Life in China has brought about many novelties for me. However, one has been especially intriguing. In China, for the first time in my life, people see me as a Westerner, with all its pros and cons.

Personally, throughout my life, I have never intimately defined myself as European or Westerner, even though my self-understanding has been greatly shaped by what we refer to as “Western culture.” Yet, the society that I come from – Southeast Europe / Western Balkans / former Yugoslavia – is seen, both by locals and foreigners, as a non-European one, having its distinctive characteristics – from the non-European, Ottoman path to modernity, to the infamous wars of the late 20th / early 21st century. Although geographically it is part of Europe, it still remains as an external Other. On the other hand, the West in the Southeast European common sense is a foreign and distant entity, both discursively [in terms of development disparity] and physically [due to the limited ability to travel].

And here I am in China, where the term “Balkans” is all but known or relevant [only Belgrade is an exception, due to the 1999 China embassy bombing during the NATO campaign against FRY]. What matters, however, is my skin color and my average English accent, which for the majority of Chinese [struggling with pronunciation, as "we" struggle pronouncing Mandarin] sounds native-like. These two features were enough for me to be assigned the role of a Westerner, or more precisely, a European [and I feel more European in Beijing rather than in Brussels].

If nothing else, this is a puzzling situation and maybe a prelude to serious research work on the topic. I hope that I will soon write some notes on how Chinese see foreigners and vice versa; and will attempt to discuss China from a Balkan perspective [in order to maintain my Balkanocentrism, of course].