I stood in the piazza, surrounded by tinkling espresso cups and beer glasses. This wasn’t Europe – this was Tianjin, a city near Beijing where I was visiting my aunt and uncle.
This was “Italian style town”, an area of in the old Italian quarter of the city.[1] “Italian style” was a bit of a misnomer, however. European would be more accurate. This is not to be confused with Florentia village, which is also near Tianjin.
And European it was. The first time I went to visit, my uncle told me, with a hint of pride, that some of the building materials were from Europe. I have to say, they did a great job. Dull-red tiled roofs, European styled façacdes, French bistro chairs – they even had a few murals on the ceilings of passages, which was a great hit with the locals.
This is not a unique phenomenon in China – ‘fake’ European cities have been popping up all over the country in recent years.[2] There are four Eiffel Towers in China. There is a Chinese logic to these cities – if you can’t go to Europe, why not bring Europe to yourself? This is not meant to be a condescending statement – given the aesthetics of our politics today, the phenomenological outweighs any considerations of providence and authenticity.
In a sense, this is a massive museum exhibit, and as with all museum exhibitions, what and how we choose to exhibit exposes more of ourselves than the object being displayed. And what is exhibited is a Chinese-drawn caricature of Europe. Well, continental Europe, at least – in an amusing foreshadowing of Brexit, the UK was not included.
So what was chosen to represent the nations of Europe? I went from restaurant to restaurant – France was represented by quaint tables and bistro chairs with checkered tablecloths and Eiffel Tower wallpaper; Italy had a suspiciously similar tablecloth and a literal pyramid of red wine, Germany had a fucking Schwenker[3] and long beer garden tables reminiscent of Oktoberfest; Spain, bafflingly, had all their servers in Spanish football jerseys.
Most of these restaurants had wallpapers of the countries they were representing, and some had TV screens looping touristy videos. What was strange was that the people in the pictures and videos were all white. Indeed, in this replicate European town in China, all representations of Europe are white-washed, leaving only smiling Caucasians. Even the food was whitewashed – you’d expect an European area, or at least the German part, to have kebabs. But alas, no kebab was to be found.
“This is the Europe that extreme Front National and Lega Nord supporters want. And I’m in China.”
Where does that leave us? Racism in China is a strange animal – I think the Chinese are the only people in the world who have constructed a racial hierarchy and not put themselves at the top. Instead, white people are still at the top, with Chinese people second, and the rest of the world beneath.[4] This is, of course, a 19th and 20th century construction – colonialism precipitated the Fanonian internalization of inferiority. Its legacy is still prevalent today – a recent laundry detergent ad had an Asian woman stuff a black man into the washing machine, and he emerged as a pale-skinned Asian man.[5] Guangzhou, known for having a large black population, is called “chocolate city”, and has been described as a “black invasion”.[6] Much closer to home, my parents still remind me to “stay away from Hispanics and black people”, and once my friend complained about there being too many “black people” in the US. In contrast, popular and commercial culture still put a premium on whiteness.
The other dimension of such racism is that it’s couched in pseudo-scientific objectivity. At least for my parents’ generation, their racism stems from a genuine belief that physical features meant certain races were inherently inferior. They’re not aware that these ideas are intellectually descended from 19th century pseudoscience such as phrenology that was, ironically, used to justify the colonization of their own country.
Thankfully, such racism is getting more attention in the country, and with a population that travels more often,[7] the situation might improve with my generation. What China needs, ironically, is a healthy dose of Marxism – the acknowledgement that systemic inequalities both internationally and nationally are the reason for creating the realities that feed into their racist narrative.
Ultimately, the white-washed Europe presented in this Italian quarter doesn’t exist, nor should it be seen as kind of utopia. After all, what kind of utopia doesn’t have kebabs?
[1] Tianjin was one of the many port cities that were ‘leased’ under foreign rule during colonialism. It was divided up by nine foreign powers at one point.
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/cities-china-ripped-off-from-the-rest-of-the-world-2015-7/#across-the-river-from-hong-kong-is-overseas-chinese-town-east-oct-a-sort-of-ecotourism-theme-park-that-has-a-man-made-lake-and-an-entire-district-thats-modeled-after-switzerlands-interlakeninterlaken-town-hasa-five-star-resort-with-a-spa-golf-course-and-steam-train-as-wellas-an-imitation-of-thekappelbrcke-a-covered-wooden-footbridge-in-lucerne-4
[3] Massive hanging barbeque
[4] This is a good article on this. Also, there’s even a hierarchy within “Asians”, with China obviously at the top. https://qz.com/945053/china-has-an-irrational-fear-of-a-black-invasion-bringing-drugs-crime-and-interracial-marriage/
[5] https://qz.com/693978/the-story-behind-the-racist-chinese-ad-where-a-black-man-gets-his-skin-color-scrubbed-off/
[6] https://qz.com/1027809/us-and-european-leaders-finally-agree-on-something-suspicion-of-chinese-takeovers/
[7] Recently I saw an ad for a Chinese chauffer abroad. Basically, you get to a country, use the app, a Chinese driver who lives in that country comes to get you, and shows you around the city. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
Life on the Wall 