Colouring-in by Christopher 13 November 1934
A colouring in by Christopher completed in Peitaho, China featuring a Chinese and Gweilo character
“Foreign devil” is how gweilo, that widely used epithet in China for Caucasians, is usually translated. Composed of “gwái” (“ghost”) and “lóu” (“man, chap, regular guy”), gweilo/gwai lo literally means “ghost/devil man”, and has been considered pejorative, especially if prefaced by (“dead”), to give séi gwáilóu, akin to “damn foreigner”. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest documentation, in an 1878 Far East glossary, is kwei-tsze, kuei-tzu ˘ (“devil”), with “kwai-lo” noted in 1969.
Such a descriptor was purportedly coined in early encounters in the Pearl River Delta with Europeans in reference to their pale skin.
