It’s more of a lost in translation - we use _laowai_ as a convenient word. When I just came to US, I sometimes still “translate” what I want to express from Chi

It’s more of a lost in translation - we use _laowai_ as a convenient word. When I just came to US, I sometimes still “translate” what I want to express from Chinese first, so I even called the other fellow US students “foreigner” once when talking about a cultural difference. “Foreigners tends to do XXX while we(Chinese) do YYY” He laughed and thought it was funny