Shang High Life, #4

Shang High Life, #4 August 5, 2001 Al Dente? Or Off The Shoulder? It’s summer in China. July and August are hot. Read, “hot”. Shanghai summer temperatures are regularly 100 degrees Fahrenheit, approaching 40 degrees Celsius. Humidity hovering around a bazillion. It is inspiration to wear as little clothing as possible. Yet, stripping off like a Swede in spring is hardly acceptable here. As in most places, one’s physical comfort takes a back seat to prevailing social norms, adherence to which is a serious matter and seen to be very much in the public interest. It is, therefore, of concern to The Party. Which is why the central government has taken a recent heat wave as opportunity to release official state policy on spaghetti straps. They published in the People’s Daily. Allow me to boil the esoteric communist ideology on the spaghetti strap issue down to the basics: THEY DON’T LIKE THEM. What I don’t think The Party realizes is that, ironically, even as it attempts to clamp down on the western-inspired decadence of the spaghetti strap, this policy will have an impact economic reformists have only been able to fantasize about….until now. It will launch the majority of Shanghai women straight up to parity with their western capitalist counterparts, as they will now be forced to stare into their closets and complain that they have absolutely nothing to wear. An anti-spaghetti-strap policy is impractical in this heat, sure. But, more than that, it also seems a little ironic. This is, after all, the land from which Marco Polo appropriated pasta. Rather than banning the damn things, one might have thought the government would celebrate spaghetti straps as a cultural export. They could even *mandate* that clothing supports, ties and fasteners of all kinds be made and named in the image of noodles. But banning them? Coming out against spaghetti straps isn’t quite as bad as Nero fiddling while Rome burns. (The cliché is historically impossible, anyway, given Nero’s death predated the fiddle’s invention by a few centuries.) But whatever happened to tackling the big issues first? So, like, knock yourselves out trying to force The People’s dress code into something you consider less prurient. But, while you’re at it, could we please do something about the guys who sleep on the sidewalks in their underwear? No, I am not kidding. And the guys aren’t homeless. It’s just cooler outside than in many of the communist-era concrete ovens known as apartment buildings. Unfortunately, these sidewalk sleepers seem, without exception, to be unattractive middle-aged men. The only thing in the plus column is that this has allowed me to make one of my first important observations of comparative cultural anthropology. Middle-aged men the world over, regardless of race, creed or cultural heritage, have equally bad taste in underwear, not to mention lax underwear-maintenance practices. Imagine how different a country China would be if its young *women* slept on the sidewalks in their underwear. Rather more salubrious, I venture. And I’m not sure anyone would have gotten so riled up about a cultural revolution, either. But if Marco Polo brought pasta from China to Italy only to have it take over the country’s entire culinary identity, Europe did indeed return the favor---although I shudder to call it that. Call it a cultural exchange, if you must. Call it the worst plague to be visited on some of the most beautiful women in the world, if you desire a reputation for sympathetic hyperbole. But whatever you call it, mourn the loss of a distinctive part of China’s ethos. For, just as the Chinese noodle enslaved the palates of Italy, so the brassiere has enslaved the breasts of China. While this may not be THE stupidest thing man has foisted on God’s creation, can we take a moment to appreciate the obvious here? Think Chinese women for a second. Even if your experience of them is tiny, I can assure you that they are, too. These are the last women on the planet that need titular support. I don’t know who the bastard French salesman was that made an early trip to China and had a sly idea, but he totally ruined a paradise for men who appreciate small-breasted women. You would see more braless women in a German convent than you see in Shanghai on a 100-degree day. Chinese women even learned from westerners that nasty habit of wearing floral-embroidered bras under thin silk chemises, creating that oh-so-attractive nobbly effect. What a horrible way to ruin three of the nicest things China had to offer the world….silk being the third.