In Hong Kong, Caucasian men are known as gweilo (鬼佬 gwaai2 lou2) literally ‘ghost man’. Caucasians women are called gweimui (鬼妹 gwaai2 mui1)or gweipo (鬼婆 gwaai2 po2) ‘ghost woman’, the former name is used for younger women. Today, these colloquial terms are generally not considered as derogatory, and the terms are used among the white people. For example, Martin Booth used the title Gweilo: Memoirs of a Hong Kong Childhood for his book and Christine Cappio’s book is called Gweimui’s Hong Kong Story.
While gweilo and gweipo are contemporary terms for foreigners, back in the 18th and 19th century foreigners were better known as “foreign devils”, a translation of 番鬼 (pronounced as faan1 gwaai2 in Cantonese); spelt variously as fan kwae, fan qui, etc.) William C. Hunter, an American trader, explained the classification of fan kwaes in his book The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton Before Treaty Days 1825-1844 (p. 28).
“Although by the Chinese all foreigners were called ‘Fan Kwaes,’ or ‘Foreign Devils,’ still a distinction of the drollest and most characteristic kind was made between them. The English become ‘Red-haired devils’; the Parsees, from the custom of shaving their heads, were ‘White-head devils’; Moormen were simply ‘mo-lo devils’. The Dutch became ‘Ho-lan,’ the French ‘Facian-sy,’ and the Americans ‘Flower-flag devils.’ The Swedes were ‘Suy’ and the Danes ‘Yellow-flag devils.’ The Portuguese have never ceased to be ‘Se-yang kwae,’ thus retaining the names first applied to them on their arrival from the ‘Western Ocean’ (which the words signify), while their descendants, natives of Macao, are ‘Omum kwae,’ or ‘Macao devils’ from the Chinese name of the town.”
Apparently, the word 鬼 meaning ‘ghost, devil’ indicates that the Chinese looked at the foreigners with hostility. In the pre-Treaty days, activities and movement of foreigners were strictly regulated and confined to the Factories area. Foreign settlers were of course aware of such resentment. The photograph above was captioned “The allied gun-boats protecting the “foreign devils,” West River, Canton.” The West River 西江 (Xi Jiang, Si Kiang) is the longest river of southern China. The upper course of the river begins at the Yunnan province; it runs eastward and ends at the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong province, where foreign trade concentrated. Armed with small cannons and machine guns, these gunboats were purpose-built for river navigation. The Yangtze Patrol was formed by the United States Navy to protect American citizens and properties along the Yangtze River. Other European nations and Japan also had their own gunboats to safeguard their interests and extraterritoriality.