So, I previously had a blog post called Colorful Conversations: Good Enough. It was about a conversation I had with a rickshaw driver in Kunshan. I’m coming back to this topic this week because we are talking about stereotypes in my class. One of the discussion points for this topic was “Commercials Gone Wrong.” I showed students a series of commercials by the Italian company Dolce and Gabbana that caused quite a stir among Chinese people. Interestingly, while many students seemed to have heard about the controversy, only one or two had seen the commercials before my class.
The commercials show an Asian woman, who students told me looked and behaved like a prostitute from the early half of the 20thcentury, using chopsticks to eat traditional Italian food, such as a pizza. While she makes attempts to use chopsticks to eat a pizza that hasn’t been pre-sliced, there is a male voice instructing her on how to use the chopsticks. You can watch the commercials yourself, but it’s not hard to see why Chinese people might feel offended. One student commented that it was ridiculous for this Italian company to be telling the woman how to use the chopsticks to eat when Chinese people are the experts on using chopsticks.
In order to prevent the class from turning into an angry discussion about how the world stereotypes and looks down on Chinese people, I then showed them another commercial made by the Chinese laundry detergent company Qiaobi. When I first saw this commercial, I did not know what was going to happen. It features a woman doing laundry when a black man who has clearly been painting comes into the room. He has paint on his face and clothes, but the man and woman flirt with each other in a way I thought was very open-minded for what I knew from my experience being in a biracial couple in China.
I smiled.
She then stuffs a detergent packet in his mouth when he leans in for a kiss and stuffs him into the laundry machine. She closes the lid, starts the washing machine, and sits on it as she waits for the load to finish. During this time, you can hear the groans of the man as he is supposedly knocked around the machine and probably trying to get out. When the load is finished, the woman opens the lid and a pale-skinned Asian man comes out in a stark white T-shirt. Not only had the paint been removed from the shirt, the black had also apparently been washed out of the man.
You can imagine I was no longer smiling.
My students gasped when I showed them the commercial. It seems most of them had missed this commercial and the controversy around it.
We went on in that class to have a fruitful discussion about the different thoughts that crossed their mind when watching the first series of commercials versus the second. One student admitted that before coming to an international university and meeting black students, she felt the same way as the woman in the Qiaobi commercial. She also thought white was better. Another student said that he felt angry and offended when he saw the Dolce and Gabbana commercials, but he thought the Qiaobi commercial was funny. He then felt bad about it. He knew that he should be equally angry at both commercials, but he wasn’t.
I told them that my class wasn’t a place where anyone would be judged for their thoughts or feelings, and I appreciated them sharing so openly and honestly. We were after all human beings. We all had stereotypes. We would all at some point or another likely say something offensive. What was important was how we dealt with this problem.
In that class, I shared with students some of my experiences around race in China. One such colorful conversation was with a Didi (China’s Uber) driver on my way to school. This event occurred during my Peace is Every Step: The Path to Mindfulness in Everyday Life phase. This amazing book made me very chill. So, when I noticed that the driver that day was trying to covertly take my picture more so than keeping his eyes on the road, I just made a peace sign and smiled for a photo with him.
He continued to use his phone throughout the car ride as he kept up a conversation with a group of people on WeChat. [WeChat is a phone application that allows people to send voice and text messages (and much, much more) to an individual or a group of people.] While keeping up a conversation with me, the driver would voice message his experiences with the black foreigner to the group. This caused quite a stir. People sent voice responses, and the driver played it aloud. Two of the people in the group made derogatory remarks about black people. I said nothing. The driver sent a warning to the group, noting that I could understand Mandarin.
He then turned to me and asked, “Do people like you think dark skin is beautiful? I mean, people who look like you.” I responded emphatically, “Of course.”He confirmed, “So, black people think black skin is beautiful? Like you think you’re beautiful?” I responded more fully then, “Yes, we think black skin is also beautiful.”He was in disbelief, “Really? You really think so?”
Yeah, yeah, I really think so.
The twenty-minute car ride ended amiably. I kept smiling and internally tried to be understanding. I reminded myself of our common humanity. I reminded myself that I would feel the same way and ask the same questions had I grown up in his circumstances. However, I was curious about why this man who obviously did not believe I was beautiful because of my dark skin would want a picture with me. It felt like a spectacle, just an event he could tell his friends about. I don’t think he could see our common humanity.
When I think of the ideals of beauty that I see in China, I know that this is not a place where I would want to raise my children. There are many benefits of living in China as an expat. There are many conveniences in a country that is constantly developing its technology and economy. It’s a place where things are always changing. It’s a dynamic and exciting place to live. However, I fear that my future children would grow up to resent the black mother who darkened their skin. I’m afraid my daughter would buy the myriad whitening products that are marketed to young women to meet the beauty standards.
I fear that she, like one of my prior students, would only want to visit Egypt in her dreams. This student was worried that the sun in Africa would somehow irreversibly darken her skin. So, even though she wanted to see the pyramids of Egypt, she would only ever travel there in her dreams.
Of course, that is not to say that I want to raise my children in the United States either. I’ve always said that I didn’t know I was black until I moved to the United States. Black skin is so political there. It can also be dangerous, especially for black men.
I want my children to grow up somewhere else. I want them to grow up in a place where dark skin is also unequivocally, unquestionably beautiful.
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