I worked in Hong Kong for a bit, and I lived in a hotel room with really dingy lighting, which I hate, so I’d end up walking around town all night in the heat until it was finally time for sleep. Sometimes I’d look around me on public transport, note that I was substantially bigger, hairier and sweatier than anyone else, and I’d feel like a yeti that had accidentally wandered into an urban area.
But are yetis even primates? I suppose I should know if I am one…
That may be a regional or ethnic group stereotype there. Living in a place with a large Chinese population, they’re sort of known as being “the rude Asians”. (and this is in an area with many little enclaves of different Asian ethnic groups).
“…we Americans will hire an English spokesperson to lend our project more gravitas.”
I though were we just employed to add a veneer of sinister, criminal class?
This pale complexion beauty standard talk is interesting. This is not new in Chinese culture, classic painting often represent women with a lighter skin tone than men.
It was as much of a childhood staple when I was growing up as Dr Who or Thunderbirds. Much loved.
Usually, yes. In China, perhaps not.
AFAIAA, colourism in China is primarily a class thing. Poor women work outdoors and get tanned, wealthy women avoid the sun.
As for Caucasian facial features, from what I’ve gathered a slighter epicanthal fold is favored, but, on the other hand, a flatter nose is generally considered more desirable. (Not the results of any extended polling, admittedly.)
To be fair “super” has undergone some semantic inflation of late…but yeah, if the standatd is “anything like black people being called monkeys” no we don’t have one of those. to be slightly in topic, my wife’s chinese dad just referred to white people as white devils, but I think we earned that one fair and square…
I was curious too - and skimming the ADVChina list, they have a video about this. They said that it’s called that because the job is so simple a monkey could do it, and the only reason you got the job was because you are white. That’s where the term comes from. (Though later they said the term applies to all jobs like this, including non-white foreigners).
They go in to some more detail of examples of basically being hired as set dressing for meetings, to show the company is more international or has foreign interests or “this guy is the architect for the project” even though he’s just some guy in a suit. Straight up lying, basically.
If you want to watch an American and South African white dude drive around China talking about it, link below. Both are English teachers in China, but both did a side gig sometimes and talked about it, as well as know other people there doing those jobs.
In English, mechanics have been called grease monkeys for generations, without necessarily implying a lack of expertise. Tall ships had their rigging monkeys and powder monkeys, mostly a reference to nimbleness and small size.
A quick google shows an ad for a “code monkey (Java or C++ or C#)”, salary $90,000 - $110,000 annually, so probably non-pejorative.
I always assumed the “monkey” expression when applied to a job was referencing a trait that a monkey would have. The mechanic being contorted in the engine bay with his hand routed only god knows where while making it look rather simplistic and easy. The programmer banging away on the keyboard frantically with intense concentration, yet no obvious direction. All of these would be more apt descriptions when observed by a layman rather than someone already in that field. Just my 2 cents.
Oh we have seen it in action.
Nothing causes a wypipo meltdown faster than saying, “all white people are racist”.
Yes, asian beauty standards have traditionally included pale skin for women.
However, breast implants, “double eyelids”, nose jobs, and face-slimming surgeries are all procedures that promise a “european and western” look. There is more to the western beauty ideal than skintone.
This. Knowing that I have privileges isn’t insulting. Insulting is the refusal of people to recognise that luck – not the rabbit’s foot kind, but the “right place, right time” – can influence anything.
Being born with white skin (and possibly money) in a world where people who look like you are the power brokers, is being in the right place, right time. It doesn’t negate the hard work I put in, but boosts it. I also got lucky in that while I have what is recognised as a learning disability, it’s not so severe that other aspects can’t compensate for it, and circumstances helped me on a lot, too: an extra year of kindergarten, because my mom volunteered in my older sister’s class. Split grades in 4/5 and 6/7 meant my concentration issues worked in my favour because I got to do grades 5 and 7 math classes twice. A mother who could afford the time to volunteer to help out, even if she couldn’t afford a babysitter. A mother who read to me early on and started me on a love of stories and as an early reader – influenced by her father who was a great storyteller. The simple timing that I was born into a world where a woman is allowed those things.
All of those are advantages handed to me, that I didn’t work for or control. But change any one of them and I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. Why is it so insulting to recognise that you got some advantages from being part of the in-group? Hell, your average high-school kid can tell you the advantages of that.
Funny thing is, the people ranting on and on about how “some people” need to find offense in anything, are the ones who get soooper offended, any time you imply that they’re lucky. Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but it baffles me how much some people think that good luck is a bad thing to have.
Why is it so insulting to recognise that you got some advantages from being part of the in-group? . . . Maybe it’s the Irish in me, but it baffles me how much some people think that good luck is a bad thing to have.
Well of course, most people in dominant/privileged groups just aren’t clued in to that like you are. Many honestly believe that opportunities in life are equal now, and further, that efforts to address ongoing inequities actually mean that those in dominant groups are “the real victims these days.”
It’s a right mess, and I’m not sure that these things really are getting better.
#notallracists
Wait… recording conversations over walkie-talkie (bikey-crikey?) helmets while riding with helmet cams is a youtube genre?
I… don’t… know? This is the only channel I know of, but I’m not into motorcycles. Youtube thought I’d like it.
Oh God, the “growing oppression of white straight men”.
Nine times out of ten it means they can’t use racial and sexual slurs without worrying that someone will call them on it.
It’s always westerners who equate the Asian beauty ideal of fair skin to “wanting to look like westerners”. Think of this, or other arbitrary beauty ideals, what you want, but that is not the point.
