Information Derived from Personal Contacts

Personal contact, on the other hand, was referred to in my sample as another important source of information. One male respondent commented on how he saw personal contact with people who had been to China as a reliable source:

Westerners who had worked in China and had come back from China, I did listen to their stories very carefully because the experiences I‘m going to have

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are not going to be media experiences; they are going to be experiences of a person being displaced in a foreign culture.

(Anthony, October 2011)

One of the British students in my sample, 46 who had not been to China, noted that her sister had been to Beijing and told her what it was like. One third of the sample had personal interactions with Chinese people back in their home countries, which provided them with ideas of how real Chinese people lived and socialised. Two teachers mentioned particularly that they had taught Chinese students English back home,47 and two male respondents once had Chinese girlfriends and met with their families,48 which gave them a fairly good idea of how Chinese people thought and interacted, especially in a family environment.

The perceptions that were based on personal contacts were mostly positive. One teacher49 had worked in a company with people from China, and he got the idea that Chinese people were smart and extremely hard working. Another respondent50 noted that his best friend back in Canada was a Chinese person; they went to kindergarten together and spent most of their childhood together, and he even worked at the friend‘s parents‘ restaurant. Thus he always felt very comfortable with China and Chinese people. Another female teacher described similar experiences with diaspora Chinese people in her home country:

When I went to secondary school, I spent about 6 important years (11-18) with a group of Chinese girls. I spent a lot of time with them; I learnt a bit of Chinese with them and also about Chinese cooking. And I learnt a lot about Chinese culture from them. I just became very interested in Chinese culture.

(Carine, October 2011)

For some Western expatriate teachers, their families‘ contacts with Chinese people also served as a good indicator. One respondent‘s51

father was a professor of medicine in Britain and had a lot of Chinese students. Another teacher‘s family once hosted a Chinese academic, which, combined with his knowledge of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong, provided him an idea that Chinese people were very hard working:

46 _{Amy, Mar. 2011.} 47

John, October 2011 and Adam, October 2011. 48 _{Thomas, October 2011 and John, October 2011.} 49 _{Gary, October 2011.}

50 _{Alex, October 2011.} 51

Chapter 4 Intention, Prior Perception and Perception Gap 85

I remember my family back in the UK always have positive views about China and Chinese, not only because the people from Hong Kong traditionally in the UK are always being hardworking and successful—they have a reputation. My mother hosted a Chinese academic; this was when China was still a very much closed country before the country opened up. She hosted a Chinese academic from one of the universities in Beijing. It was for two years and we got along very well.

(JS, October 2011)

As a result of the massive migration movements of Chinese people to the outside world, Chinatowns and Chinese restaurants were referred to in my sample as additional common places for experiencing Chinese cultures. Almost two thirds of the sample mentioned this in the interviews. In Britain, for example, Chau and Yu (2001)‘s study suggests that the consumption of Chinese food has been the main channel for other people in Britain to have contact with Chinese people. One respondent in my study52 noted that she grew up in Chinatown and could use chopsticks when she was only 6 years old. However, to most respondents, such experience was rather limited. One teacher53 commented on Chinese restaurant: ‗You don‘t really know those people. It is just an experience.‘ She further commented that the same Chinese people working in the catering service were not often seen socialising with the rest of the society, and they somehow disappeared into their own isolated community after work. In Britain, as Chau and Yu (2001, p. 116) argue, ‗the interaction between many Chinese and the members of mainstream society is essentially limited to a commodity relationship regulated by the private market‘, particularly by the catering service. They observe that, from the British perspective, the trade with a Chinese restaurant is based predominantly on cultural differences, namely, how distant the experience is from the routine meal British people would have. In addition, the fact that a large proportion of Chinese migrants are based in catering service market attracts more attention to them as a commodity rather than citizens (Chau and Yu, 2001, p. 119). This sheds some light on the reason why some participants frequented Chinese restaurants back home but still had the idea that the Chinese people working there were very much unknown, mysterious and often not active in socialising with the rest of the population outside of work.

52 _{Judy, October 2011.} 53

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