这个podcast是为了外国学生，但是我觉得它的内容很消极。干吗叫我们“老外”？为什么你要让大家以为所有的留学生都一样并且都很黄色？Why are so many Chinese materials so full of stereotypes and slurs?
Not politically correct perhaps, but quite interesting. Interesting material is good for language learning. Sound quality is good as well. Not a fair representation of all foreigners. On the other hand, most people studying this lesson are 'foreigners" so I don’t see any problem.
I agree, sound quality is good, it is interesting. I feel like a lot of learning material for Chinese, not necessarily on LingQ has a lot of embedded racism and Chinese-centric storylines. Eg: Japanese characters that constantly praise China and make comparisons between traditions that China has, but Japan doesn’t; Western foreigners (who are apparently all male and white) as obsessed with Chinese women, alcohol and partying.
I generally really take exception with the term “laowai” because it trains people to talk about all foreigners as a homogenous group which couldn’t be farther from the truth. Chinese always ask questions like: “老外喜欢吃什么” as though all foreigners eat the same food.
(…) I feel like a lot of learning material for Chinese, not necessarily on LingQ has a lot of embedded racism and Chinese-centric storylines. (…)
I have not checked the specific lesson you are referring to, but personally I have not had the same experience as you when it comes to study material for Mandarin. I’ve dozens of books, CDs etc. and I don’t recall having read any more generalizations in them than in other books. But I might just have been lucky.
老外喜欢吃什么however, is something I was asked myself as well when I was in China but most people used the term 外国人. Some people find 老外 even a bit offensive. I think it all depends on who says it with which intention.
To be honest, many Westerners also generalize quite a bit when they talk about “the Asians” as if they were a homogenous group. Even the fact that we often talk of “Mandarin” simply as “Chinese” (thus ignoring the fact that there are many other Chinese languages) shows how little we sometimes differentiate between things.
cctv has lots of really good content on its site for foreigners who would like to study Mandarin. I have watched a lot of their educational videos (language courses for foreigners). In many vids they have foreign women that don’t correspond to the stereotypes you mentioned.
Maybe I have not been sensitive enough to these issues so far but personally I have had more problems with the fact that many Chinese publishing houses don’t seem to proofread their publications before they put them on the market (and the amount of typos, grammatical mistakes and other inconsistencies can be quite overwhelming).
These are the two that I saw recently. I’m really glad to hear that you haven’t encountered as many problems. I have generally found the newer the material, the less offensive it is, so I guess things are getting better.
I heard 外国人 a lot in Taiwan and China from astonished kids as they saw me.
“To be honest, many Westerners also generalize quite a bit when they talk about “the Asians” as if they were a homogenous group. Even the fact that we often talk of “Mandarin” simply as “Chinese” (thus ignoring the fact that there are many other Chinese languages) shows how little we sometimes differentiate between things.”
I don’t think westerners generalise about Asians nearly as much as Chinese do about westerners. They seem to think that every white person speaks European and would automatically speak it with me, which is fine because it’s my native language, but maybe other people might find it annoying.
I think it is not worth taking the lack of political correctness in China too seriously. I laughed recently when a Chinese friend of mine recently told me after getting a massive tan on holiday that she looks like a skinny Latino woman.
I laughed at this… one of my many chinese friends I had while studying in Japan (near china town) always called me “cowboy” and since my brother had a bit of a beard he was “wolf man”. Stereotypes are usually too funny for me to get fed up with them 
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ad Colin: (…) I heard 外国人 a lot in Taiwan and China from astonished kids as they saw me. (…)
That happened to me too, but it was always a very friendly encounter. Something I cannot really say about quite a few situations when I was recognized as a foreigner in a few European countries. As many stereotypes as there may be in China, at least so far I have not faced even a fraction of the kind of anti-foreign sentiments you sometimes are faced with in the West.
By the way, many Japanese do the same thing when they see a foreigner. Being called a “gaijin” 外人 (some Japanese told me that it was a less polite form of 外国人, gaikokujin, while others felt this was not the case at all) when I entered restaurants and/or bars was quite a common thing. Again, it was usually more a sign of astonishment than anything else.
(…) I don’t think westerners generalise about Asians nearly as much as Chinese do about westerners. They seem to think that every white person speaks European and would automatically speak it with me, which is fine because it’s my native language, but maybe other people might find it annoying. (…)
I think they do. I went to China again last year and before I went lots of people asked me if I was planning to eat dogs and rats. As if all Chinese ate dogs every day.
I don’t understand why people would get upset if they are addressed in English. I heard the same complaint over and over again by Westerners in Japan who were not native speakers of English.
On the one hand we get swamped by English every day in our own societies and most of us readily accept this, allowing English to replace our own native tongues partly or wholly in our work life (there are companies whose “internal language of communication” now is English despite the fact that they are basically German, Austrian etc. companies with a huge staff whose native tongue is German) and on the other hand people get all sensitive when they are spoken to in English while in China.
I have not heard nearly as many Westerners complain about this when they go to another Western country. How many times do English speakers really ask locals if they actually speak and/or understand English before they address them in English? It used to be more common in the past to be asked, but to be honest this hardly ever happens now in Austria for example which is a country with a high number of English speaking tourists.
(…) … the lack of political correctness …after getting a massive tan on holiday that she looks like a skinny Latino woman. (…)
Is this politically incorrect? He/she generalized, ok, maybe based on a lack of knowledge but in my view that statement is not politically incorrect.
Besides, I think in the West we have by far overshot the mark in this respect. I am very much in favour of trying to be as respectful as possible in my relationships with other people, but our political correctness (especially in relation to the way we use our languages) has produced some really strange results (like the terrible and grammatically completely incorrect so-called “Binnen-I” in German; when they write “KollegInnen” instead of “Kollegen” for example).
Finally, I think stereotypes between Westerns are far more common and in most cases lead to a much less friendly attitude towards foreigners than what I have experienced in any Asian country I have been to so far. Just think of how Americans are still viewed by lots of Europeans (they have no culture at all, they all only eat fast food, all of them carry guns, their English is not even “real English” etc.). The French are also faced with numerous stereotpyes which are anything but flattering. So are the Germans I guess. The list goes on and on…
I don’t think the Chinese are that much different except for the fact that I find the results of their stereotyping rather benign.
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I think people here who study foreign languages are more tolerant to different cultural, educational, ethical, …, backgrounds, and are willing to spend some time dabbling in how the culture or society develops in the countries the target languages are spoken.
Although I’ve never been in China, and I can’t speak for people there. I have to admit that quite a lot of Asians generalize Caucasian* as a homogeneous group especially in the countryside mainly because people there have less opportunities to encounter people different from their own, but this happens less in some big cities. This also happens in some other European countries as well. My experience told me that people in these countries only recognize Asians as either Chinese or Japanese, and probably Korean comes after. Vietnamese, Singaporean, Tai, Lao, Taiwanese, Cambodian, Myanma, Mongolian, …, hardly come first in their mind. Reason? 
As far as the stereotypes mentioned by @danednie, it also reflects a lot how the societies develop. If you spend some time dabbling in how these Asian societies developed after the World War II, or after 1980 if you are only interested in China, you will know why. Personally I am also quite often asked if I eat dogs, asked on the street in Chinese/Japanese, treated obscenely while walking through somewhere, etc. C’mon, don’t take it too serious. There are so many other nice things in the life to enjoy.
As @Robert said, the list can go on and on …
As for the term 外国人, I think it’s quite neural to me especially people don’t know where you come from. Of course, it also depends on how tones are applied.
Note: Sorry, I still don’t like the usage of the term Western. Since the world is (almost) a sphere, how do people define Western or Eastern? It nerves me from time to time. Can I also call it a stereotype?
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(…) 为什么你要让大家以为所有的留学生都一样并且都很黄色？ (…)
I attended language courses in Japan, Taiwan and China and I must say that many students who were high school or college students actually were a lot into partying and drinking. If you compare a Chinese university with a European one for example, I’m pretty sure that there are a lot more parties (including some heavy drinking) going on in European student dorms than in Chinese ones. That was also the impression some of my Chinese friends had when they spent their exchange year in Austria (and they stayed in student dorms).
And I would not say we (non-Chinese people) are “slurred” in textbooks for foreigners wishing to study Chinese.
As for the term “laowai”:
If you watch the hordes marching and shouting “Foreigners out!” in Europe, the US and Australia as well (I remember some incidents around Melbourne and along a popular beach outside of Sydney), well that’s what I’d call “slurring” (because they don’t just chant “foreigners out” but combine that with a lot of other denigrating slogans directed at foreigners). How benign does “laowai” sound in comparison to that…
EDITED
dude 老外 isnt in any way a racial slur unless they throw some other adjectives in there with it. its even friendlier than saying 外国人. honestly chinese doesnt even have much in the way of racist words. they just call anyone who isnt chinese a 老外. even here in america they still refer to me as 老外 rather than 老美 even though theyre the foreigners here. bottom line is that theyre no more racist than we are, just another reason why you cant learn the language and culture of a country separately
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@ Robert
Let us not forget Austrian stereotypes…
http://stwww.geekexchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/arnold-terminator-almostdidnotstar.jpg
ad Colin (…) Let us not forget Austrian stereotypes… (…)
I still have to meet a single Austrian who actually watched “The sound of music”.
Ah, Arnie is quite an interesting person. I would not know, however, what stereotype he is supposed to stand for.
I have neither his muscles nor his money…but I share his craving for some of our traditional desserts (just that in my case the craving shows).
@Colin
I’ve only actually been to Arnie‘s homeland once - a family holiday when I was about 13.
As I got on to the plane to return home I said to myself: “I’ll be back”.
@ lovelanguagesIII
“I have neither his muscles nor his money”
Well at least you don’t have his English…
Imagine that English coming out of the interpreting booth!
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That’s the kind of English we often hear from speakers at conferences (I’m not kidding):
Especially the last part is almost typical of what we are presented with. This is why I am not in favour of the “we speak all English” policy of companies etc. Let them speak in their native languages unless they have reached a level that is at least comprehensible. Listening to these presentations may still be ok but if you have to interpret something like this simultaneously, you are up against a major challenge. At least the guy in the vid was not speaking fast.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle the efforts of people who speak in a foreign language. I just don’t understand why so many, especially native speakers of German, try to speak English at conferences where we then have to interpret their “English” back into German. That is kind of ridiculous.
Quoting dylan jesky：
dude 老外 isnt in any way a racial slur unless they throw some other adjectives in there with it.
The word 老外 is definitely negative. 外国人 acknowledges that the person is foreign 外, from a country国, and they are a person 人. In contrast 老外 is dehumanising in that you are just outside, that’s all. I hear it much more when people are angry or drunk, or if the speaker is older. Younger Chinese recognise that it is an impolite address term, you can definitely feel the awkwardness in the room when someone says it. Its treated as a "don’t worry about him, he doesn’t know any better.
I don’t think Westerners are perfect either, but its not like the learning materials that people use to study English for example is fully of cultural generalisations in the same way that Chinese material usually is. How do you think people would react to a pocast called “The Asian eats dog at the Restaurant”?
Most Chinese that haven’t had much exposure will rely on generalisations to deal with the big scary unknown of “foreigners”. Calling people 老外 is a way to make them feel like they are of a higher status, in that the local people are more valued 当地人 , and the outsiders (老外) have deficiencies.
The fact that Chinese overseas refer to the local people as 老外 is not a justification, its just a reflection of their lack of intimacy with the local people, or their lack of respect. They should be saying “美国人” or 当地人／本地人
@ lovelanguagesIII
I don’t think his English sounds so bad but maybe I am used to this kind of thing. He completely mangeled quite a few words early on the video.
(…) Calling people 老外 is a way to make them feel like they are of a higher status, in that the local people are more valued 当地人 , and the outsiders (老外) have deficiencies. (…)
I remember being called a 老外 by an ice-cream seller in Qingdao. He was smiling at me and he actually gave me a discount after he heard that I am from Austria. He engaged in small talk and was very pleasant.
I don’t think he was in any way suggesting that I was inferior to him.
(…) you can definitely feel the awkwardness in the room when someone says it. (…)
I think you can feel that awkwardness when you are with people who have become more sensitive to that issue themselves. This is mostly the case with Chinese people who have spent some time abroad. I agree that there are instances where 老外 can be used in a derogatory way. But it takes more than just the term itself to create the atmosphere you described.
You can do the same with the German word “Ausländer” for example. Strictly speaking, it simply means “foreigner” but over the years it has gained a bit of a negative connotation due to the fact that many nationalistic groups used the term in almost exclusively negative contexts.
Besides, the term “foreigner” in English does not have any part in it that refers to a human being either (I’m referring to your argument that 外国人 has the character for “man, person” in it while 老外 does not). And considering the fact that native speakers of English use the term “foreign” to denote things they feel not that related to or that appear to be strange to them (the unknown as you described it very much reflects what the English term stands for) shows that Mandarin is not the only language where “people from the outside” are simply referred to as such.
In quite a few English speaking countries the official term for foreigners is “aliens”. Now, that would make for an argument of “dehumanization”.
(…) “The Asian eats dog at the Restaurant”? (…)
An honest question, because my Mandarin may not be as good as yours: I checked the first file (Roast Ducks and Pancakes) and I can’t find any passage where they actually portrayed ALL foreigners as “sexist” or whatever. They said some foreigners use the terms mentioned in the dialogue to refer to a specific type of women. They also said that they thought that foreigners who do so, do not mean any harm by it etc.
Ok, the dialogue may not be a masterpiece of sociological study but I can’t see why it would actually be offensive to people.
And if it should be true that Westerners often are portrayed in such a negative way in teaching material as you suggest, then I’d say the Chinese people deserve even more respect for the fact that they mostly treat foreigners with much more kindness and openness than I have experienced in many other countries. Being a professional interpreter I have been to about 40 different countries and China is one of the countries where I felt most welcome as a foreigner, no matter whether they called me a 老外 or not.
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@ lovelanguagesIII
What did you think about Qingdao? Did you see the railway station? I got a shock when I saw it. I met somebody who grew up in the finantial district there who said that when he was a kid (about 15 years ago), it was all farms.