Laowai (老外) is the everyday Chinese word for a foreigner — and if you visit China, you will hear it. A child might point and announce it; a shopkeeper might use it to a colleague as you browse. In the vast majority of cases it is casual and neutral, closer to "the foreign guy" than to any slur.
Understanding the word — and the friendly prefix hiding inside it — turns a moment that can feel awkward into one you can smile at.
What the word actually says
Laowai is built from two pieces: lao (老), "old," and wai (外), "outside" — so, literally, "old outsider." But that "old" is not about age. Chinese attaches lao to names and words as a marker of familiarity, the way English might say "good old Dave."
You will hear the same warm lao elsewhere: laoshi (老师) is a teacher, laoban (老板) is the boss or shop owner, and old friends call each other lao plus a surname. So laowai sits in oddly affectionate company — it is the "outsider" word built with the friendliest prefix Chinese has.
Is laowai rude?
Mostly, no. In everyday use it is informal rather than insulting — the quick, casual word people reach for in unguarded conversation. Tone and context do the real work, just as they would with "foreigner" in English.
The formal, unambiguously polite word is waiguoren (外国人), "foreign-country person," which is what you will hear in news reports and official settings. Some foreign residents dislike laowai and prefer waiguoren; plenty of others cheerfully call themselves laowai. If someone wanted to be genuinely insulting, Chinese has actual slurs for that — laowai is not one of them.
The pointing-and-announcing you may experience — especially outside the big cities — is usually curiosity, not hostility. In places that see few foreign visitors, a laowai sighting is simply notable, the way a celebrity sighting might be elsewhere. Children in particular narrate what they see; their parents are often mortified.
How to respond
The best response is usually a smile and a ni hao (你好). Answering in any Chinese at all tends to delight people — the observation was "a foreigner!", and the reply is "a foreigner who speaks!"
If you want to play, point at yourself and agree: "dui, wo shi laowai" (对，我是老外) — "yep, I'm a foreigner." Delivered with a grin, it almost always earns a laugh and turns spectators into conversation partners.
你好
ni hao
Hello
对，我是老外
dui, wo shi laowai
Yep, I'm a foreigner
我在学中文
wo zai xue zhongwen
I'm learning Chinese
That last line is the real door-opener. Say wo zai xue zhongwen (我在学中文) and the conversation stops being about you as a curiosity and becomes about your Chinese — which people will immediately, generously, help you practice.
When it is worth a second thought
Context can change any word. Laowai delivered with an eye-roll in a dispute is jab-flavored, the way "this guy" can be in English — you will know it when you hear it, and it is rare. In formal or written contexts, waiguoren is simply the correct register, which is why businesses and officials use it.
If you live in China long-term and prefer not to be called laowai in a particular setting, saying so politely usually works — most people simply have not thought about it. For a two-week trip, though, the relaxed response is the accurate one: it is almost never meant unkindly.
Keep learning Chinese
Laowai is your first taste of how Chinese builds words — an "old" that means friendly, an "outside" that means foreign, two characters that say a whole sentence. Learn how locals address everyone else in our guide to Chinese address terms, pick up the essential Chinese phrases that turn sightings into chats, and practice them with audio and spaced repetition in the Pretalk app.
