Narrating Chinese Occidentalism: American Migrants’ Experiences of Everyday Otherness in China

Abstract

Despite the growth in numbers of Westerners in China, research focusing on this body of international migrants remains scarce. This article focuses on Chinese Occidentalism’s mundane manifestations by examining Americans’ experiences of everyday Otherness in China as an illuminating case. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 37 Americans, this article elucidates how they experienced the perceived stereotyping manifested in fantasization, underestimation, and stigmatization during their interactions with ordinary Chinese people at the everyday level. The perceived stereotyping, triggered by Americans’ phenotype and nationality, was fabricated at the intersection of various factors in the Chinese context. Ultimately, these Americans experienced the perceived stereotyping as an exclusionary discourse of Othering that permanently confined them to the conceptual box marked “the foreign Other,” a blurry social construct contingent upon specific facets of Occidentalism in the Chinese context.