Fit To Strip, And Other Things I Love Right Now

Those of you who read here before I left for China know it used to be called “Stuff I Love.” In memory of times gone by, here are a few things I love right now:

1. Fit To Strip, the workout DVD by Carmen Electra. I know, I know, it sounds lame, but disc 2 is a calisthenics routine that has nothing to do with stripping and everything to do with building strength in your core, legs and upper body. I used this DVD before I ran a half marathon a few years ago and was the most toned I’ve ever been. I let myself get chubby after my dad died, so I’m back on a strength training/toning regime, and this DVD is part of my new routine (along with running, weights and yoga). It kicks your butt in a really good way.

Amazon.com, $12.99

2. Community, the tv show on NBC. One of my friends in the U.S. prodded me to watch this show, and it takes the place in my heart that used to be occupied by The Office until The Office turned kinda lame. (Sorry, but you know it’s true.) Abed and Troy crack me up; long live their Donde Esta La Biblioteca rap! Also, Joel McHale naked is so much yummier than I never imagined. Thanks, ratings ploy! It totally worked.

Community recaps, nymag.com

3. My new panda wrist rest, advertised on the packaging as glow in the dark, but it’s only those little floaty thingies that glow and they’re hard to see inside the plastic. So, glow fail, but panda win! Sorry, I don’t know where to buy this outside of China. But if you’re in China, I got it at Sanfu.




4. WeiEast face cream. Katie at Scattered Starlight introduced this product to me, and it’s a new favorite. I’ve mentioned before how serious the Chinese take their skincare*, and I’ve gotten compliments from Chinese girls on how good my skin looks after using this. As an added bonus, it’s not actually made in China, so it’s free of skin whiteners and other ingredients you don’t want to know about.

WeiEast.com

5. Tostitos Queso. This is junk food, and I love it. Judge me if you must, but a bowl of warm cheese and warmed tortilla chips is a little bit of heaven in my mouth. I brought some back with me to China in my suitcase.

I think you can buy this at pretty much any grocery store in America, you lucky dogs!

6. Undergear.com. Warning, this website is not suitable for the faint of heart, or maybe those at work. It’s men’s underwear and pajamas and workout gear, and my friend sent this link to me, and I sent it to a few friends here, and we all spent a good hour on gchat, sending each other links from the site and cracking up and drooling. I never knew there were male equivalents to push-up bras, but now I do! This guy’s pretty handsome. I’m not recommending the shorts, just the guy.

Undergear.com. I recommend the sleepwear, swimwear and underwear links. Oh, and can’t forget this. It's kinda strangely hot!







7. And while we’re at it, I love gchat. I stopped using msn because of all the spam, and because Vista didn’t seem to like it and kicked me off every few minutes. Skype is great but not everyone uses it, and it takes a lot of bandwidth to run. Yahoo Messenger seems sorta 1998. But gchat? So convenient! No need to add anyone, and if you miss a chat, they email it to your inbox. I think on MSN, you had to log back in again before you got offline chats. Gmail isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty great. I deleted my Facebook account, so happy I did that, but you can pry my gchat from my cold, dead hands.

Ok, that’s it for this edition. Next time, I’ll be back with more China stories.

*Recently a Chinese friend was asking me if I knew another teacher on campus,and she said, "She's in her early 30's and sometimes has bad skin." I've never heard skin used as a major descriptor before I came to China. They aren't kidding around about their skin.

By The Time We Got There, It Was Dinner At Tiffany’s*.

There is a phenomenon of giving directions in China that I still don’t understand: people will only give you directions to the next block. For example, “Go straight ‘til the next intersection, then turn left.” Now, you as a Westerner might think that means that after you turn left, you’ll be there. Oh no, my friend. This is just the beginning. If you don’t see what you’re looking for after you turn left, you ask someone else, and get the next set of directions. You will keep doing this, block after block, until you arrive at your destination.

This happened to V. and I when we were in Chengdu for training. I needed to get to Tiffany & Co.* to get some jewelry cleaned, and he came with me. I didn’t know where Tiffany was exactly, but I figured it was downtown near the other big shops. Turns out it was in a new shopping plaza built a little zig-zaggy ways away from where we were. It took four sets of directions to get us there. Yup, that’s about right.

Also, be aware: you will always get some directions, even if that person has no idea where you should be going. Saying, “I don’t know” is a loss of ‘face’ in Chinese culture, so even if they have no idea, they’ll still give you directions. The next set of directions might send you in a totally different direction. It means one of those people has no idea. Have fun deciding which one!

By the by, there was a Victoria’s Secret near the Tiffany, the first one I’ve seen here. Bras were over a hundred USD, and even those cheap little $5 dollar thongs were the equivilant of $60 USD. Say wha? It’s like they’re trying to turn Victoria’s Secret over here into an Agent Provocateur or La Perla equivalent. Ridiculous.

After our luxury adventures, V. and I stopped for dinner at a “Western” style chain restaurant out of Taiwan. Here’s a picture of what our meal came out like:



Yes, that is fried chicken steak (w/ pepper sauce), spaghetti w/ peas and a fried egg, all on the same plate. So don’t feel bad when American Chinese food is nothing like what you get in China; they get it wrong, too.

*This is a brand new Tiffany & Co. store, the first in this region of China. Also, why is the name in the novella/movie possessive? I’ve never noticed before that that is weird. But it is.

The Bra Strap Triangulation

As soon as I discovered my bra had removable straps, I knew the next step would be losing one of 'em. Sure enough, a strap went MIA only the second time I took them off. Bra straps are my new bobby pins! Luckily it's fashionable right now in China to have fancy, exposed bra straps, so I went across the street to the accessories store and bought these as replacements (along with a clear set):

(Perhaps these are also now fashionable in the U.S.? I'm not keeping up on the home trends very well.)

It's one of the dichotomies of life in China: a very conservative culture in which it's completely acceptable for your bra and panties to show through your clothes. And by panties, I mean the 1/2-inch inseam denim shorts in size -3 that are so popular here. They're pretty much denim underwear. (And Chinese girls have no cellulite, so they look great in them!) In my city, a popular summer outfit for girls is denim panties, fancy-strap bra, long sheer shirt, and high heeled shoes. I cannot pull this look off.

They also sell bra straps with big rhinestone bows, butterflies and flowers attached, but they were close to $3.00 USD, which was too much for me to buy even as a joke. (The ones above were about $.60 and $.20 respectively.) But you must have at least one set of Hello Kitty. It's just a rule.

Panty Flags

I was unprepared for the amount of panties I see everyday in China. I don't mind panties, I think they are quite cute, but I'm used to them being a private or semi-private thing. Not so here. It's one of the lovely paradoxes of China that this quite socially conservative culture displays its undergarments so freely. (It is also possible to buy panties on the street like you would a baseball hat or purse.) It's popular to say that in China there is no sense of privacy, but I didn't understand all the ways in which this concept manifests itself here. Publicly hanging up your underwear is one such way.

A bit of backstory: clothes dryers aren't used here, you have to hang your wash to dry. Most people choose outside drying and many apartments have special bars outside the windows on which to hang laundry. Those that don't have them make their own drying lines (pictured above). As a result, you constantly see cute, fancy panties hanging in windows and outside doorways. (And a lot of it is red, a lucky color here.) If I knew the whole world would be looking at my underwear, I'd make sure it was cute too! As a joke, we call them "panty flags" because they inadvertently announce where the people with cute underwear live.

New Year's Eve Panties

According to Mexican tradition, brought to San Antonio by its large Mexican expat population, the color of panties you are wearing when the clock strikes midnight determines what you will find in the new year. So, you should wear red panties for passion, yellow panties for prosperity, and rose colored panties for true love.

I love this tradition, because how easy is it to find rose colored panties vs. red ones?  RIGHT. The Mexicans are onto something.

I always wondered about yellow vs. green for prosperity, but green panties are hard to find too. I guess this one is just about practicality. I have also heard you should wear yellow to find true friendship.