Throwback Thursday: When Foreigners Taught, and Were Taught, the Rules of the Road

Throwback Thursday takes a look back into Beijing's past, using our 12-year-strong blog archives as the source for a glance at the weird and wonderful stories of Beijing's days gone by.

This past April, a video was posted on Reddit’s China community with the long-winded yet descriptive title, "Sanlitun SOHO Beijing today. After a 5min video with 100% Chinese actors and characters explaining the safety measures, guess who ends up in jail for breaking the rules." The video depicts a bearded cartoon foreigner sitting unhappily in a lonely cell as he serves time for breaking the anti-COVID rules.

A few days after the video was posted, I found myself in the Soho area and decided to watch the full video for myself. In fact, a few minutes before the clipped segment, the video does depict locals in jail for the same reasons, although somewhat less prominently. A generous assessment might conclude that the video creators simply wanted to be inclusive, but even if that were the case, it’s understandable that foreigners would be upset at being depicted as criminals in the midst of a pandemic that pushed xenophobia and discrimination against foreigners to new heights.

Perhaps you also saw the widely shared memes of “foreign trash” being tossed into waste bins for refusing to wear a mask and other behaviors that are by no means exclusive to expats. Or maybe you rolled your eyes as netizens declared that “foreigners should have to follow the rules too!” in response to a Chaoyang Park gathering, conveniently ignoring the many locals who were also present at the picnic. Then there was that one guy who didn't do foreigners any favors whatsoever.

As we discover in this week’s Throwback, however, putting the spotlight on bad foreigners committing the same offenses that locals do is nothing new. Three years ago this month, the Beijinger senior blogger Charles Liu tracked a trend in China of shaming laowai for what is perhaps the most common offense among locals – traffic violations.

In terms of sheer entertainment value, the draw of these videos is obvious: who doesn’t want to watch an officer shame a douchey-looking foreigner at a stoplight for repeatedly claiming “tingbudong”?

Yet, the irony was not lost on all observers. As Liu trawled the internet, he came across an interesting justification for why Chinese media would embrace such content. Apparently, Beijing Mayor Wang Anshun had claimed that “foreigners have a high awareness of the law, but the same person that wouldn't normally cross against a red light does just that when in China.” According to Liu’s interpretation, this meant that the virality of the videos could serve as an educational tool for locals prone to misbehaving on the road.

Later that same month, Liu published another blog on the “Lawful Laowai,” a Chengdu expat who was so fed up with bad drivers that he decided to take matters into his own hands. Whenever he came across someone driving the wrong way or otherwise endangering the lives of pedestrians and other drivers, he would roll up on his scooter, cell phone in hand and shame them on video. His efforts were met with round praise by Weibo commenters who said that his actions reflect a love of China.

The lesson? Chinese-foreigner relations are not always as fraught as some people make them out to be. Yes, sometimes the spotlight unfairly shines on the foreigner, but as many have pointed out before me, that is something that has to be reconciled with a culture that, in the grand scheme of things, is still getting used to the idea of foreigners being around at all. Meanwhile, netizen's response to the Lawful Laowai shows that well-intentioned criticism is welcomed. Chew on that while you ride your bike around town – just make sure that you ride on the correct side of the road.

READ: Throwback Thursday: When Beijing Welcomed a Giant Rubber Duck to Its Waters

Images: adventuresaroundasia.com, Chengdu Economic Daily, Reddit, Bilibili