[matthewrudy]

Having lived in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan I take a pragmatic view to whether I should be offended by peoples use of the term foreigner.

The Cantonese "gweilo" (lit. "monster/ghost person") and Taiwanese "adoga" (lit. "big nose") are more clearly offensive in literal meaning.

Both are extremely casual, and in most cases no ill will is intended.

But for each I've encountered situations where it wasn't so pleasant.

Notably once in a remote guangdong town, some people stopped on a motorbike, pointed at me and said "Gweilo" before riding off laughing.

Equally at a good friends wedding, his mum kept referring to me as "adoga" in the 3rd person.

"Adoga comes from England" rather than using my name, which she'd known for the past 3 or so years.

In China, I can't think of a specific situation where I was offended by the use of "laowai".

[farnsworthy]

"Hello monster/ghost person." Yes, that's me?

[mistersquid]

This made me think of a wonderful article titled "While Teaching in Japan, it Took an Enemy to Make Me Feel at Home" [0] which was on the HN front page at the end of 2017. [1]

That article is about the friendship/enemyship between a teacher and a child student, formed by the student’s teasing hostility toward the author as a foreigner.

[0] https://catapult.co/stories/on-campus-yuka-my-enemy-friendsh...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15992603

EDIT: grammar, clarity, readability.

[matthewrudy]

"big nose is from England, he's my son's good friend"