Ang Mo

The original ‘Ang Mo’.

I know racism is a boh liao topic but please just bear with me one last time. 🙂
First off, apologies in advance to non-Chinese/Hokkien readers. This entry will be written from a Chinese guy’s point of view so much of this entry might not be entirely comprehensible. Also for this entry only I shall use ‘we/us’ to refer to Chinese and ‘them’ to refer to Caucasians.
Its quite interesting to read the suggestions some commenters have come up with to replace the Hokkien word ‘Ang Mo’ for Caucasians. Its also interesting to note that no one have yet come up with a solution to call Caucasians without making references to their skin colour, their hair colour, or by calling them ghosts.

Try calling her gwei-lo. Or rather, gwei-lui.

I know the word ‘Ang Mo’ is not meant to be deragotory, and most Caucasians don’t mind being called ‘Ang Mo’ or ‘Pek Lang’ or ‘Gwei Lo’. After all, those are colloquial terms instilled in our mind since young. But colloquialism is not an excuse for racism.
Put it this way, how would you like to be called a ‘Yellow people’ or a ‘Ching-Chong-Chang’ when you’re overseas? I know I wouldn’t be very happy if a Caucasian were to call me a ‘Ching-Chong-Chang’ instead of an ‘Asian’. So how come when we call them ‘Ang Mo’ its ok because its colloquial, but when they call us ‘Yellow people’ we think its racist? Those words are similar what!
I don’t understand. We can call Dayaks ‘La Kia’, Indians ‘Kek Leng Nga’, and Malays ‘Hua Na’ (not the little girl Huang Na, ok). YET, there are NO words to call Caucasians or Africans without making references to their skin colours. What is wrong with us Chinese!? We’re even funny enough to call ourselves ‘Terng Lang’ when clearly we are not the longest people on this planet!
Actually I do have a body part that’s very long. But that’s besides the point.

Yao Ming. The original ‘Terng Lang’. The girl in the picture is Coco Lee. She’s the cousin of my balls, Coco Nuts.

There’s a few people who suggested that calling Caucasians ‘Ang Mo’ is not accurate. ‘Ang Mo’ literally means ‘red hair’ but Caucasians are mostly blonde or brunette. We should call them ‘Kim Mo’ (gold hair) or ‘Chocolate Mo’ (brown hair) respectively instead. Then again, looking at the number of people dying their hair these days, I think calling a Caucasian ‘Kim Mo’ is also no longer accurate.

Anita Sarawak is not an Ang Mo leh.

Jeff Yen suggested that instead of calling them ‘Ang Mo’, maybe we can be more specific by referring them to their nationality. So we avoid the skin colour issue by calling them American (Bee-kok lang), or British (Ying-kok lang), or Australian (Oh-jiu lang). Of course that wouldn’t work right? Everybody knows these countries are actually quite multi-racial. Just because someone is American, doesn’t mean the person is Caucasian.

Snoop Doggy Dog clearly is not Ang Mo.

So how?
Here’s where I propose a solution. We need to create a new word. Let’s put an end to Chinese people calling Caucasians by their hair or skin colour!
Notice how some Chinese words are created from English words?
Like how ‘Mahathir’ is 马哈迪(Ma Ha Di) and ‘George W Bush’ is 不死(Bu Si)?
Let’s just translate the word ‘Caucasian’ to Chinese then.
Caucasian = Kou Ke Xian = 口渴先= Thirsty First
Caucasian = Gou Gu Xian = 狗骨先= Fresh Dog Bones
Caucasian = Ku Gua Xian = 苦瓜仙= Bittergourd Angel
Ugh… hopeless. I think I’ll just stick to calling them ‘Ang Mo’ for the time being.
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I’m a big fan of Quentin Tarantino’s black comedy Pulp Fiction.

I thought the scene where Samuel L Jackon’s character (a hired assassin) uttered out a passage from the Bible before opening fire on his victim was a classic. Its so grim yet so funny. I never took his character in the other his movies seriously since.
Like the one in Star Wars.

I can’t help it!