" Hence one is not born a woman, but becomes one." the second sex, Simone de Beuvoir
Accompanied by proper shoes is great concern in life, specially when exploring the world.
My feet gets sore. I've been walking for hours in the city of Gwangzhou, south-east China. Gloomy, overcast sky is shadowing me, from my head to toe.
I should have bring my CONVERSE or... would better be Adidas shoes, I regret. Fed up with walking, I got on the subway.
At the first moment, Chinese steps, feet, came into my eyes. Almost half of them wear Adidas or NIKE, or those copied/similar one. There might be those shoes factories around here. Looks very comfortable, compared with my stylish, black-leather loafer.Yes, it's stylish my shoes... but all I need here is easy one, to be ready for running away (from someone or something).
While my feet were having rest, spontaneously, my eyes re-started to watch around. Soon I noticed the interesting imbalance of two, between the subway itself and the passengers. The construction building is dressed with highly urbanized, highly polished (amazingly cleaner than the ones in Tokyo), well-controlled new looks which leave us a sensation of impersonal coldness as typical urban personality.
On the other hand, the peoples those who are still showing in rustic garb, many are being clothed with sweat suits (with three side line on their bottom), not at home but even at the center of the city. Seems like all the peoples are fresh from countryside, apart from the buildings.
Humorous contrast between the developing infrastructure and people. The massive stream of construction is overwhelming the people. That may explain the great popularity of Adidas, among who are running to catch up with it, wearing a pair of Adidas shoes. So far, they are under preparation against the power, top-down development, which has established all this infrastructure.
They are ready.
Am... I ?
I came to feel like buying a new pair of shoes, running shoes, so that I got off the train at a station, just under the fashionable street.
Upon the station on the ground, colorful-dreamland (or Disneyland)-like-department store and crowds of teenagers threw me out to the street. I felt like being out of place, like in the Harajuku street (popular district in Tokyo, among teenagers) Guess I was too big to live in those kind of "dreamland".
Rejected by the "dreamland", plus, still tired and suffering with sore feet. What is worse, I was hungry. Only thing which could recharge and encourage me should be..... yes, sugar and caffeine.
Went straight to a cafe restaurant just across the road, and ordered a cup of coffee and one sweet bakery. A middle aged waitress, who looks so tired with her life, served me in a minutes.
The pastry looks quite similar with Japanese "melon pan(bread)", covered in a thin layer of crispy cookie dough, whose appearance resembles a melon (not necessary melon flavored). According to my guidebook, this supposed to be called "菠蘿油, Pineapple butter bread". I prefer Japanese "melon pan" but this is not that bad.
This realized me some sense of sisterly "sweet" relationship between Japan and China.
The coffee (鴛鴦茶), the important, was.....like..... mm. Let's say "Cafe con leche (cafe au lait), peruvian style MEETs United Kingdom.. or India. I mean, there's a plenty of milk and ..... TEA. Once again, according to my guidebook, this is typical drink among HongKong. So, is this loyalty to Queen of UK? Or friendship to India? Could be?
This admirable Chinese, complicated and very challenging attitude (toward food) encourages me to be ready to go back to the street. Well, I'm not saying it tastes bad, this definitely giving me caffeine DOUBLE in performance, coffee and tea. Why not becoming more aggressive?
While tramping around the street, something charming had passed by me. A small fashion boutique, displaying modern designed Chinese dress.
The atmosphere, antique and elegant style spiced with modern technology, I love it and decided to get into the shop. There were one shop girl, casting a smile at me when I entered, and one fifty-something woman ahead.
Looking around the clothes, good, too-mach, boring one, and I finally came across the one, the best. Modern designed Chinese dress, with floral pattern. Fancied myself a Maggie Cheung(張 曼玉), in the movie " In the mood for love (花様年華)", I asked the shop girl to try it on.
This moment, was the beginning of "GUANZHOU collection 2008 spring".
As I put on the one-piece and opened the curtains to see myself under the light, the two, shop girl and middle aged lady were waiting for me at front.
"Wow, you look gorgeous, indeed."
Actually Both of them doesn't speak English nor Japanese, only Cantonese(Chinese in Canton), I didn't understand much what they were talking about, but you could guess what peoples want to tell, at least whether good thing or bad thing.
Suddenly, the middle-aged-lady, who seems to be a steady customer here, gave the shop girl some direction. At the next moment, she handed me another dress, indicating to try this on, too.
It was nice dress but a bit too formal one.
Traveler tends to accept more things than usual, so do I, tried on one after another following to the lady's suggestion.
The fitting session continued and the spectators got escalated. I was in the mood for princess at that moment.
" I have a daughter in your age, in the same height." She, the lady, said perkily.
"And she (her daughter) also wore these dress here." she added (at my guess of translation).
Definitely her loving daughter must have grown up as princess, or "queen's" dress-up doll.
I decided to buy two of one-piece dress, not among of this queen's recommendations, one is the first one, modern designed Chinese dress, and antique designed one-piece. The queen also liked my selections, looking so satisfied, she left the shop with dignity.
"Where are you from?" the shop girl asked me, packaging the dresses.
"From Japan."
"Really? You doesn't look like foreigner. Possible to be Chinese beauty."
Lovely. I'm becoming feel like live here. And She asked me to write down my name on one paper, I expected, this would be for customer list, but seeing her coy smile, it turned out to be just her personal favor. A kind of autograph?
We exchanged our name paper, and learnt the pronunciations. Japanese use Chinese letter in parts but the sounds deffer in total so that we could communicate each other via writing Chinese letter, so-called 筆談(pen conversation).
Through chatting with her, my stereotype for Chinese has been collapsing. Such as aggressive, money-centered, ambitious people. I was unaware of myself being soaked up with these stereotypes, before the fact I was surprised at the girl in front of me, who love fancy goods and fashion, is charming shy virgin, just like girls in other country. I should have be reasonable, not irrational, enough not to generalize all the people, but I was.
After all, I just understood all these views in my head part, but not in any deeper understandings.
We could know by flood of information surround us, but it'd be impossible to grasp at the whole without "participation".
"When do you come back here?" she gave me a innocent question.
She's already known that I just drop by without plan and will back to Japan in 5 days.
When?
Return?
I totally have no idea what will be, but... by a twist of fate, people might ride on a circulation, go somewhere and back there and on and on.
Haven't answer her question, I told her to send the photo, of her and me, after I back home.
Soon after I left the shop, I faced the reality, that I can hardly wear these clothes, as daily clothes.
I tends to buy clothes in two ways. First, for daily conservative clothes. Second, challenging, avant-garde or sort of "too-much" clothes, along the edge of girls' intuition, to dream or "cosplay (dress-up)" in my room alone.
Wei Hui (周衛慧), author of the novel "shanghai baby", was also writing similar things in her book. I cannot remember precisely but "They're two color in my closet. Dark and Vivid." something like that.
I like both, even if I never wear again. You'll see when one "becomes" girl. Girl does like to be fancied oneself.
On the way back to the hotel, I witnessed another girlish thing.
Princesses, in line, riding on bike.
More than ten of girls in pink dress were riding on bike on the street. What is happening here?
They had gone so fast, in a hurry. Where to? Are they on the way to meet their prince? Maybe it's almost "12 o'clock", the end of all the magic, so they decided to go to buy their shoes ?
I dare say Cinderella in this century doesn't wait for prince coming.
She would go to shop her shoes.
Cinderella comes in all shapes and sizes.
Shoes also come in all shapes and sizes.
...then, shall we go to find out a pair of nice shoes in our limited life time, Cinderella?
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