An Australian Girl in China

I've had so much tea in the last two days that my eyebrows are still twitching. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am spending a month in the land of the overbuilt, in the great wide country of the mass-produced designer fakes, in the homeland of the stingy Asian who will argue for half an hour to purchase her roasted pine nuts for 50 cents cheaper per pound - the one and only China. I must say it's been a tiny bit of a culture shock, and things definitely ain't the way I remembered it. One thing's for sure, I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore.

You know how all those television tabloid shows masquerading as current affairs programs ("Every anal-retentive, uptight parent should see this: do YOU know how many times your Ritalin-addled, bubble-wrapped, molly-coddled children blink each day?") keep showing that incendiary segment where white people complain about Asians being bad drivers? I think I just might know where all that is coming from - BECAUSE THEY ARE! (Just like Italy and half of the U.S., mind you.) In China, there appears to be no road rules, no speed limits - I've been here four days and I still don't know how fast they're legally allowed to drive - and horns are employed liberally and loudly (that is, where they haven't already been banned for that very reason). People do whatever the hell they please on the roads - driving the wrong way down one-way streets, on the footpath, in the lane of oncoming traffic. As for indicating - wait a minute, WHAT indicating? I'm not sure the cars HAVE indicators! So there's basically no way to tell where anyone's going - hell, I don't even know where I'M going half the time! I swear I've been in three near-crash situations already. In fact, they drive so completely psycho that nobody batted an eye as we overtook a yellow sedan puttering along at walking pace while straddling two lanes - until I looked back and noticed the driver slumped slack-jawed in her seat, having had, most likely, some sort of epileptic fit at the wheel. But god knows how long it took until someone noticed that something wasn't right, because driving like that in China IS CONSIDERED COMPLETELY NORMAL.

And don't even get me started on trying to cross the road as a lowly pedestrian. In China, jaywalking is not a crime - it's an art. I swear, it's traumatized me for life. There are cars, scooters, bikes and motorcycles coming at you in at least five different directions, and no such thing as pedestrian crossings at all. Sure, there are zebra crossing painted haphazardly across the roads, but who gives a damn? It's not like anyone's actually going to STOP to let someone cross! Truly not for the faint-hearted. Best to scuttle along after an old lady or two, whom people will think twice about running over.

The people here have no concept of tact. The epitome of subtlety they are not. They sure don't mince their words here. They are as blunt as a rusty ice pick in an Indian summer. And any other bad metaphor you can care to think of. Case study: a clothing store stocking products for the plus-size gentleman or madam. Do they give it a nice, glossy, even remotely PC name like oh, off the top of my head, Full-Figured Madam, or Plus-Sized Ladies? Oh no. Such pansying around with words is not for the Chinese. So what indeed, I hear you ask, do they call that store? "Fat People's Clothes".

I don't know what in the world the people who run restaurants are thinking when they choose uniforms for their waitresses, but they probably aren't the prettiest of thoughts. Seen in one of those restaurants where you cook your food at the table: a waitress's uniform consisting of a fitted jacket over hotpants over fishnet stockings tucked into knee-high boots. But that ain't it, sister, oh no. It gets worse. The boots matched the jacket. Not just went with, not merely complemented but matched. THE BOOTS WERE WHITE VINYL.

The shop assistants here are downright scary. They are absolutely EVERYWHERE. Back home if you walk into a shop, you would be considered lucky if the solitary attendant grunts in you general direction as she continues her conversation with her boyfriend on the phone. In China, if you so much as glance inside a store, five assistants will ambush you and drag you inside, spouting promises of 20, 40, 60 percent off and bombard you with every item of clothing that you happen to cast your eye past (in a pretty accurate approximation of your size, of course). This happens in every boutique, department store and sidewalk stall, from the five-dollar plastic necklaces to the Louis Vuittons. (And yes, you can actually buy real designer pieces, and at real designer prices too, thank you very much. But hey, they make a damn good fake if you know where to look.) Even in the supermarket section of the more fancy departments - "Ferrero Rocher, madam? On sale today, for only 84 RMB." "We got that box for four dollars," mutters MD, and the girl gives us a weird look and slowly backs away.

But I'll tell you one thing; they sure know how to make a girl feel like an oaf. These petite little Asian girls are so freaking skinny that my mother (who is tiny) (size 8-10 UK, a metre fifty-five at most - she used to be a metre fifty-eight, but honest to god she is shrinking at the rate I'm growing) teeters on the chunky side in China. I, who have been accursed with broad shoulders and non-anorexic thighs, practically have to go to Fat People's Clothes to find some to fit me. That being said, I'm about a metre seventy and a standard size 12, I have the tag on the hem of my jeans to prove it, so I ain't no Michelin man either, although that doesn't stop me from feeling like one here. In fact, the Chinese girls come in so many different shades of tiny that they make about four clothing sizes between your average western comparative sizes 10 and 12. My mother wears a size 28. The really miniscule ones can squeeze into a 23. I WEAR A SIZE 31. (Even the eager-to-please shop assistants do a double take when I tell them what size I wear. ("Sorry, did you mean size 27?") More often than not the reply comes back as, "Sorry, we don't stock that size."))

I walked into a clothes store the other day and saw a cute printed sweater on the sale table. I asked the shop assistant whether they had it in my size. She looked me up and down and asked, "You're about a metre seventy, right?" I nodded. She yelled into the back, "BRING OUT THE EXTRA LARGE!" "THERE AREN'T ANY!" "Sorry," she said, smiling apologetically, "we don't have any in extra large."

Tomorrow I jet off to the North-East for a week. It doesn't rise above -10°C in winter, and it's a crazy idea to go but to hell with that. I'm not taking any chances - I'm going to wear fifteen layers of clothing every day. Cross my fingers I don't turn into an icypole.

Being in China has made me retarded - I've forgotten both how to speak English and how to write numbers.

القمر السعودىsaid...: شركة مكافحة حشرات بنجران
شركة مكافحة حشرات بأبها
شركة مكافحة حشرات ببريده
شركة مكافحة حشرات بعنيزه; 11:22 pm