Hey, Good Lookin'...

If you’re not careful, a place like China can give you a big head. Just having white skin pretty much guarantees that you’re going to be called beautiful or handsome at least a couple times here. One of my Chinese coworkers from the first company I worked at told me that when she first arrived there, she thought all the teachers looked like Western movie stars. A random student once told me that I looked like Sean William Scott. I still haven’t decided whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.

At first it’s quite nice being called handsome by people you don’t know or by people on the street. Chinese people tend to blurt out their opinion of you as they walk by you. I’m not sure if that’s a result of the seemingly direct way they can pass judgment on people in front of their faces or because they just assume that I can’t understand them. It's probably a bit of both. I mention their directness because from a Western point of view, it seems quite rude to call someone fat to their face, but it’s not really seen that way here. It’s only now becoming taboo to call a woman fat partly because Western standards of beauty are infiltrating and changing the traditional Chinese concepts of beauty.

On the other hand, I find that it’s still very common and not generally seen as insulting to call a man fat. I’ve been called fat a couple of times, most notably by my girlfriend of the time. Now I could probably trim a bit here and there (and most likely will as summer sets in and people start taking other elevators when they see me slosh in wearing what appears to be a business suit as a towel), but I admit that I took a little offense to that. I politely reminded her that she had more stomach fat than I did. Of course, that didn’t help matters. She proceeded to point out how skinny her arms and legs were directly prior to her pummeling me with those skinny arms and legs. Eventually it dawned on me that anyone who has a husky build here is automatically categorized as fat, regardless of whether their size comes from muscle or just a big frame. One of the girls who works in my school at the moment is a perfect example of this. She has quite a big frame in relation to most Chinese girls, which means that she is also quite well...um, endowed…compared to most Chinese girls. Basically this makes her the Dolly Parton of these parts. Anyway, most of the other girls think she’s fat, which is (a) not true and (b) not helpful because now she thinks she’s fat too. I don’t know why girls do this to each other. But I digress.

As I said, it’s nice to be called handsome by people you don’t know, but eventually you begin to notice a pattern in the people who do so. Almost all of them stand to gain something from you. When you realize that it’s just a not-very-subtle attempt at flattery aimed at your wallet, the thrill of having random people compliment your looks is cheapened juuust a little bit. On top of that, half the time it’s some guy calling you handsome. I know it means nothing to them, but it still makes me feel awkward. (Really, you didn’t think you’d get a post that neglected to mention some sort of awkwardness from me, did you?) There’s nothing quite like having some dude at the barber shop who looks like a Korean pop star tell you that you’re a handsome guy as he runs his fingers through your hair. This accounts for about five or six of the literally hundreds of times in China that I’ve thought to myself, “Um, what have I gotten myself into here?”

These strange situations are certainly not limited to the barbershops. The street vendor who sells me my afternoon snack once called me handsome and asked if I had a girlfriend. I know where it sounds like this is going, but he was actually leading to the next question, which is whether I like Chinese girls. They’re quite proud of their women here. That question is easily in the top five questions that I get asked by Chinese people. He then went a step further and told me that he saw me walking with a girl the night before and wondered if she was my girlfriend. It was actually my Chinese teacher, but you’ve got to love the fact that even the street vendors seem to have a vested interest in my relationships. He proceeded to tell me how he judged her appearance and gave me his advice about whether I should date her. It took me a while to straighten things out, but not until after I got a 'you sly dog look' from the vendor that made me uncomfortable. Anyway, after I left Dr. Ruth at the snack stand, I remembered one of the most important facts about China. There is absolutely no privacy here whatsoever. Not in terms of personal space and apparently not in terms of personal relationships either.

One memorable incident occurred when I went to McDonalds to get a cup of coffee one morning. One of the male cashiers took it upon himself to inform me that his female co-worker, who was standing next to him, thought I was attractive. I half-smiled sheepishly and looked somewhere else, trying to avoid embarrassment for both our sakes and hoping that we could just move along to the part where I ordered my coffee and left. The cashier, evidently mistaking my reaction for a lack of understanding, repeated his comment in English this time. The female cashier, by now certain that I understood what the guy said, turned red, shouted (that is to say, spoke in a normal tone of voice) at him, and gave him a smack just to get her point across. He then left, leaving the two of us to stand there looking at everything but each other. I finally got to ask for my cup of coffee, cringing as I watched her react like I had just asked her to the prom. In the end, she gave me the coffee, so I guess I can take that as a ‘yes.’ McDonald’s in China now proudly offers a new addition to the breakfast menu: awkwardness you haven’t experienced since high school. Not quite as successful as the Egg McMuffin, but I’m sure it’ll catch on.