FBC

[I'm going to get in trouble with this post. I just know it.]

The first language I ever spoke was Cantonese. My first official word, according to my darling mother, was "mum mum," which did not actually mean "mother" as you would suspect. It actually meant "food" in pseudo-Cantonese-baby-speak. This does not surprise me; I was a very fat baby. I went to a local nursery in Hong Kong (called Woodland Pokfulam Pre-school, and if I could remember the words in Chinese I'd throw them here just to show off a bit) for two years prior to my family's move to Peoria, IL.

Sure, while I went to the Rainbow Kindergarten in the States, I must've picked up some English, right? Nah. I was all of 3 to 4 years old with a wailing, loudmouth, oh-god-the-walls-are-shaking of a baby sister at home. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is precisely how she has American citizenship. She was born there.) Beyond memories of folding an origami-type scarf for a snowman from old newspapers and maybe getting tackled by a neighbor's dog so hard that I flew back about seven feet (it was a German Shepherd, too, the bitch)…I don't remember much of Peoria.

I imagine that dog-tackle had something to do with it. (Though seriously, my parents say that the incident is the reason why I was scared of dogs for a while.)

On return to Hong Kong in 1988, I attended my first international school: Chinese International School. Now, here's the hilarious thing: for three years, I was in ESL. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's English as a Second Language, which basically means that I was retarded with my English and had to be stuck into this class in an effort to improve my English skills. I still remember Mrs. Castle, the ESL teacher. (I do, in fact, remember all my homeroom teachers from K-12, because I have a terrifyingly powerful memory.)

To give you an idea of just how bad my English was, I spoke Cantonese daily, in between classes and after school. My parents, both working at the time, would demand that I be watching Sesame Street every afternoon. What did I do instead? Well, I would watch my Cantonese cartoons (which was really the anime show Attack No. 1 dubbed in Cantonese… my first ever anime and probably what made me end up going for volleyball years later)… and then, when I heard the elevator outside the apartment ding onto our floor and heard the key turn in the lock of our front door, I would quickly switch to the English channel and pretend like I was watching Elmo the entire time.

I was a sneaky little brat. Still am.

Anyway, lucky for me, I graduated from ESL just in time for our family's move to Singapore.

Now the point I'm trying to get at here is that my English, in the early years—the years that psychologists and linguists alike say are most key to language development in children—was abysmal. I mean, think stereotypical Chinglish, and that was me.

Singapore didn't exactly help, either, with the whole country speaking "Singlish" and me attending a local, all-girls school. If you've never heard it, it is a brutal combination of English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Malay, and Tamil that, when coupled with a terrifying accent, is designed solely as a linguistic challenge—a secret language, if you will—that only an elite few (i.e., the population of Singapore) is capable of understanding.

It does make Singaporeans easy to spot in a crowd, though. Just listen for a "OH MA GOTT WHY YOO SO LIKE DAT AH?" and yeah, just ask them if they're from Singapore (or Malaysia) and come back and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.

(There's actually a really old E-mail type thing out there where Singlish has been put into the written word to recreate the "TREE LEETLE PIK BLADDAHS"…aka the story of the Three Little Pig [Brothers].)

Up to this point, I had a cute little British accent and my English, thanks to the influence of my parents (who refused to speak in Singlish at home), was decent, if not good.

Then came the Philippines in December, 1993, and my second international school: Brent International School, Manila. This international school used the American school system and taught American curricula, which basically meant that it also taught American English. This is where my English really took off, as our English teachers were primarily Americans, not necessarily Filipinos. It was also here that I picked up my American accent, as many of the students themselves were American.

Five years later, when I moved to Beijing, I took on the International Baccalaureate Diploma program in my last two years of high school (think AP but a million times worse), complete with Higher Level English (as opposed to Standard Level). I graduated and completed the Diploma program with a 6 in English (max score 7). Not perfect, but far from bad. I know I was happy since I'd survived a—for lack of a better word—bitch of a teacher.

My American slang made its appearance during my years in Beijing, since the International School of Beijing was not allowed to take local Chinese students, taught an American curriculum, and had a predominantly North American student population.

I should note here that, by this time, my Cantonese had long since taken a backseat to my English, with English being my primary, "native" language.

It was in college that I realized that while I may not be the best at plucking literary devices out of a piece of classical literature, I was by no means a slouch at writing...particularly in a grammatical sense. I was the go-to girl for all of my friends' paper-writing needs; they'd write their papers and I'd go at it with my trusty red pen (which, strangely enough, ran out of ink too quickly for my liking), editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation…not to mention your basic essay-writing do's and don'ts.

I, the international student whose early years were marred with aye no speekee gud inglees, was now asked by native English speakers to edit and correct their English.

How the hell did that happen?

Well, it's a combination of three things. First, there's the fact that I had to build my English foundation from the ground up, and that I was educated not just using English as a primary teaching medium, but I was actually educated in the basic usage of English. The humiliation of being in ESL (which is what it was considered to be back in those days… an embarrassment to be sent to ESL classes) also drove me to try much harder when learning English. Ergo, I had to pay very specific attention to what I was doing when writing and speaking, if only to ensure that I did not make any mistakes.

Second, there was my seventh grade English teacher, Ms. McKibbin, when I was in the Philippines (who I maintain had a thing going on with our Social Studies teacher, Mr. Jordan). I will always remember her because she was the one who basically drilled basic English structure into our brains. We didn't do literature in that class. We did grammar. Syntax. Breaking down sentences daily to identify each individual part, from punctuation to word form to sentence structure.

Third, there's me. If I have to name a single talent, well, I'd say it was my ability to remember names like no one's business. If I had to name two talents, however, I'd definitely have to mention my affinity for other languages. Now, I don't speak very many languages (unlike some people I know who make the rest of us look bad, right Romain/Remy?), but my pronunciation and memorization skills are, well, elite.

(I would like to take this moment to note that the Penny Arcade Forums are being a butt and it is annoying me somewhat and ooh that rhymed.)

But yes, in most cases, my pronunciation of any language is pretty spot-on, even if I can barely speak the language itself. This is what I like to call "accent immersion." No matter where I am or what language is being spoken, give me a day or two and I can adapt and immerse myself in the accent almost flawlessly. It's what happened when I went to Oxford in the summer of 1999, it's what happens every time I go back to Hong Kong or Singapore or the Philippines, and it's certainly what happened when I was in Texas for volleyball camp. However they speak English in that country, it's how I inevitably end up speaking it (sometimes without even noticing it) if I spend a while there.

I cannot, for some reason, whip this arsenal of accents out at will. My "fake" British accent is appalling. I have to be surrounded in the accent, hearing it regularly, and being spoken to in the accent before I can pick it up. Almost an assimilation, if you will, of the accents around me. Once I leave, I revert back to my "default" accent (which, while American, is not representative of any specific region of the United States), at least until it's time to pick up a new accent.

That was actually a pretty severe tangent from the topic that I've been trying to lead you to. The entire post up to this point is an explanation regarding how my English has become so good. (Usage, practice, etc.) The rest of it, well, is the topic itself.

Here in Shanghai, English teachers are in great demand, to the point where most of the my foreign friends are only here to teach English. Depending on the company, you may or may not need a college diploma or any experience at all in teaching, and even with minimal qualifications you can still make a good salary that is enough to live quite comfortably on. I, too, briefly considered this track for a while, as teaching English would pay me more than what I'm making now while working half the hours.

But then comes a horrible truth: there are no language centers who will hire me to teach English. Why? Because I do not look like a foreigner.

Welcome to Shanghai, folks. Maybe even China in general, I can't say for certain. But even though my English is better than that of all my peers here in Shanghai (including the ones who are English teachers), no one will hire me to be a teacher. I look Chinese. Even if the company is willing to overlook that fact and hire me anyway, their clients sure as hell won't.

Their mentality would likely be, "What the hell, why am I paying this much money to be taught by a Chinese person who is exactly like me and probably doesn't know shit about English?" Even if I were to walk into the classroom, looking spiffy, and speak in my perfect English, the judgment is still there and anything that comes out of my mouth at that point would probably go through a severe filter or two in their brains, to the point where they are more likely to complain at me (or to the company) than bother listening.

Isn't it depressing? My mother wanted to teach English up in Beijing, and mentioned it over lunch to her Chinese teacher and a fellow student (yes my mother took Chinese classes up in Beijing, at Qinghua University, no less). My mom laments to the teacher that no one would hire her as an English teacher simply because she is Chinese. The Chinese teacher says no, that can't be true… when the fellow student jumps in and says that "No, they've asked ME to teach English, too!"

This "fellow student" is a 40-something woman from Hungary, with blond hair and blue eyes… and whose CHINESE IS BETTER THAN HER ENGLISH. That entire lunch conversation was in Chinese.

They would rather hire a foreigner who can't speak proper English to teach…over a Chinese person whose English is close to perfect. The even more moronic fact is that people like my mother and I are probably going to be better teachers, period, just because we came from a Chinese background but LEARNED and eventually MASTERED the English language.

I mean, we went through everything they're going through in trying to learn English. We MIGHT know what we're talking about when we're teaching them, you know. Maybe. But okay let's be fair…we at least have a better idea than most foreign teachers with regards to just how hard it is to learn English coming from a Chinese-speaking environment.

At least.

English teachers make twice my salary working no more than 30 hours a week, and they don't even have to be qualified in most cases! (Granted, the better places require that you have some experience in teaching, but many language centers don't ask for much more than looking white.)

And twice my salary is more than enough for a foreigner to get by comfortably here in Shanghai.

This is just one of the things that an FBC (foreign-born Chinese) has to deal with while living in Shanghai. You wanna talk racism? Talk Shanghai and its very special brand of it.

Now. Looking at me, it's blatantly obvious that I'm not local Chinese. Whether it's the way I look, dress, act, or speak, anyone with half an eye and a second's worth of attention can tell that I am not Shanghainese. Another second will tell you that I'm not from the mainland, either. I know this because my coworkers have pointed it out, as have many other locals who actually pay attention to people instead of judging them right off the bat.

Yet, because most people can't be bothered (or, to be fair, just don't have the time) to spare me an extra second's consideration, I get treated like a local. Is this bad? In Shanghai…yeah, it is.

Shanghainese people treat foreigners infinitely better than locals. Foreigners are put on this glamorous pedestal, so that people who were nobodies back in their home country are treated like kings and queens out here. They are paid expatriate salaries, for the most part, and are therefore assumed to be affluent and rich. Which is technically true; expat salaries are head-and-shoulders above local salaries, allowing for very comfortable lifestyles for most foreigners.

When I'm hanging out with my friends, the vast majority of whom are foreigners, it is instantly assumed that I am a local Shanghainese girl who's obviously only hanging out with them for their money. This assumption is made by just about every type of person, from locals to foreigners alike, and it drives me up the fucking wall.

It's not that being a local Shanghainese girl is a bad thing. It's that being labeled as a gold-digging, unintelligent skank is a bad thing. The fact of the matter is that local Shanghainese girls are, for the most part, NOT gold-digging, unintelligent skanks. But, as with their counterparts in the western world, there are enough of them that it gives them all a bad name. These GDUS are everywhere, in every country and city and culture…and I get labeled one just for looking Chinese and chilling with my friends. Especially when foreigners (aka "rich people") are involved.

How do I know this assumption is made about me? Oh, the stories I could tell. On the not-so offensive side, they simply involve a local ignoring my friends and speaking to me in Shanghainese when I've already made it quite clear that I am not Shanghainese…or even looking bewildered when I take the check to pay for my own dinner. On the more aggravating side, they involve snooty little French punks apologizing to me for one of his lady friends hitting on one of my guy friends because he assumed that, since I was even talking to my guy friend (and even though it was blatantly obvious to 80% of the bar that we were JUST friends, being that I was getting looks regardless), I was flirting with this friend and looking to get him in bed… and that I was somehow disappointed that my guy friend went for the French chick instead.

Man WHAT.

Shanghai is essentially what Hong Kong was 20 years ago, and while Hong Kong has gotten to the point where it treats locals and foreigners on the same level, Hong Kong has also become ultra-judgmental and snooty and pretentious, to the point where I would rather live in Shanghai than Hong Kong and deal with reverse racism.

I say Shanghai the city because this kind of mentality is less prevalent in Beijing. In Beijing, yeah, foreigners get treated like shit…but so does everyone else. Beijingers will treat anyone, white/yellow/brown/black the exact same way, and I appreciate that about the city.

I guess my problem with Shanghai isn't that I get treated badly just for being Chinese. At the core, my ire is fueled by the simple fact that there is a difference in treatment to begin with.