a little coffee

In this small coastal city, Chris and I noticed something odd about the Doodles. Besides that it’s socially acceptable for old, bei jiu gut men to wear clinging, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination speedos or almost-speedos (the swimsuit equivalent of boxer briefs), they travel in packs. Hoards. You see this in Anyang. Minus the speedos. Groups of five, eight, twelve men (usually well above 35) crowded on a sliver of sidewalk around a Chinese chess board. At any point before dark, you’ll pass three or five groups just in the seven minute walk to the supermarket. It’s incredibly rare to see a woman encroaching in this boys game. On most days, you won’t see groups of women hunched over a chess board or a card game like the men. 

In Yantai, these groups of men trampled through the sand, spitting, yelling, scratching themselves, on their way to the water or the Chinese chess game they set up somewhere on the beach. Younger men were mostly with a girl or a family, though there were a few packs roaming around. Even odder- the lack of women of any age on the beach. And those on the beach were fully clothed except a few little girls in pigtails. Almost zero grown women in bathing suits! Even the women splashing around in the water were wearing street clothes while the men the same age were diving into the waves and strutting their stuff up and down Yantai.

What the hell? Where were the beach babes? Vendors flocking around the beach sold bathing suits. Conservative one-pieces or tankinis with skirts or shorts to conceal the crotch area. No itty bitty string bikinis here although the men were romping around in a lot less. This was ludicrous! Was I going to be the only woman on the beach in an actual bathing suit?

Turns out not. Sort of. A group of five girls, late teens/early twenties, came by. The all wore swimsuits though they went to great lengths to hide this. One girl kept an inner tube around her waist while the others kept thin towels tightly wrapped around themselves. One, wearing a cute, not-too-revealing two piece shucked her towel for all of thirty giggly seconds before wrapping it tightly back around herself like a blanket. This was too much.

“Fine! I guess I will be the only woman in a proper swimsuit!” I said as I pulled my dress off and proceeded to lounge in my simple black two piece with a skirt-bottom. 

I might as well have announced “Let the ogling begin!”

Anyone that passed, a big group of dudes in almost-speedos elbowing each other, a couple, a group of girlfriends, all did double takes and blatantly stared at me in their blatant, Doodley way. Prior to the strip down, Chris and I only got cursory glances from passersby, not full on stares. What could it have been? The even whiter skin of my belly, the moderately revealing two piece? Boobs? What? 

Here, it’s socially acceptable for women to where  super short shorts that barely cover butt cheeks, to wear transparent skirts and shirts that clearly display underwear, but my two piece, modest by American standards in that it actually conceals more than a bra and panties, is scandalous? To quote Michelle Tanner from Full House, “PUH-LEEZ!“

This could be miss reading the situation entirely, but to Chris and me, this illustrated the conservative boys club patriarchy still heavily greasing the wheel in China.

I wondered what it’s like in Qingdao: Bigger City of European Influence?