| Memoirs of China: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall |
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[JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 2005:] Here in Shanghai, the golden city that attracts opportunity-seekers from all over the country, you see a vast range of Asian faces. There are the square, flat-planed ones from the north; the almond-eyed, somewhat Polynesian ones from the south; and some that are so Western-looking that you know a Russian fell into the gene pool somewhere along the line. There are many Japanese here, too, living in uneasy peace with the people their ancestors brutalized as recently as the thirties; they, also, have a look distinctly their own. My wife and I think that, in general, the Japanese are a very handsome-looking people. The Chinese, by contrast, are “prettier,” with more delicate features. The interesting thing is to compare Western faces with Asiatic ones after you’ve been here awhile. Westerners really begin to look like oatmeal-colored lumps of flesh with hanks of reddish or brownish hair sprouting from their heads. It's actually a bit embarrassing—you begin to see why they've always called us “Barbarians.” Thank God it's incredibly cool to be a Westerner in this country—everyone wants to know you, or wants others to know they know you. So far, anyway. Someday, KFC, Pizza Hut, Halloween, and Christmas will no longer be hip, new things from the West, to be avidly embraced. Everyone will speak English perfectly. Gorgeous Chinese girls with heavy, silky, swinging black hair will replace insipid, blonde, thin-lipped Scandinavians as the world's standard for supermodels. We'll no longer have a bag-load of amazing things everyone wants. Then maybe we'll just be ugly. Again. Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites               
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