At the Mall
At the Mall.
25 November 2007
Ethan is away at the moment and I took the boys to the nearby mall at the weekend, to pick up a few things at the supermarket and spend a couple of hours at the soft play center there. The mall is only just down the road, about 10 minutes walk from our house and is a popular destination for shopping and leisure. In the evenings the square in front is filled with elderly couples ballroom dancing.
In the lift we were standing behind a young woman, probably about 20 years old. I noticed her because she was wearing a tightly-belted white woolen coat over a short white skirt, white knee high patent leather boots and a white knit cap. This is a fairly typical outfit for an afternoon’s shopping trip, dressing up is all the rage here. That same morning I saw a middle-aged woman leaving our compound wearing a full-length black mink coat and 4 inch silver stilletos. She was probably just going out for lunch, or an afternoon of Mah-jong. I suppose it's the same principle of conspicious consumption as the Mercedes and the BMWs in the car park: if you've made it, you want to make sure everyone knows.
I also noticed that the girl in white in the elevator at the mall was holding hands with a girlfriend, who was similarly dressed up. She was standing with her eyes closed, leaning her head on her friend’s shoulder. Watching them I realized this is a sight you would rarely see in a western country, but it is commonplace here. Unfortunately it does not mean that same-sex relationships are accepted in China. What it means is that physical displays of affection between men and women are still frowned on, but it is fine and dandy to be physically affectionate with friends of the same sex. So it is perfectly normal to see young girls holding hands or young men in army uniforms strolling around arm in arm, but it is less usual to see a couple canoodling in public. This is changing slowly: the ballroom dancing couples are more likely to be man and women nowadays, although the majority of them are still male couples and female couples, solemnly waltzing round the plaza.
You do see couples engaged in other forms of affection, however. On this same day at the mall I noticed a young couple sitting on a bench, the girl busily cleaning out her boyfriend’s ears with a Q-tip! It sounds revolting, but nobody turned a hair. Don’t forget it is traditional to grow your little finger nail long for this very purpose. But if you haven’t done so, there are plenty of alternatives: at the parks and tea houses people come around with ear cleaning kits and offer to clean out your ears for you.
The physical affection thing changes somewhat with age, more with men than with women. You don’t tend to see middle-aged men holding hands, unless they are very drunk. But I do have one glorious image that is lodged in my mind like a Cartier-Bresson photograph. Outside this same mall one day, I saw two middle-aged men in dusty, paint-spattered clothes, probably migrant construction workers, running at full tilt down the road, hand in hand. Perhaps they were late for something or running to catch a lift, who knows, but they were laughing as they ran and their faces were a picture of pure joy. I wish I had had a camera at that moment.
25 November 2007
Ethan is away at the moment and I took the boys to the nearby mall at the weekend, to pick up a few things at the supermarket and spend a couple of hours at the soft play center there. The mall is only just down the road, about 10 minutes walk from our house and is a popular destination for shopping and leisure. In the evenings the square in front is filled with elderly couples ballroom dancing.
In the lift we were standing behind a young woman, probably about 20 years old. I noticed her because she was wearing a tightly-belted white woolen coat over a short white skirt, white knee high patent leather boots and a white knit cap. This is a fairly typical outfit for an afternoon’s shopping trip, dressing up is all the rage here. That same morning I saw a middle-aged woman leaving our compound wearing a full-length black mink coat and 4 inch silver stilletos. She was probably just going out for lunch, or an afternoon of Mah-jong. I suppose it's the same principle of conspicious consumption as the Mercedes and the BMWs in the car park: if you've made it, you want to make sure everyone knows.
I also noticed that the girl in white in the elevator at the mall was holding hands with a girlfriend, who was similarly dressed up. She was standing with her eyes closed, leaning her head on her friend’s shoulder. Watching them I realized this is a sight you would rarely see in a western country, but it is commonplace here. Unfortunately it does not mean that same-sex relationships are accepted in China. What it means is that physical displays of affection between men and women are still frowned on, but it is fine and dandy to be physically affectionate with friends of the same sex. So it is perfectly normal to see young girls holding hands or young men in army uniforms strolling around arm in arm, but it is less usual to see a couple canoodling in public. This is changing slowly: the ballroom dancing couples are more likely to be man and women nowadays, although the majority of them are still male couples and female couples, solemnly waltzing round the plaza.
You do see couples engaged in other forms of affection, however. On this same day at the mall I noticed a young couple sitting on a bench, the girl busily cleaning out her boyfriend’s ears with a Q-tip! It sounds revolting, but nobody turned a hair. Don’t forget it is traditional to grow your little finger nail long for this very purpose. But if you haven’t done so, there are plenty of alternatives: at the parks and tea houses people come around with ear cleaning kits and offer to clean out your ears for you.
The physical affection thing changes somewhat with age, more with men than with women. You don’t tend to see middle-aged men holding hands, unless they are very drunk. But I do have one glorious image that is lodged in my mind like a Cartier-Bresson photograph. Outside this same mall one day, I saw two middle-aged men in dusty, paint-spattered clothes, probably migrant construction workers, running at full tilt down the road, hand in hand. Perhaps they were late for something or running to catch a lift, who knows, but they were laughing as they ran and their faces were a picture of pure joy. I wish I had had a camera at that moment.
posted by Cat Platt at 1:16 pm
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