I agree that racism is an ugly thing, and as a local Hong Kong national who has been educated in England, I feel the political correctness there much more than I do here. I think PC is a bit silly, and I retain my personal opinion that most people ARE inherently racist. Not because they are nasty, or want to put other people down, but its just genetically programmed into us to fear those which are different from us. They did an experiment in England, where they used sophisticated make-up to transform a white guy into a black person, and he said when he was walking down the street, he felt hostile stares, and he felt people being afraid of him. I think its inherent, because you are programmed to think, to fear, those whose skin colour is different from your own. Whilst I was doing my Masters, two of my closest friends were black guys, not even "Ghetto" types, I'm talking about moved to England for 6 years from Nigeria and Ethiopia, type black guys. They were by far the smartest in the class, and wrote essays which provoked comments from the lecturer along the lines of, "I WISH I HAD WRITTEN THIS". I could barely understand the topics being taught, and my grasp of the English language was far better than theirs, yet their superior intellect easily compensated for any language barrier. But that's tax law for you.
In terms of "gwei lo" and "mainlander", yes, I would say, (and I am more than 80% certain that I speak for most of the local Hong Kong Chinese) that I would prefer a gwei lo at face value. My generation of Hong Kong people is experiencing a funny kind of identity crisis. Although I feel chinese, I am actually loyal to Her Majesty's Government, as opposed to the Chinese Communist Government. I love my country, my heritage, my history, but I dont love the communist party. Having been educated at English establishments have also marked us out as different. We take a lot of pride in being able to speak fluent English, especially if we master Queen's english (which, even most English people can't do), but we would take less pride if we spoke fluent Mandarin. For business efficacy reasons, it is obviously a good thing to learn Mandarin, and I can just about hold a conversation in Mandarin, but I would definitely toast the Queen before I would consider Mao.
Mainlanders are perceived at face value, to be uncouth, uncultured, bad-mannered, uncivilised, ugly, badly-dressed, un-educated, vulgar-featured barbarians, by us finely cultivated Hong Kongers
. Obviously such disillusions are shattered the minute you get to know good people. Some of my most revered people are Mainlanders, some of the greatest teachers in the world. The rest who hawk and spit freely, and rummage between their toes and dinner tables in restaurants, who can't fucking let other people get off the train before pushing their way in with their damn suitcases in the MTR despite FREQUENT announcements, I continue to view with distaste.
Its not racism to discriminate against your own race, but it REALLY does happen, and I have decided to call it reverse-racism. I found this phenonmenon to be very true when I was in England. I hated seeing Chinese people when I was there (for a very substantial amount of time). I wasn't the only one. I talked to French people who hated hearing French accents, my German roomate said, "Look at that blonde guy, you can spot that fucking German a mile off". This reverse-racism is something I would like to ask you guys about. What do you think?
