Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Chinese soap opera
Strange events are taking place in China. Some might say that strange events have always taken place is China, but such apocryphal claims will not be entertained in this blog. A quick perusal of the Jimmy Choo History Almanac indicates that things were pretty humdrum during the Ming dynasty, when mandarins of the Imperial Court played ping pong to relieve the boredom. As long as they kowtowed to the Emperor and kept their beards well trimmed, no one would dock their pay for having a quiet snooze in the eunuch dormitory.
The latest incident of note from the Middle Kingdom concerns a pretty young woman called Xiao Xiao, who was dumped by her boyfriend for being too fat. The heartless rogue didn’t bother to soften the blow by saying he was “having issues” or had fallen in love with his sister. He simply told her that he was embarrassed to come home with a girlfriend who looked like “a fat little goose”.
The peculiar aspect of this tale is the manner in which Miss Xiao responded to being callously rejected in this fashion. She did not, as far as we know, hang out with a gaggle of girlfriends willing to endorse her tearful recriminations. Instead, she made herself slimmer in a jiffy by paying for a liposuction procedure. The fat extracted from her body was then used to make a bar of soap, which she sent to the scoundrel who jilted her with the following message:
“Yang Xiaolei, do you still remember last Spring Festival? Since I can't accompany you to go home this year, I used my own fat to make a soap and give it to your mother for bathing. Spring Festival is the time to give a gift to those low-class men who judge women by appearance.”
When I told the manager of safari camp about this story, he sucked his teeth and nodded.
“That’s the Chinese for you,” he said. “They always have their own way of doing things. A western woman would have had herself photographed with a handsome hunk and sent the picture to her ex with the message ‘In your face, buddy!’ Only a Chinese woman would think of using her dripping to make a bar of soap. You could spend a lifetime trying to fathom what goes on in their minds.”
“You don’t say?” I remarked. “To be honest, I find Hollywood actors more inscrutable than the Chinese. Especially George Clooney. Why is his face always so grumpy?”
As a gorilla, I find that humans tend to exaggerate their cultural differences. If you examine Miss Xiao’s statement, she said the soap was a gift for her ex-boyfriend’s mother. Why did she bring his mother into the discussion? It looks suspiciously like the kind of “Yo Mama” insult that was invented in the ghettos of America.
In truth, there are very few human tribes whose culture has not been contaminated by foreigners. Humans have been cross-fertilising each other since they learned how to jump on two feet.
Labels: China, George Clooney, liposuction, soap
