Only been here full time for 3 years, but I started coming here in 2005 to do projects.

Back in 2005 it was endless meals, day trips, invites to peoples houses and so on. Even if not a manager, you were sort of elevated to manager level in the eyes of your co-workers. Cash advances from accounts were no problem, taxis would tout for your business, you could basically do no wrong.

Now, 10,years later...totally different. Left to your own devices (even the new guys who come over), treated the same as everyone else by accounts ( with disdain), taxis don't want to take you and many co-workers take delight in finding fault.

I prefer it as it is now. Much more natural. Get treated as an equal (sometimes as inferior), and no more of the king treatment.

Chinese people have massively more confidence in themselves than they did 10 years ago. That is good. In terms of the people I work with... that means I have done my job well. Treat me as you find me, not for what you think I am.

So yes, I think people are a lot nicer now. More genuine, more individual, more confident and very very capable.

Lol, we even have rebellious teenagers where I live. Fantastic. People with attitude. Love it

You are right, foreigners are not exceptional anymore and I prefer it that way. I was getting fed up with the stares, unwanted attention and "kan laowai!" thingy.

Now we are just like other people and it's good, you can mind your own business and no one is going to give you a long creepy stare just because you look different (at least in bigger cities).

There might still be some migrant workers who are not used to Foreigners but the local people (in bigger cities again) don't even pay attention to us anymore.

This is just what I want, treat me professionally and like a normal person, only talk to me about business or if you want to be my friend, no I don't want to teach you English or be the token Foreigner at some event (common requests back then).

However I will not tolerate the other way around, racism, xenophobia or being looked down upon based on the simple fact that I am a Foreigner. I expect the same treatment as Chinese people with each others, otherwise fists will fly for the racist fucks.

The natives are markedly less friendly than they were 5 years ago.

I agree with all your observations, but I don't think the Beijing Games had much to do with it. I think the only significant factor is Xi Jinping's campaign of hostile nationalism. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the way natives talk about foreigners these days.

The Hu Jintao administration focused almost solely on stability and economic growth. Provoking racism, hatred and fantasies of revenge was not amongst its aims.

One qualifier: People in the South generally seem happier than people in the North. People in the Centre are the worst (stereotypes about Henan are not baseless). In my experience, China's wetter climates have nicer people. But they're not as nice as they were when I came here.

Do you still live in the same place?

A lot of people come here at first to a place in the middle of nowhere and then kinda work their way up. Move to a more serious career, bigger city etc.

I've also been here about 5 yrs, and yeah I definitely felt more "special" in the eyes of the locals when I first got here. But then at the time I was 22, more open to that stuff and living in a smallish city in Anhui. Hung out with people who didn't have jobs because they were students and local adults who had no economic opportunity. 

I'm infinitely more impressive now, but I hang around people both local and expat who have higher standards. So I agree with the others, I'm much happier to be around equals, though I have zero patience and thankfully no reason to ever interact with the local trash who only saw my whiteness.

im here since 15 years, and, no, people become more arrogant, and xenophobic towards foreigners than they were in the past and part of the reason is the new emperor

Agree with others on the special attitudes just because you're white : it's not has much as it used to be, that's a *GOOD* thing. I get some people that will ask me if I speak Chinese, then they will tell me some nice generalities about my country and about me doing effort to speak Chinese. I give back the politeness, it's all good... And nothing more, I'm not some kind of ET, just human to human. People don't bat an eye when I order food or ask something, in big cities at least. The migrant workers are still not quite there, but, hum... Poor souls are victims of their environment.

 Low brown jingoism is on the rise too, I really hope Chinese people will see why it's propped up and won't fall for it. Pang Eleven, don't push your problems on others... They are an emotive bunch and it can overshadow the good side in them. It's not so much people's attitude with foreigners that hurts me, it's Chinese society , the free-for-all dog-eat-dog, the self-centered self-serving attitudes, the insular views, the blissful ignorance, the victim complex, and the stubborn refusal to look at reality that worries me.

I arrived a few months before the CCP power shift, and I had too much culture shock back then to make a comparison with the time after he rose to power.

Even before Xi, I was aghast at how the media were reporting on an *attempted* rape by a British guy in Beijing (with the only photo evidence being of the girl holding on to him as he stood next to her - meaning it might have been a lie for compensation, or staged media distraction), and emphasizing the nationality of the alleged offender. It was quite a shock, especially how he was hunted down and beaten up by a mob. My wife told me I should lie about being British for a while...

There were more things like that: A respectable British musician swearing at a fellow passenger in the train (*national* news?? provoked reaction, most likely), a ridiculous story of a guy who drove into an ayi who demanded compensation. At first he was supported, but then there was a video of him swearing to the Chinese lady, which led to a totally fake video of a scooter being presented as proof of his guilt. There were THREE people on the scooter, so a girl claimed to be his girlfriend, but there was no explanation of the child in front who was clearly thrown forward at the moment of impact. The lack of scrutiny and perception was mindboggling - I even tried to point this stuff out everywhere online, but it made no difference.

China has become arrogant about its economic good-news tales, and has been taking pot shots at foreigners long before Xi Jinping arrived. Though it may have been turned up a notch. Criticism of foreigners has gained the government's thumbs-up, in contrast to the pre-Olympic policy.

A lot of us come here to smaller cities when we first get here, where people really dont know any westerners and especially if you were teaching there were probably tons of students about your age who really wanted to bend over backwards to know what we're about.

Then if you stay and maybe move into more involved careers and bigger cities it might just be were less of a spectacle now. For better or worse.

i was first in a smallish city in anhui, 22 fresh out of college. Working at a uni. Of course tons of people tried hard to be really nice to me.

Once I moved on I may be a more impressive person now in some ways but i'm not surrounded by people saying "is america REALLY like high school musical???" but with people who had mostly gone to school there. Personally I would rather have to impress people with my ability...what i do not what I am.

so i dunno, maybe your situation is just now different, but if you were back where you started you'd have a similar expereince

Sorry to say that some of the answers here sound like "Boo hoo hoo, no one treats me like a rockstar any more".

I don't think people have become more negative to foreigners, they simply don't care because (in the larger cities) foreign people can be seen everywhere. Perhaps we are just now being treated with the same contempt that the locals previously reserved for their fellow countymen. That said, the richer people become the more entitled they feel towards everyone and everything.

There will always be a subset who say negative things about foreign people. Every country is the same in this respect. In my humble opinion, much of it isn't meant to be rude, it is just unsophisticated behaviour by a few who simply don't know better than to point and mutter crude statements. My personal care factor = 0. It may be that simply because of the large population that this sort of person appears to be a larger number than the percentage of civilised people.

Definitely worse, the arrogance and severity of abusive attacks on foreigners at least doubled if not tripled.

Quite a few senior locals said they didn't have to lock the door of 'their' (everything was state owned) home before Deng opened china up, there was nothing to steal! Look at the crimes in china these days, the quantity and the quality or creativity. Are they worse? When you didn't rob, steal, cheat much because there was nothing to steal, and now you do all that, have you become worse or just the same? To the person being robbed, worse! But as a person, you are the same you. As someone says, the Alcatraz of Asia, if not Earth.

Before they needed you to make money, now they don't. 

Look at neighbor Japan before they welcomed Brazilian immigrants because they needed them and later on they kicked them back home.

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892469,00.html

As far as the average citizen, hard to tell. When I first got here, about 4 years ago, I had people shouting racial slurs, was denied apartment rental due to my race being "too dirty", and since then, have had threats and people try to pick fights because they didn't like my kind in "their country" (especially with "their women"), and this type of behavior hasn't really increased or decreased.

I have seen more racist/xenophobic rhetoric in the news, so that does seem to be on the increase.

Something that I have noticed that could be positive, however, is I see more younger folks are more willing to admit there is a problem, and see it. Maybe it's because students now have more contact with Westerners than before, or just are more willing to challenge what they are told. I've noticed more recently, Chinese students actually talking among themselves about discrimination and hostility towards non-Chinese. Often, this takes the form of mentioning being pissed off at how a Western friend (or boyfriend) is treated, so it's based on first hand experience (one student told me how a Chinese dude attacked her British friend, just because the Chinese guy couldn't stand seeing a Westerner with a Chinese girl).

I often have students ask about my plans to stay, and if I ever want to immigrate, and they seem shocked to learn how it's almost impossible to immigrate to China if you don't have the right genetics, or how tenuous our stay in China is.

I was here 5 years ago, mmm I'd say I have notice people becoming less nice and more selfish.. But who knows, could be wrong..