, when I received calls from heavily accented people, I normally hung up right away. But this time, I talked for 5 minutes with him, asking him the nitty gritty of tax regulations.
On a related note, when I was choosing agents to handle my business registration application, I made my choice based on two factors:1) the quality of the office; 2) where the people come from. I finally chose an agent whose entire staff is from Shanghai. My rationale was a cost benefit analysis from the agent’s point of view. Would it be worthwhile for them to take all of the clients’ money and ran away? (They make a bit of money (RMB 500) on each case. ) My conclusion was that for people from Shanghai, their deep community roots make it not worthy to do it. Even if they did run away, it would be a lot easier for local police to track and arrest them. But if the agent is not from Shanghai, they can run to whereever they want. The local police probably won’t really bother to fully investigate crimes on this scale. So I made my decison. And I got everything done without nasty surprises.
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March 9, 2009 9:27 pm
Isn’t xiang in this place 1st tone?
March 9, 2009 9:33 pm
Glen,
Yes, it is. Thank you for pointing it out!
March 11, 2009 7:01 am
Hello Jenny.
I listening your lesson in Chinese Pod. very happy to visit you blog.
March 11, 2009 10:36 am
pavielin,
You are very kind. I hope the blog is a good addition to the language lessons on ChinesePod.
Jenny
March 11, 2009 2:41 pm
sometimes it takes time to be duped by so-called reputable people and their beautiful offices. you’ve heard of bernie madoff, haven’t you?
that being said, i understand your decision-making process on this matter. i grew up in an environment where people trust 自己人。did you seek references from business people you know before you selected your business agent?
March 12, 2009 5:04 pm
Art,
Great point. No, I didn’t seek references from business people I know. I trusted Google.
March 30, 2009 8:55 am
Hey, (Just discovered your blog)
Normally I don’t comment much about anything, but this topic seems to resurface quite a bit and has left me with a “half in – half out” sort of opinion.
When I visit Shanghai I definitely feel the old attitude and biased eye to 外地人. I’m not Chinese of course, but I’ve traveled to Shanghai plenty of times with Chinese and have on more then one occasion been asked to do the speaking. Strange right? Why should I go over there and struggle through a Chinese conversation when you yourself could easily fix this problem. Often the answer is not what we like to hear, “because that &%#!*@# was soooo rude to me”..
If the topic comes up at dinner I always try to take the side of Shanghai people not being snobs or 外地人 haters, but instead, insist that Shanghai people are simply feeling a loss of identity, feeling perhaps that their city is turning into something that more resembles a melting pot and easily tagging new problems with new ingredients.
However, after reading your blog and hearing it from the horse’s mouth it seems that maybe I’m just too idealistic. I mean, Shanghai wouldn’t been the first huge city to discriminate.
March 31, 2009 1:54 am
Hi Xuchen.
Thank you for sharing your story. We are all legends in our own minds. Shanghai’s sense of legend is even more legendary given its cosmopolitan sophistication, economic status and so on. But I do see a rather fundamental shift in attitude among young people in Shanghai, something largely due to the migration of people from the rest of China. Always two side to the coin and furtunately we’ve turned it on a positive one.
April 21, 2009 12:00 am
Loved this post. I used to think that Beijingers discrimate against waidiren, but this gives me some perspective. That sometimes it is not discrimination but one of practical concern – it is easier to fraud a stranger than a neighbor. OK, except that ART is right in that Madoff totally exploited this universal sentiment.
April 26, 2009 3:43 pm
Hi Jenny,
There’s something I’m very curious about, with regards to the Shanghainese sense of superiority. Is it a recent development (i.e. since Shanghai’s modern boom days from the mid-late 90s onwards), or did it exist prior to this?
I’m sure the Shanghainese of the roaring 20s and 30s saw themselves as hugely more cosmopolitan and sophisticated then the rest of China, but what about from the 50s-80s? That period seems to be written out of Shanghai’s history, dismissed in guide books as grey and dismal and usually afforded no more than a couple of sentences before the account of the city’s recent boom begins. I presume in that period, with the pre-war glitz removed, the Park Hotel constituting the tallest building in the whole city and most people living in crumbling lane houses etc, that it wasn’t a particularly glamorous or cosmopolitan place to live. So did people still look down on 外地人in the 50s-80s, despite this? If so, how did it manifest itself?
Many thanks,
John M
April 28, 2009 9:30 am
Hi John M,
Your observations are spot on. But I would say during the 50′s to the 80′s, the locals in Shanghai felt a special and precious sense of identity. In those decades when traditions (bourgeois lifestyle in Shanghai’s case) were denounced alongside humanity, individuality and prosperity, the former glory in Shanghai gave its people a sense of belonging and even dignity, although one could not publicly display it. Now in memoirs and stories, you often hear people recounting how they were secretly speaking English or baking cakes at home to feel despite the turbulence, they were able to keep some part of who they were.
July 30, 2009 8:08 am
I wonder how they will feel about a native new yorker with Cantonese roots. Personally, I wouldn’t take any snobism kindly. Plus I could dish it out just as easily if provoked. I plan to visit for some work opportunities and would like to know what to expect in that area.