‘White Guy For Rent’ – Playing Random Foreigners To Help Chinese Developers Sell Condos

During the big real estate bubble a few years ago that led to China’s now-notorious “ghost cities,” expats like David Borenstein found work as what Chinese called a “laowai-for-rent” – appearing at real estate sales events pretending to be a foreign businessman or musician or athlete in order to make the development look international and important. Borenstein tells Linda Poon what it was like.