3E Presents: Foreigner Week

I asked nine different people (mainly young) what the word meant, and although their answers were not identical, the following conclusions can be drawn: firstly, laowai carries no particular negative or positive connotations, and secondly, the word is only a noun and not a form of address. That means that saying "Hello laowai" is akin to saying "Hello foreigner" in English (would you ever say that to a tourist?), not "Hello sir/madam".

What my informants couldn't reliably tell me was why the word begins with "old". After pausing to think, several of them pointed out that this word is used in some dialects (particularly the Beijing dialect) as a familiar form of address. For example, a man with the surname Wang might be called "Old Wang" by his friends. But even if there is some connection between this usage and the word laowai, it is clearly not a direct link since laowai is neither a form of address nor an indicator of familiarity. There are in fact numerous colloquial terms beginning with lao that have negative meanings (such as laotouzi in the story above), and some people believe that laowai had a derogatory meaning when it was first coined. But this sort of speculation is hard to verify, and doesn't have much impact on the modern meaning and usage of the word.

Seven Ways to Say 'Foreigner'