Welcome To The Greatest Place On Earth

Back in 2013, the day after I touched down in Beijing, my host invited some of his homies over. They instantly became my new fake friends. I slightly knew my host, a large brother who obsequiously shined his pearly whites for his Caucasian friends.

I concealed my concern, which was legit, and then got on my journalist shit, asking newjack questions. “Which app did this? How do I do this? How do I get around? Can I exercise in this foul ass Beijing air?”

All that shit got answered. Having the priorities out of the way, my questions eventually led to the subject of women.

“Where should I go, to get the pussy?”

This club or that club they answered. Perhaps at a place called Sanlitun where all of the expats and foreigners congregated.

The pussy laced convo segued into who had gotten with which woman over the last week or so. The terminology used amongst them was ‘flags.’ If you got with a chick from Germany, then you could claim her flag. The guys in the room, all claimed multiple flags and discussed the ones they wanted.

As a newjack, I found their perspectives interesting and I pondered the pussy flags that I would accumulate in Beijing.

A new fake friend who was headed home in a few days, whose name escapes me, explained that going back to the states, was going back to ‘The Real World.’ I didn’t fully comprehend it, but when he started speaking about the dating scene, he explained that the odds were in my favor.

The long and short of his summarization was this: Expat men typically dated Chinese women. Expat women, for the most part, they did not date Asian men. I’ll delve into the reasons why in my upcoming book, but most of the expat women didn’t have anyone to date long term and they were often desperate.

So, regardless of how you looked, as a Western foreigner, if you had a functioning heterosexual penis, you could get laid regularly. I found this to be a truism during the next 4.5 years in Asia and realized that things were even better for my pale skinned homies, but whatever.

My new fake friend, who was a few days from returning to the real world where he’d be in the shit, casually turned to me. While all the other fake homies were caught up playing some video game, he quietly said:

‘Welcome to the greatest place on Earth.’

I realized something about my new fake friends. They didn’t have a life long obsession with The Forbidden City. They hadn’t seen The Last Emperor’s fifty times. That had not read From Emperor to Citizen. Coming to China was not an obsession. They were behind the Great Wall for another reason.

Loser Back Home 本国卢瑟

Over the next few months, I found my way in Beijing. For reasons I won’t get into now and will explain in the book, I had to look for employment.

Although I was a certified English teacher with experience, I had difficulty finding work. After interviewing, and reading the ads on The Beijinger, I realized that the Chinese preferred pale-skinned English teachers. Even if said teacher spoke English as a second or third language. Just as long as they were ‘White.’

I kicked, pushed and eventually found work. During a convo, a European coworker mentioned that he had a part-time job where he could show up and not do anything.

He got paid for his complexion connection. Another pale-skinned American coworker described a similar gig, working for a wine company. Eventually, he left because he felt like he was being used. The company he was working for even told him NOT to learn Mandarin. Just show up to some dinners. Hold the wine bottle, smile and of course, be ‘White.’

I started to understand that in Asia, so-called White men could do nothing, have nothing, be nothing and then be celebrated. I kicked, pushed and didn’t complain. I had a functioning dick and met women the same way I did in the States.

One day, by way of the message boards on The Beijinger, I came across a legendary, no excuse me an epic thread from a website called China Smack. I haven’t been able to find it since, but in 2013, know this, hundreds of Chinese girls ‘went in’ on the low-quality foreigners they had been dating.

The overall consensus: They realized that the White guys they had been dating weren’t rockstars. They realized that many of these guys had never had a girlfriend in their home countries. Many were functional alcoholics. A few of these girls called them ‘Losers.’ I truly believe that this thread gave way to the Chinese term ‘Loser Back Home’ 本国卢瑟.