Macau and the stranger

VivianaSegui* Anthropologist. Visiting lecturer, School of Arts, Letters and Sciences, USJ.

In his essay “The stranger” the Austrian social scientist Alfred Schütz describes the difficulties that a person faces when trying to live abroad, taking the immigrant as the best example. By approaching a new social and cultural group the stranger is suddenly deprived from using his “thinking-as-usual”, that is the system of knowledge that everybody acquires by growing up in a society and through which he manages his daily life behavior without the need to think about it.

The stranger of Schütz fails for the first time when he tries to interpret the new social group in schemes of his “thinking-as-usual” because this group will interpret things in its own cultural pattern. He can neither understand why things happen the way they do, nor behave and express himself by using his “thinking-as-usual”. “In other words, the cultural pattern of the approached group is to the stranger not a shelter but a field of adventure (…)”.

Anybody who has lived for a while in another country will be able to identify with the problems of this stranger. In Macau, however, things go differently. The stranger that comes to Macau will soon meet other immigrants, the so-called expats. They will give him a basic introduction to “how-to-live-in-Macau” and provide him with useful information as “Never open your windows, otherwise your clothes will get moldy and cockroaches will come into your apartment.” They will also show him places where he can find non-Chinese food in case of homesickness.

The foreigner in Macau faces very few rules he has to adhere in order to perform successfully, just as there are no sanctions in case he accidently breaks one. Locals seem to be very indulgent towards newcomers and apparently follow the principle of "laissez-faire". Thus, the foreigner will certainly encounter new forms of behavior but he is not obliged to copy them.

Language usually represents one of the most difficult obstacles for any foreigner to overcome. As Schütz puts it: “Language as a scheme of interpretation and expression does not merely consist of the linguistic symbols catalogued in the dictionary and of the syntactical rules enumerated in an ideal grammar. (…) In order to command a language freely as scheme of expression, one must have written love letters in it; one has to know (…) how to say things in every shade appropriate to the addressee and to the situation.”

In Macau, even this poses no problem. The foreigner doesn’t need to learn Cantonese –as apparently no foreigner does–, he can survive knowing English. This of course, bears the consequences of remaining basically inside a "foreigner bubble" and communicating only with Chinese people if they speak English. He will therefore be deprived from entering a big part of the local society.

If the stranger in Schütz’ essay proves unable or unwilling to follow the new cultural pattern he remains a “marginal man”. In Macau, the stranger joins one of the groups of strangers according to his homeland, stays in a parallel world, and, after a while, becomes a more-experienced-in-Macau-stranger.