My New Favorite Book

Some months ago I found a book in the school library. The Longman's Visual Dictionary of Chinese is a treasure trove of laughs. I tried to find my own copy on the internet, but to know avail. So I have instead scanned a number of pages, and I will share them with you, dear reader, whenever I feel like it.

The pages cover almost an amazing range of topics. Some are absurdly specific. Most are useless. To say more would be to deprive you of the joy of discovery, so you will just have to wait until I make a new post. If, however, are visiting a Chinese machine shop anytime soon, and really need to know how to say "geared headstock" or "wheel flange" anytime soon, just let me know.

In the meantime, I will start with a page that teaches you necessary vocabulary that is much closer to home: underwear and baby clothes.




Now as you can see, there is a wide variety to choose from. All appear extremely uncomfortable. By the way, this book was published in Hong Kong in 1997, which was the year of the handover from Great Britain. I suspect that they just recycled pictures from some older book, however there are a few pages that almost appear to be calculated insults of the mainland Chinese as backwards and provincial. More on that later. The resolution on the page is good enough to see all the illustrations and text clearly if you click on the image. I will highlight just two.

This was my personal pick for "most uncomfortable looking underwear" (unless it is number 13). In fairness, I would hazard a guess that no one in China under the age of 75 is wearing anything remotely similar.




Now if the picture above looks like something Medieval, what you see below is actually still widespread in China. "Widespread", of course, is a very bad pun in this case, because that is exactly the pose in which you see a whole lot of Chinese toddlers, as their mothers hold them over gutters, tree wells, and sometimes the middle of the sidewalk. Sometimes the toddlers just decide to take care of business on their own schedule. A friend of ours got peed on by a little boy standing in a shopping cart next to her in line at a store.




Disposable diapers are for sale in the stores these days. They probably remain too expensive for most Chinese. If you want proof that bare baby butts are still a common sight in China, here is a photo for you. In case you are wondering, the front of those pants is just as wide open as is the back.



Occasionally, I feel guilty for taking surreptitious pictures of people, but they certainly don't have any compunction about doing it to us, so I guess it is all fair.

Finally, this one reminds me of another little saying we have around here: "China doesn't have a five-second rule".

Think about it.