You’ve brought up an interesting and important concern regarding the use of the term “foreigner”, or, more to the point: uncritically adopting the categories (in this case, people-categories) that are presented to us (in China, our home countries, or anywhere). IMO, this happens way too much. It’s actually a way of manipulating others’ opinions; I’ve heard it said that “the person who defines the terms always wins the argument”, and the same general thing is true for thought categories. And it is interesting to me how you can easily witness Chinese understandings and usages of 老外 and 外国人 unconsciously adopted by foreigners in China in their thought and speech.

I admit my use of the term “foreigner” on the blog is not very intentional and usually just for convenience sake, and definitely is influenced by 外国人 and 老外。 Your concern has actually been in the back of my mind for a while, but I haven’t paused to explore it much yet. If I wrote a post about Chinese and North American people-categories, then I’d be more careful about what I used. Sometimes I use laowai when I want to specifically refer to usually-native-English-speaking, usually-white foreigners as opposed to Koreans in China (for example), but not consistently. I can only claim laziness! :)

But for these Good Samaritan posts, I didn’t see any reason to use a more specific term than “foreigner.”

But can’t you at least put it in quote marks, or italics?

What’s wrong with using specific language for different contexts and focuses like : non-Chinese, ethnic Chinese, non- Chinese national, ex-pat, foreign tourist, foreign national, visitor, non-Han Chinese or non Han locals etc.

The catch all term foreigner has many sides, lots of baggage, most of it not very pretty.

Thank you for sharing your article with us. I’ve always wanted to read more about this (since I’ve heard a lot about it but have never experienced it first hand).

Too bad that these are happening!