What are you eating?
I was overjoyed- giddy- to get a gallon of milk in my hands again. China had milk powder and individually-sized boxes of possibly tainted milk. There was no cheese. Their one plus in the dairy section was drinkable yogurt. So, the simple pleasure of pouring a glass of milk or bowl of cereal became the homecoming prize I kept my eyes on. That and pizza and Mexican food ("Look! A Pizza Hut/Taco Bell hybrid restaurant! I've got a deliciously sinister idea..." (Yes, that is tongue in cheek)). On the way back, at the Honolulu airport, I got my first whiffs of pizza, Starbucks, and Cinnabon. Delicious smells, yes, but then I heard the people in line ordering. "Do you have meat lover's? What about extra cheese? And gimme cheese sticks and Coke with that combo." So what? You might ask. But this was a pattern with every customer in line, and the vendors had clearly been engineered to market the high fat, high sugar, high dollar craving food. And judging by the bulging bodies people bought into this system whole-milk-heartedly.
I can say, contrasting China, that the people were very sensitive to sugar (they though Reese's Peanut Butter Cups were too sweet), seldom ate "very expensive" chocolate, and among the students, especially the girls, they would hound each other if a classmate became fat (according to the standards of a country that used to experience regional famines once every year). I was let on to the diets of some girls who would routinely skip dinner or only eat an apple, saying, "I'm a little fat." China has plenty of chubby kids, but among the young adults I counted maybe two or three girls who were what would indeed be called fat. Really, Americans that I know would just say, "Well, she's not skinny, but she is a bigger girl." But back to body types in a moment.
One more observation about food in China (for now, at least, I will have to write about this topic later). A lot of the diet consisted of fruits and vegetables, and chicken and fish and ducks and whathaveyou, bought from the street markets. These were filthy, shocking bazaars, having no health inspector to please. Besides the obvious health dangers, there was the fright of whole animals, chopped up or cooked whole, staring at you from the dinner plate. I could handle the adventurous eating, surprises and all, but I did wonder why I maintained my weight with all the ostensibly fresh, healthy, if not tainted, food. I concluded that the main cause was the oil, which ran over everything and pooled in a layer at the bottom of the plate. The Chinese may be resistant to the encroachment of processed foods, but their love of Chinese tradition means they are going to stick with the heavy oil habit.
The bodies
Lastly, I want to comment on the most glaring of the differences I noticed on American soil. The bodies. Now, the rest of the world all knows that Americans are fat. This is not to say that there are no other fat countries (see Russia and the United Kingdom, among others), but America is Number One when it comes to fat culture. I often laughed and acknowledged this to my students in China, but when I returned to America the site of all the obesity hit me hard and took away my laughter. I was saddened and hurt by it. Bellies and thighs with their own momentum, masses of humanity whirring along on electric scooters because they had given up standing and walking, unrecognizable deformities of the flesh made in the image of God, people, like me, who were a slave to their cravings- in this case, the food. So it makes me heartbroken to see this pandemic.
I have also noticed that men's bodies have diverged, either into weightlifters or beer bellies, but with considerable overlap between the two groups. The men here have huge hands, and often monstrous arms. In China, the men looked like the standard I have seen in many life drawing manuals, and what men in America looked like before World War II. A thin, perhaps lean upper body, straight arms that expand at the elbow and upper forearm, making the joint look much larger compared to the pipe-like upper arm, overall moderate proportions and moderate height- not often short and not often tall- and most prominently, calves.
Calves
As a visual connoisseur of good calves, I can put my authority behind the statement that the Chinese have bulbous, bulging, and even wonderfully shapely calves. In America, sorry to say, the people are starting to resemble Gary Larson's Far Side characters. Big galoots with round bodies and awkward limbs. It looks like a plastic surgeon found a creative way to hide his Play-Doh. In China, I would see skinny young men, no more than 130 pounds, no definition in their chest or arms, (weightlifting has not caught on with the typical Chinese male and they don't spend their weekends idolizing football players), and they would have veins popping out of their calves and snaking down their inner knee. Ladies, who largely did not work out, would still have shapely lower legs and the muscle groups would be plainly visible (from knee to ankle it should look like two narrowing ellipses, stacked one on top of the other). I know a couple families in America with good calves, but I look around now and wonder where all the good specimens have gone. A little strange, I know. Well, at least in car-loving, skinny-calved America, it is ultra-rare to find a woman with feint black mustache or leg hairs, or a black dish scrubber hiding under her armpit, but that not uncommon sight is a topic for another time.
-Mantis
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