01.26.07

HAA-LOW!!!

Posted in Society at 7:20 pm by Benjamin Ross

It’s late afternoon in a crowded shopping district anywhere in China. After buying some Chinese tea and scarfing down a Big Mac, you are walking back to the bus stop when suddenly out of the blue you hear a voice coming from a Chinese guy with a baseball hat and a Yao Ming jersey walking your direction: “HAA—LOW!” After two and a half years in China, there is not a single word in the English language that I detest as much as the one which is the first and possibly only word known by many of the world’s non-English speakers.

Of the many common annoyances which come with living in China, the constant “hello’s” are one I still have not been able to get over. Here’s how it works. You are walking nonchalantly down a crowded street when a young guy (of the hundreds of times this has happened, it has never once been a female) turns to you with a grin on his face, and just as he passes you, yells “HAA—LOW.” What comes out usually sounds more like the word “hollow” than it does like “hello.”

When I first got to China, I was often confused, my first reaction thinking that the hello-wers were simply people whom I had briefly met before, but couldn’t remember (Fuqing was a small place like that). Later, I postulated that the “hello’s” were simply a kind gesture, so as to say “Welcome to China our foreign friend” or something along those lines. I didn’t hear the full story until one night I was walking around downtown Fuqing with my Chinese friend Yueting, when a group of teenage boys with spiky hair and warm-up suits, passed us bringing with them a chorus of “HAAA-LOWWW.” Yueting turned to me and angrily said “I hate that,” and pointed out that Chinese people never greet strangers (this is true) and that the “hello’s” were purely mocking in nature. To put it simply, it would be like me walking around the streets in Kansas City, and whenever I see a Chinese person (or any Asian for that matter) yelling “Chinaman” at them. I’m sure this has happened at points in US history.

I should mention that the “hello’s” come in several different flavors, and aren’t always inherently mocking in their intent. There is the occasional student who passes me on the street, probably freshly out of English class, who gives me a casual “hello,” not in attempt to make a joke, but simply to be polite, or as a small opportunity to use the English he has learned in school, albeit such a small morsel. There is also that eager English learner who will accost any foreigner in the street in attempt to strike up conversation to practice their English. This, although annoying at times, is at least respectful, and doesn’t come with any condescending feelings. Then there are the parents who eagerly push their children to “say ‘hello’ to the foreigner” as if I am some kind of zoo animal. However, I would estimate that 80% of the “hello’s” I receive, fall into the mocking category.

In addition to “hello” there is also the occasional (although less and less these days) shout of “lao wai,” which literally means “old outside” or more accurately “foreigner.” “Laowai” is a complicated term, and contrary to the belief of many laowai, it’s connotation is not always negative. It’s often used in conversation as a convenient abbreviation for the technical term for foreigner, “wai guo ren,” which literally means “outside country person.”

In a completely isolated instance, one time I was walking around a downtown Fuqing, when I passed a group of teenage boys. Just as I passed, out from the crowd came the phrase “Suck my dick!” in heavily accented English. All the boys laughed. This time I was laughing too.

The “hello” problem is typically inversely proportional to how cosmopolitan a particular city is. For example, in Shanghai if you hear a “hello” it’s probably from the white guy going the other direction on the escalator who notices that you two are wearing the same Van Halen T-shirt. Beijing is the same. In the big cities, the novelty of foreigners is stale enough that you can no longer get a rise out of simply yelling “hello” at them.

So how do you deal with this “problem?” One way is to just suck it in and keep walking as if nobody is talking to you. The most humiliating response is to turn around and give the deer in the headlights “Hey, somebody just said ‘hello’ to me.” look. Ignoring somebody who is yelling at you from ten feet away can be demeaning enough in some situations and provide an adequate feeling of retribution. A while ago my girlfriend suggested (and now regrets teaching me) the phrase “gan ma,” which means something along the lines of “What the fuck are you doing?” not in the tone you would get from your parents after leaving the bathwater running until it overflowed, but more so in the sense of the way people would respond if you stood at a street corner in July singing Christmas carols with your underwear on the outside of your pants. Basically, if you walk up to an average Chinese person and yell “ni hao” at them, “gan ma” is what you will get in return. “Gan ma” worked really well because not only did it throw a quick curveball at the heckler (a typical hello-wer isn’t expecting the foreigner to speak any Chinese) but it also turned the joke back around at them. My favorite time to pull this one out was when a Chinese guy, in the company of females, would “hello” me in an attempt to show off…at my expense. Replying with “gan ma” would turn the tables and then he would find himself being laughed at by the girls in his company.

Last May I traveled to Jiangxi and Hunan province with my friend Ron (check out the pics www.benross.net/photos.htm ), and naturally we ran into a lot of hello-ers as we were traveling through small towns. After getting some good mileage out of “gan ma” we came up with an even better solution to the “hello” problem. If one of us heard a “hello” we would immediately turn to the other and with a puzzled look, ask, in Chinese “What language is that guy speaking?” The other one would reply back “I’m not sure, maybe Russian? Pakistani?” This took people completely off balance, with the hecklers either apologizing to us in Chinese, or simply scurrying away, bewildered.

Note: As with most of the “bad behaviors” that Westerners commonly make note of in China, it is only a small percentage of the population who participates in the hello-ing. By in large, most Chinese people would probably find it inappropriate and rude as well.

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