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Our Man in USA: On banning PJs and hegemony
By Wan Lixin |
December 4, 2009, Friday
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Print Edition
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EDITOR'S note: Shanghai Daily writer Wan Lixin is on a three-month study tour in Virginia in the United States. This is the fourth of his cross-cultural writings.
THE standard observation that it is unseemly for Shanghainese to saunter around in pajamas in their neighborhoods is totally unjustified.
The accusation can only be explained in terms of a cultural inferiority complex, rooted in the assumption that some people know better how to dress, feed, or amuse themselves than we do.
In China we are now seeing standardized junk food, standardized concrete matchboxes serving as residential or office buildings, standardized amusement parks, standardized handbags, T-shirts, and underwear.
These influences of cultural hegemony are usually subtly effected in terms of fashion and progress, and totally run counter to such progressive concepts as diversity that some "enlightened" critiques claim to espouse.
The real intention is to spread some cultural idiosyncrasies as universals, which in turn helps to perpetuate the bias that some eating, dressing, or living habits are automatically superior to others.
Now it is already early winter in Washington, DC, a city whose latitude is roughly the same as Beijing's. While most Chinese people are wrapped up in heavy coats, it is quite common for us to see some Westerners going about the streets in shirts or shorts that leave parts of their legs and arms exposed to the elements.
We admire their hardiness, their defiance of the inclement weather, but none of us expresses any reservations that they should have been more decently dressed in the presence of many foreigners that happen to be in their capital.
In a nearby jogging and biking lane I see that bicyclists are invariably dressed in a kind of tight-fitting suit of the superhuman style that can only be uncomfortable and unhealthy.
But though we are deeply sympathetic to people who claim to subscribe to individualism but submit willingly to the tyranny of a dress code, none of us airs any complaints.
Over the past few years plenty of objections have been raised against Shanghainese hanging their laundry outside in the sunshine, which is probably the only green way to dry the laundry on earth. Here in America I found we have to roast our laundry for about one hour in electricity-powered drier.
One trainee in our group said that the roasting had ruined two of his shirts, one originally fit for people with a height of 190 cm had shrunk to one for 170 cm after being dried, and one female colleague had similar grievances.
We all know the wear and tear on clothing and the energy costs if all Chinese began to use this method to dry their clothes, but none of us finds it necessary to point this out to our hosts.As a matter of fact, in George Washington's enormous plantation at Mount Vernon there is a room where his many slaves used to wash the family laundry and then dry the laundry on the grass and shrubs in the courtyard.
One of the most serious problems in the world is that some people are so eager to spread their idiosyncrasies or aberrations as universals, and by remodeling the world on their norms, they are making the world less peaceful.
THE standard observation that it is unseemly for Shanghainese to saunter around in pajamas in their neighborhoods is totally unjustified.
The accusation can only be explained in terms of a cultural inferiority complex, rooted in the assumption that some people know better how to dress, feed, or amuse themselves than we do.
In China we are now seeing standardized junk food, standardized concrete matchboxes serving as residential or office buildings, standardized amusement parks, standardized handbags, T-shirts, and underwear.
These influences of cultural hegemony are usually subtly effected in terms of fashion and progress, and totally run counter to such progressive concepts as diversity that some "enlightened" critiques claim to espouse.
The real intention is to spread some cultural idiosyncrasies as universals, which in turn helps to perpetuate the bias that some eating, dressing, or living habits are automatically superior to others.
Now it is already early winter in Washington, DC, a city whose latitude is roughly the same as Beijing's. While most Chinese people are wrapped up in heavy coats, it is quite common for us to see some Westerners going about the streets in shirts or shorts that leave parts of their legs and arms exposed to the elements.
We admire their hardiness, their defiance of the inclement weather, but none of us expresses any reservations that they should have been more decently dressed in the presence of many foreigners that happen to be in their capital.
In a nearby jogging and biking lane I see that bicyclists are invariably dressed in a kind of tight-fitting suit of the superhuman style that can only be uncomfortable and unhealthy.
But though we are deeply sympathetic to people who claim to subscribe to individualism but submit willingly to the tyranny of a dress code, none of us airs any complaints.
Over the past few years plenty of objections have been raised against Shanghainese hanging their laundry outside in the sunshine, which is probably the only green way to dry the laundry on earth. Here in America I found we have to roast our laundry for about one hour in electricity-powered drier.
One trainee in our group said that the roasting had ruined two of his shirts, one originally fit for people with a height of 190 cm had shrunk to one for 170 cm after being dried, and one female colleague had similar grievances.
We all know the wear and tear on clothing and the energy costs if all Chinese began to use this method to dry their clothes, but none of us finds it necessary to point this out to our hosts.As a matter of fact, in George Washington's enormous plantation at Mount Vernon there is a room where his many slaves used to wash the family laundry and then dry the laundry on the grass and shrubs in the courtyard.
One of the most serious problems in the world is that some people are so eager to spread their idiosyncrasies or aberrations as universals, and by remodeling the world on their norms, they are making the world less peaceful.
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