Blending into the crowd of nighttime Sanlitur, you'll find yourself being jostled by people from everywhere in this world. It is not just Chinese moneybags hanging out in this popular bar & club district in Beijing, China—plenty of foreign faces are also mingling around.

Everyone seems equally wasted. Red blushes are coming on their cheeks, the scent of alcohol and scattered words breathing out of their mouths. You can't even tell one's skin color under dim streetlights after a couple of drinks outside. But if you shoulder your way up to a nightclub entrance, you'll easily figure this out.

One common scene is that white people on this street get to walk straight into the clubs with girls, while Asian males are stopped for entry fees.

Club entry fees never seem to exist for white people anywhere in this city. "Same reason we don't charge girls," said a bartender at a nightclub in Beijing, "We need as many white faces as possible—they attract customers. The Asians would practically crawl towards them."

"They attract customers." Turns out it is true.

If you enter a five-star hotel anywhere in Beijing, you would never fail to see a couple of white people among the staff.

"It seems to them as though the high-standard quality of facilities and services is not the definition of a five-star hotel, but rather, whether there are white faces mixed in the staff crews." Said a management trainee at a five-star hotel in Beijing, “Once I was called in to work on my day off, which was already pissing me off, but when I went right downstairs, I found that they were not short of hands. They called me downstairs because they were short of white faces. They can’t even bear for one minute not to make an appearance that we are treating our guests with white people’s services.”

Same goes for every other restaurant and hotel in this city. Whenever a place needs to appear “classy” or “expensive,” instead of improving the quality of products and services, the owner simply hires more white people.

This phenomenon is so common in cities like Beijing that, as a Beijinger born and bred, I formerly couldn’t even see the problem in it.

Fact: We, Chinese people, especially the younger generations, look up to Caucasians. Having the sense that hanging out around them make us feel socially advanced.

This kind of thoughts, like the capability of using chopsticks, has been planted deep down in our minds since we were young. We were never explicitly asked to feel this way—in fact, what we always tend to shout out is how we despise white people and their “bootlickers.” This is such a funny aspect of human nature that we usually comfort ourselves by trying to convince other people that we don’t think what we actually think.

Most Chinese people are in awe of white people. This is a fact nobody in this country wants to admit, but it’s still a fact.

Lately, I have been thinking about where this awe is coming from and what influence it has exerted on our country and its people.

Just like Shanghai and Guangzhou, as a major city of a third-world empire, Beijing as a whole has been eagerly trying to keep up with all other metropolises in developed countries.

Less than 5 years ago, the eastern part of Beijing, a large suburban area in Chaoyang district, was stark and uncultured with dusty side streets also functioning as shelters for Sinkiang petty dealers. I knew well of this part of the city because I used to live there until I couldn’t bear that third-world scene and left.

Today, though, every time I revisit this place, I’m shocked by how dramatically it changes. Within half a decade, it has become a concrete forest with innumerable international cooperation’s setting offices inside. Billboards in English, luxury stores and all other products of alien culture has soaked into this area with a sense of superiority.

Same goes for the entire city. I’m not saying that this rapid change is not a development, but it certainly gives local dwellers the idea that white culture is somehow sort of an upgrade of things. They admire while they adapt.

Is this awe of white culture exerting positive effects on this country? I’d say yes and no. Certainly, taking after aspects of white culture boosts local economic developments, and it sure has certain improvements to people’s lifestyle.

But really, when this admiration and replication of modern western lifestyle go too far, there are serious problems.

I've discussed this phenomenon with an American friend during his time visiting Beijing. He told me how he found amusing to see that the Asians, of all races, despise Asians the most. He is not wrong.

Excessive admiration of western culture has made the younger generation of Chinese people think less of their own culture and their own people. “I’ve always enjoyed to see kids learn how to make a pot of tea,” said an old lady in a Hutong, “But they hardly do that anymore.” Fewer and fewer kids read Chinese poetry not merely for the exams––children sneer at Chinese conventions when their parents talk about them––the population of students going abroad for college is doubled each year…

Waiters in restaurants serve foreigners scrupulously with a flattering smile on their face, but when it comes to people of their own race, they barely try to hide their apathy. As I said at the beginning, nightclubs opened by Chinese people themselves treat white people and Chinese people completely differently.

More importantly, Awe has led to inequalities.

What I mentioned at the beginning of this article definitely counts as one, and there are tons more. When it comes to job applications, “Being white” already surpasses most of the other qualities companies seek in an applicant. Recently a school in Beijing hired a former swim coach as the new principle for their international academy. The newly-hired principle had little teaching experience and absolutely no idea how to run an academy. The mere reason the school hired this man is his convincing white face.

A Chinese girl wrote an article called “How to hook up with white dudes in Beijing” that went viral on Chinese internet, in which she sarcastically described how Chinese girls go out of their way trying to hook up with white people and the reasons they do it. “If your bike is stolen on campus, that campus police couldn’t care less––however, if you’re going out with a foreigner, you sure will get their full efforts to try to retrieve it.” The article pointed out numbers of truths like this and explained how girls are likely to share these privileges if they get in bed with a foreigner.

White privileges has been so plain in sight in this country that people are numb with them. This is an ongoing and very unhealthy situation in every major city in China.

While partially learning from developed countries speeds up a third-world country’s development, excessive admiration of them keeps it from being powerful and independent by itself. As long as its people consider white culture more “upper-class” than that of its own, it will always be a mediocre follower behind developed countries' back. This is true for Beijing as a city, China as a country, and also, dare I say, all developing countries in general.