Gulliver’s Travails

One thing being in China makes me aware of is how multicultural the U.S. really is. This sounds totally self-evident, I know, but I think the expectation of difference is something I have really taken for granted in the past. I try to imagine a Chinese person walking down the street in Portland and having one out of every five passersby stop to yell “Ni hao!” in a loud, unnatural voice. It would just never happen. I’ve been in plenty of situations abroad where I stood out like a sore thumb: 6’1’ females are likely to do that anywhere. But at least in Africa they whistle, or speak to you directly. At least in Italy you feel sexy, even if you wish you were carrying mace. Here, I’ve just had to swallow the endless, furtive blank stares and the whispers of “Hen gao!” (Whoah – so tall!!!) every single time I enter a store/room/market/bus/restaurant. I’m thinking of having those two characters silk-screened onto the back of my jacket. Sometimes I’m tempted to wander around staring rudely at everyone else in slack-jawed, drooling wonder, muttering, “Look how fucking short you are!” (Sigh) But I don’t. I don’t mind being the tallest person for hundreds of miles – not really; although I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind being able to wear some of these clothes.

I’ve never been so uncool in all my life. First of all, nothing I own is pink. I don’t use colorful scrunchies, I don’t wear denim miniskirts, and I hate most things “cute.” However, three of my grad students recently ran an intervention, trying to save me from my terminal lameness. They presented me with a Christmas present: two pairs of stretchy kid gloves, one pink with purple and orange stripy-stripes and little pink buttony-wuttons, and the other pair black with puffy Hello Kitty dolls stapled to the backs of the hands. I’m on my way. When I showed up to class the next day in my usual medieval black gauntlets (knitted awesomely by a friend back home), I was chided after the lecture and told that I could better “expressive my feeling” with my new mittens. I was so busted.

So, Chinese fashion continues to be a riddle I have yet to solve. The most important question is, “How can so many women in short skirts and knee-high boots be so relentlessly unsexy?” It’s baffling. Granted, notions of what “matches” run according to a different logic here; either that, or the polluted atmosphere has resulted in mass, undiagnosed color-blindness. I have to say, I admire the panache – I certainly couldn’t get away with the hot-pink/aqua combo. Not since third grade, anyway. These women have a fearless zest for mismatched prints that an outsider can’t help but appreciate. That fact, combined with the taste for chunky plastic jewelry and fake fur, and the creepily youthful aspect of even my adult students, gives campus fashion a permeating air of a thousand-girl game of dress-up. It’s as if every morning they giggle and shriek their way through their aunts’ old closets and trunks, flinging through scarves and wraps and costume jewelry, cram their toes into teetering heels, and then clomp forth into the day to show off their get-ups in the boring parade that is their classes. The effect is enhanced by the rare use of makeup: acne is a major problem here, either due to air quality or diet or both, so few girls risk clogged pores. For those that do, rouge is very popular. Lots of rouge. It’s a bit like visiting a planet that awoke one morning as if from a thousand-year cultural coma, only to find nothing but mall advertisements from 1983 on which to build their awakening aesthetics. I did a secret little observation-poll in my classes: studies show that six out of ten females prefer jackets with fake fur trim around their hoods. Men do not use fake fur at all, although the more metrosexual of the lot will occasionally go in for a dark polyester shag.

Perhaps the most unusual fad is the use of “xiutao,” literally, “sleeve protectors.” These are plastic tubes with elastic around either end, worn from the wrist to the elbow on the outside of overcoats or jackets. They are typically adorned with patterns commonly found on kitchen curtains or paper towels: ladybugs, strawberries, teddy bears, and the occasional plaid. I hear that the function of these is to protect clothing from dirty surfaces, such as desks. Everyone wears them – at least among the female population. Sometimes they are selected to match a jacket print or color. More often than not, they provide yet another opportunity for wardrobe randomization. My students are shocked that I do not wear them. I clearly have no concern for nice things.

Beneath the fluffy, mincing exterior, however, there are some very interesting things happening in women’s fashion here in China. The boots, for instance. Why don’t we get fun boots like these? “New Jersey hooker spends time in the Shire” seems to be a popular look, as does “teeny-weeny Valkyreenie.” On a grumpier day, I announced to a supermarket at large that if anyone in the store was qualified to wear knee-high white leather with fur trim, it was me, goddammit. My ancestors developed the Rumpleminz ads, not theirs.

I’m also a big fan of the short, short wool skirt in winter – with lots of tights and woolly warmers, of course. I covet a dozen such skirts a day, but I’m pretty certain they would better fit me as thigh wraps, a look that has yet to catch on, as far as I’m aware. I have this fantasy of owning a black wool overcoat like Parker Posey’s in “Fay Grimm,” and I’ve found a few here – several, even. One was even satin-lined and hooded, and on sale for roughly the price of a caramel latte in the States. But, of course, the sleeves reached just past my elbows, and the swing hem barely cleared my waist.

What an unexpectedly evil torture this is: to have found a culture that is willing to try most anything when it comes to sexy clothes, and then is selling them for a tenth what they’d cost back home. And yet all are sized for a seven-year-old ballet class, with feet to match. It just isn’t fair.

Interestingly enough, there is another woman on campus who can relate. Kristin, a Peace Corps volunteer from Santa Barbara, is teaching conversation classes here at my university; she is very funny and very cool: a young, recent philosophy grad, she loves ideas and has big blue eyes and is also six feet tall. People are frequently mistaking us: I’m often asked probing questions about the function of the Peace Corps, and she said that her vegetable lady at the market (who is also mine,) thought she just ate a lot until she figured out that one of us always came shopping with a husband in tow and that we were not, in fact, the same enormous person. It must be difficult for them to grok the idea that there are more than one such Amazons running about in their petit environs. For myself, I love that the only other American woman many of our students have ever met is also “hen gao.” Their mental image of the States must be a Bunyanesqe scene, full of towering, busty, statuesque women stomping around in impossibly long jeans.

~ by knifemaker on December 28, 2007.