Thursday 17 November 2016

Chinese Diaries - Celebrity

I am sending this from my iPad so sorry for any formatting problems.

To get from People's Square to the Bund you are more likely than not going to have to walk down Nanjing Road East; the pedestrianised part of Nanjing road and Shanghai's equivalent of London's Leicester Square, New York's Time Square or as the locals call it Shanghai’s Cardiff's Queen Street. This was shopping central and people central. It was the kind of place where you need to keep some wits about you, although actually, it felt safer than the aforementioned tourist attractions.  Normally I consider myself to be quite an anonymous looking fella. Grey hair and grey face, means I blend in with the crowd and the grumpy expression means people tend to give me a wide birth. Even the chuggers in Cardiff know not to mess with me. But on Nanjing Road East I was Mr Popular. All manner of people approached me, from all different angles. I don’t know how but they somehow seemed to know that I was from out of town and that made me a prime target for their sales pitches. One man promised me a top of the range fake Rolex, for about thirty quid; quite expensive for a fake I thought. The next man showed me a picture of a scantily clad young woman and promised me a happy massage. How anyone could feel happy being massaged by an eighth grader was anyone’s guess. Then there was the girl who followed me for about 3 mins asking me all sorts of questions in her broken English. Why you in Shanghai? what you do tonight? She was nice, quite cute really but I am not that naive. I know that young women don't follow old men for nothing. 
“You can buy me coffee,” she said. 
“How about you buy me coffee,” I retorted. 
She smiled, “No, you buy me coffee and then maybe...” 
I told her to scram, no fluids exchanged; coffee or bodily. 
I tried all manner of ways to rid myself of my fan club. I spoke Czech to one. I told one woman who showing me a picture of a young girl that she was showing me a picture of my daughter, (strangely it didn’t perturb her) and to the next girl who followed me wanting me to buy her coffee, I explained I was an international escort here to entertain rich Chinese women and I didn’t think she could afford me. 
All the while I was wondering how they knew I was a foreigner, how had they twigged so quickly that I wasn't at home. And then a group of boys provided the answer. 
They were teenagers, maybe early twenties, dressed up to the nines, all in black with perfectly coiffured hair. (I’ve noticed here the busiest shops are the beauty salons and it is mostly boys being pampered.) They could have been a Chinese Boy band,  a Wang Direction, (sorry)/ 
“Mister take a photo,” one said. 
I naturally assumed he was asking me to take a photo of them. I was wrong. I reached for the camera. 
“No mister of you.” The speaker stood next to me and smiled into the camera his friend was holding. 
“Why?” I asked, as the shutter closed.
He stroked his chin. 
“Beered” he said.
I looked around. I was the only man with a beard. The only person with a beard. Not a whisker, a stubble or a five o'clock shadow in sight. No sign of a goatee or a mo. Everyone was as smooth as a baby's bottom. Then it dawned on me, that must have been how they all knew I was a foreigner. 

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