CHINESE AND WESTERNERS

The Chinese are not fascinated by your nose. This, I'm sure, comes as a complete surprise. Because EVERYONE knows that Chinese people are 'peculiar', and given to obsessing about the physical attributes of white people.

It's a well known fact!

Several days ago I was in a conversation with a blonde woman who had spent a year in Taipei after three years of studying Mandarin. Obviously her Mandarin was sheer buckets better than mine, given that Mandarin is well-nigh useless anywhere near San Francisco Chinatown.

In Mandarin, the denigrating term for white folks is 高鼻子 (gao bi ze = high nosed thing).


高鼻子!

She herself had been called a gaobize. And she was married to one.
And I too was a gaobize. We all were. Everyone!
She seemed amused by the concept.

So naturally I have spent several hours reading in Chinese about noses recently. My first search on the internet was for the words 'high nose' (高鼻). This was not productive, because in addition to Japanese sites about rhinoplasty, many of the search-results were scientific articles about horned grass-eaters with big snouts. Antelope, Elk, and variants on a Wildebeest.
Image-search for 高鼻 was no better. Most of the results showed Japanese celebrities before and after, several Japanese or Chinese bikini babes, Anita Mui, and Maggie Cheung.

Image-searching for 高鼻子 brought up hundreds of beautiful Chinese and Japanese women, a few Russian hunks, and Jackie Chan.
Plus plastic surgery diagrams.

Turning off safe search increased the amount of smut by approximately one percent. Instead of three cleavage pictures, there were four.
Japanese, I believe.


According to Wikipedia:

鼻，又称鼻子，是陸上動物呼吸的器官，屬呼吸系統一部份，也是哺乳類動物感應嗅覺的器官。
"Nose, also called 'nasal thing', is a land mammal respiratory organ, and that part of the respiratory system which is capable of olfactory experience."

鼻一般在動物的頭部，可能是隆起，鼻對體外的開口叫作鼻孔，鼻孔讓空氣進入鼻腔內，兩孔氣流速度不同，且每隔幾小時就會交換一次。鼻有兩腔，被鼻中隔隔開，哺乳類動物的鼻腔內通常長有鼻毛，作用是過濾及吸收空氣中飄浮的塵埃及雜質，鼻腔壁有黏膜，有助於溼潤吸入的空氣，並附著雜質。鼻腔內後部則是鼻竇，位於鼻兩側的顱骨下，是感應嗅覺的神經，鼻腔連接咽喉，並與消化系統共用管道，再分支進入呼吸系統至肺部。
"The nose in some creatures is raised up on the head, the nose's corporeal openings are called 'nostrils'; nostrils permit air into the nasal cavity, (albeit) not necessarily similar volume, and will vary once in a while. A nose has two cavities, each cavity separated by septum, the category of nose mammals have nasal hairs, to filter crap in the air; noses also have mucous, which moistens the entering breath, thus making the crap stick. The sinuses are behind the nose under the cerebral cavity -- there are olfactory nerves, and the tubing is shared with the digestive system (before) splitting off into the pulmonary department."


Dang, still no mention of white people.


The photo in the chapter on 流鼻血 ("flowing nose blood") is rather grim, and I'm fairly certain that's a white woman. But there is no mention of the size or height of her ruptured proboscis, and I'll assume that both dimension and ethnicity are medically immaterial in any case.
Epistaxis, also called 鼻出血 ("nose-departing blood") may have a variety of causes.
Again, an image-search (for both 鼻出血 and 流鼻血) produced mostly Asian people, a number of them toddlers. Only one white person, and he additionally had a black eye. Very many colour diagrams and schematic illustrations with arrows and text. No smut whatsoever, despite the Japanese having weird ideas about nose-bleeds.


高鼻鬼

Searching for "high nose" (高鼻 gao bi) plus "daemon' (鬼 gui: a common opprobrius nomen for foreigners) in the logical construction 高鼻鬼, brought me several hot-looking women (all Asian), plus zany antics (also Asian), an ibex, two baboons, adorable pugs, a kitten, a raccoon, a mandril, some girl rinsing her mouth, and a Chihuahua. Then more of the same. Along with a picture of an I-Hsing (宜興) teapot (茶壺), with bamboo motif and mouse finial (紫砂竹鼠執壺).

Plus, remarkably, a lovely photo of spaghetti with sauce.

No white people. Not a honky to be found.

Soup, a cactus, a soulful looking doggie, Shang (商) and Zhou (周) bronze axe heads and daggers, a cute little pig-tailed girl, a moist lump of rye bread, a harbor in Taiwan, various cocktails, and a volcano.

No white people.


鼻屎咁!

I am forced to conclude that Chinese people are NOT fascinated by our fabulous noses. This is something I always suspected, but it is never-the-less ego-shattering to have it proven. Somehow I feel diminished, unimportant even. I had here-to-fore been rather pleased with my handsome nasal appendage, and fondly imagined it loved and admired.
A complete fantasy, I know, but extremely comforting.
Woe is me, I now need to reconsider.
It ain't that great.




後附件

So what do Chinese people call Caucasians?

BAI TOU (白頭 'paak tau': white head); this yields several hundred entries about bald eagles, numerous storks and sparrows, and a few pictures of Superman.
BAI GUI (白鬼 'paak gwai': white daemon); mostly drawings and photos of Japanese girls dressed like a small Asian manga child vampire or daemon, sometimes with cat ears. Very cute.
DA BI ZE (大鼻子 'taai bei ji': big nose thing); a search shows Asian hotties, Bill Clinton, Gerard Depardieu, and pure-bred hounds.
Plus mules, a kitty cat, and funny cartoons of noses.
DA GUI (大鬼 'taai gwai': big daemon); ghouls, vampires, zombies (殭屍 'Keung si'; "immobile corpse"), cartoon characters, and stellar hotties (both bikini babes and Japanese manga characters).
But mostly the living dead.
DAN (蛋 'daan': egg); disparaging term for Caucasians who try to act Chinese; white outside, yellow within.
Here's a useful link for egg lovers: 吃蛋吧 - - - 愛蛋人的天堂.
FAN GUI (番鬼 'faan gwai': barbaric/barbarian daemon); many pictures of lychees (荔枝 'lai ji'), custard apples (番荔枝 'faan lai ji'), manga characters, and 劉永福 (mr. Lau Wing-fook).
GUI LAO (鬼佬 'gwai lo': daemon dude), or gui po (鬼婆 'gwai po': daemon old woman), both mostly Cantonese usage; frothy drinks, Latin lovers, cookies, crabs, cars, beads and bracelets, horned Japanese devil dolls and theatre characters.
HONG MAO GUI (紅毛鬼 'hung mo gwai': red furred daemon), this is primarily a Hokkien (閩南語) usage, and rather dated; pictures of cute Japanese schoolgirls in manga costumes, much food, some rambutans (红毛丹 or 毛荔枝) and a few hotties from Hong Kong, Tokyo, or Taipei.
LAO WAI (老外 'lo ngoi': old outside/foreign), a Northern term; many white people, some of them extremely hot.
LAU FAN (佬番 'lo faan': dude barbaric/barbarian), Cantonese usage; more custard apples, manga characters, hotties, and white folks.
YANG GUI ZE (洋鬼子 'yeung gwai ji': oceanic daemon thing); bicycles, Bud's Ice Cream, bikinis. Hotties, and elderly white dudes.
YI (夷 'yi': non-Chinese, tribalist, barbaric, heathen); as in the phrase 以夷制夷 ('yi yi jai yi'): use barbarians to regulate barbarians, let the foreigners fight among themselves. The search for 夷 yields lots of flowers and Chinese girls. Which is remarkable.


The normal term for white people is bai ren (白人 'paak yan': white person).
An image search produced mostly gorgeous women, only a scant few of whom were less than fully dressed. Knowing what I know about the internet, I dared not turn safe-search off for this one.

Xi fang ren (西方人 'sai fong yan') and xi ren (西人 'sai yan') are also used; both mean western person ("occidental").
It's a dry and rather un-inspiring expression, and pictures brought up by a web quest are all across the board, including not only people, but also food, wine, architecture, maps, paintings, the Dutch flag, a cabbage, sushi, Zhou Enlai, statuary, Rembrandt, and grilled tomatoes.

Plus Santa, tattoos, and soap.

Nothing about noses.



終



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================