Wo Shi Laowai – Wo Pa Shui

So, you are in China, and you want some clothes? Every city and town has a ‘fabric market’, where you can choose the fabric you want, and have the clothes you desire tailored at a reasonable price. You will enjoy the high quality and low cost, and you may even indulge in a little friendly bargaining with the tailor. Enjoy!

Right, that’s the bit for the dumbfuck tourists out of the way. When I want clothes, here’s what I do:

I go to Thailand.

China is a bit problematic when it comes to clothing, and footwear, and, well pretty much everything else actually. For one thing, Chinese are not merely smaller than real people, they have entirely different body shapes: no hips, no ass, no tits, legs that are as well-muscled as chopsticks, complete lack of chest and shoulders, flat heads, flat feet. So finding clothes you can wear isn’t just a matter of merely scaling up the stuff they wear. And ‘tailor’ or not, no one in China seems to comprehend that what you want to buy might not be what they want to sell. As for quality, well that’s a joke on a good day. The fabric you think you are buying, well, it isn’t. The buttons are made of soda-biscuits, thread dissolves in water, colours run and everything shrinks upon washing. The stitching is barely enough to hold the stuff together on the rack, and no further. And the price? Outrageous!

When I want clothes, I generally take a long weekend, leaving Friday after work and returning Monday night. I fly to Bangkok, where I meet my regular tailor (note: always go with an Indian or Nepalese tailor). He looks up his records, measures me for any changes, and gets right to work. The quality is superb, and I can get a couple of really nice suits and a few shirts (and perhaps a pair of shoes) for the same price as some raggity shit from China’s finest ‘tailor’. The weekend away in a nice country with great food and friendly people can be considered a free bonus.

Recently I wanted some new clothes. And unfortunately, I was far too busy to be able to go to Bangkok, even for three days. I knew it would lead to disaster, and I knew I’d pay over the odds, but I needed some clothes. So I went to the ‘fabric market’.

I’m not completely stupid, so I brought with me a shirt and a pair of trousers that I wanted copied. You’d think a Chinese could at least do that, right? I selected the fabrics, gave explicit instructions, obtained a completion date that was ten days longer than any tailor in Bangkok would give, and (after significant argument) paid a deposit equal to the normal full price that a tailor in Bangkok would charge.

When I returned to pick up my clothing, the trousers weren’t ready. I saw the shirts hanging on a rack though, so I took a look. They were, of course, wrong. There were buttons without corresponding buttonholes, buttonholes without matching buttons, buttons missing or in the wrong place, pockets missing and some of the shonkiest stitching I’ve ever seen. Par for the course. I was told the trousers would be ready “in a few days”.

I returned a few days later. Some of the problems with the shirts had been fixed. Sort of. The trousers were not there, though I was informed that they were “on the way”. Would I care to wait for twenty minutes? Sure, I said, knowing full well they were not finished yet. An hour later with no sign of the alleged items of apparel, and I departed, having left instructions to call me when everything was there, completed, and ready to take away.

A week later I got the call. Everything was there, and it was all wrong. One pair of trousers was almost nearly the right length just about, the others were impossibly short. I’ll never get my hands in the pockets of any of them. Still, all-in-all, it was a good job for a Chinese. Everything only slightly fucked up, only two weeks later than a date that was only ten days longer than a human would have required, with most of the errors able to be remedied by myself with a needle and thread, at a price that was merely exorbitant. I considered myself lucky, paid up and left.

Why pay, you might wonder? Well, the deposit covered the cost of the materials, and a healthy profit margin. If I hadn’t paid the balance, the so-called ‘tailor’ would have simply sold the clothes to a Chinese at a knock-off price. I’d have been out of pocket and out of pockets. At least this way I got a few shirts that were almost large enough and some trousers that I could wear in emergencies.

I consider myself lucky, though: most people are not nearly as fortunate in their dealing with the Chinese. In a land where cutting corners, ripping you off, cheating, lying, and stealing are all considered virtues, this is to be expected. When someone is more crooked than a dog’s hind leg, how can you expect integrity or pride in one’s work?

Next time though, it’s back to my real tailor in Thailand.

I know I have not of late been as faithful to my readers as many of you would have liked, and I can but proffer my humblest and most abject apologies. Though this meager blog may very well be my highest calling, one can not afford to ignore the small yet insistent demands of other trifles, such as work and wives.

I trust you understand. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

In the meantime, I should like very much to share with you the following wonderful work of literature, penned by Edwin John Dingle – one of the greatest of all gentleman explorers – and entitled Across China on Foot. Though we are still in the earliest parts of the year, there is a very good prospect of this being my favourite read of the year, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who has the slightest interest in China.

This book can of course be purchased in the usual manner, however for those of you who are blessed with the ability or the inclination to read eBooks, it is available free from Project Gutenberg. Clicking the image above will take you to the download page, as will this URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13420

I would wax on about this book, but I must instead go now and beat the coolie who didn’t black the tyres of the Aston properly.

It’s not easy, being me…

New arrivals in the Middle Kingdom have all kinds of questions for experienced old hands like myself, and usually we are able to steer the inexperienced down the correct path and away from trouble. In rare cases, however, the question posed is somewhat of a poser, if you see what I mean. One such question – and one that I have noticed is posed by almost everyone within a month of arriving here – is as follows:

“Why do almost all Chinese women dress like whores?”

Now, the obvious response is that almost all Chinese women are whores, but despite the evident truth of this, it doesn’t really address the issue of why they dress the way they do. Team MyLaowai investigated…

For one to understand the results, one must approach the question in a systematic and logical manner. There seemed to be two reasons why almost all Chinese women dress like whores:
1. because they want to
2. because that’s all the shops sell

With reference to 1., this is an expected condition, for the same reason that firemen dress like firemen.
With reference to 2., however, we need to look deeper. The shops sell whore-fashions, but who owns the shops? Who makes that decision? A crack team of MLW researchers was therefore sent out on an under-the-covers secret mission. That mission? To find out who owns these fashion shops, what is their shadowy background, and how they came to it.

The results were astounding. It turns out that every whore that was interviewed, whether professional or merely keen amateur, had exactly the same dream, and that was to “own a fashion shop and so on”. I’m not kidding, 98.7% said the same thing, word for word.

The conclusion seems clear, so here is the explanation:
1. Whores want to have their own fashion shops.
2. In some cases, they succeed in leaving home and renting their own shop.
3. They sell the fashion they know, which is whore-fashion.
4. Their customers, who are also almost entirely whores of an amateur nature, buy their clothes.
5. Their customers eventually want to have their own fashion shops.
… And so the majestic cycle of nature repeats itself.

I will leave it there, content to have clarified the opaque and murky waters of Chinese ‘culture’ once again. I have nothing else to say except Happy Year of the Rabbit to you all. I know it is the Year of the Rabbit, because the neighbours climbed over my garden wall, stole the children’s pet rabbit, and cooked it. The kids were, quite naturally, distraught, but they soon saw the funny side when I took them on a 4a.m. raid to super-glue all the windows and door locks next door, before pushing a string of firecrackers through the letterbox. Oh, how they laughed, the little scamps.

Happy Eat Rabbit Year.