A nice tan is much pursued by ladies (and maybe gents) of the West, but it is not so for people in the East. While the tan of someone in a Western country may be the result of a vacation in some exotic tropical place, dark skin is undesirable in the East.
Have you ever noticed while traveling in Asia that women (and men too, sometimes) like to carry an umbrella with them to shade them from the sun? It is not only older women who do this, although they are more inclined to do so. Many younger Asian women are aware of the damage that ultraviolet rays will do to their skin. Lying on the beach or the balcony to enjoy the sun is not a common pastime for Asian women, unless they are very westernized. Fairness in complexion or, to be exact, whiteness of the skin, is valued a lot more than a nice tan in Asia, probably by both sexes.
If you travel in Vietnam, where a bike—motorized or non-motorized—is a common vehicle for commuting, you will see women wearing long detachable sleeves on their arms. The same if you visit Japan; you will come across many women wearing large-brimmed hats and detachable sleeves on their arms while taking a stroll in the park.
While a tan on someone in the West may indicate affluence, in the sense that they have taken a vacation to enjoy distant beaches and the sun, it may imply something different in the East. Traditionally, only Asian women who are from the working class need to work outside of their home and be exposed to the merciless sun.
There is a saying in southern China that mere whiteness of the skin is capable of masking three counts of ugliness in a person. So there you go.
For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.
As a Hong Kong Chinese, I did not associate seniors with fast food until about 10 years ago, when I moved into an apartment from which, if I needed to get to the train station fast, I had to take a short cut through a McDonald’s.
Every morning I made that trip, the scene never failed to amaze me—lots of seniors having breakfast at McDonald’s. Maybe it is a myth, after all, that Chinese people are particular about food. My—or our, if I can claim that I represent a certain segment of our society—belief used to be that Chinese seniors would not like fast food. They preferred congee to burgers, jasmine tea to coffee. But, obviously, I learnt something new when I moved into that apartment.
When I was taking a course for my doctoral program, my professor told me that she had been to Hong Kong and that both she and her husband were totally surprised to see that McDonald’s was such a favorite spot for children in an Asian city. She predicted that this generation of Hong Kong youngsters would have the same kind of cardiovascular problems as those in her country, the United States.
When I saw the large number of seniors having breakfast at McDonald’s, I remembered what she had said and thought, not only will we have a generation of young people with cardiovascular problems, we will also have a generation of seniors with those problems, as in Western countries.
I remarked about this to a friend, and she suggested it could be the free coffee refill that attracts seniors. This may be one of the reasons, but probably only one. To this day, although not so amazed as before, I am still puzzled. Maybe one day, I will do a survey on this, trying to find out seniors’ perceptions of fast food, and why they patronize these restaurants.
My speculation is that fast-food restaurants treat everybody the same. Our seniors enjoy the same kind of “freedom” as anyone else. They can sit for as long as they like, in spite of buying little, and not be driven away or given strange looks by waiters and waitresses. They don’t have to abide by the rules of a regular restaurant. This, then, is a good aspect of fast-food chain restaurants. They are a place for any age group; there is no age discrimination.
For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.
