fat figures of fun in China
Pippen visited China recently accompanying her husband on a business trip and left with vivid memories of its culture and people, a better understanding of its ancient civilization and migration history and a deep sense of shame for being overweight.“The Chinese seem to derive their main source of entertainment from disabilities, variations in size or appearance,” says Pippen, “and foreigners are particularly targeted – even a normal sized westerner is seen as fat!”
"On the rare occasion I saw a disabled person in public I was horrified by the way everyone laughed at him," says Pippen, "but I was absolutely mortified when I became the laughing stock of a group of people because of my size. It wasn't good natured giggling either. It was nasty and cruel and I want to warn all corpulent western visitors to Beijing to steel themselves for a shock to their self-esteem."
"Sure, there are plenty of fat babies in China -- they think they're cute – but very few adults are overweight and in view of the fact that people in some parts of China are living on starvation rations I guess it is also a shock to their system, and self-esteem, to see westerners twice or three times their size."
"The fat babies -- the little emperors -- are the result, of course, of China's one child policy," says Pippen, "and while the policy has reduced China's population it has unfortunately skewed the gender ratio in favor of boys so what China has now is a mass of young men without women to marry them and the future possibility of them becoming unruly little warlords."
“That this revulsion of fat people is now coming to the West, via Chinese influence and migration,” says Pippen, “is something we all should worry about.”
Read more by Pippen on China:
Labels: beijing, bullying, china, chinese century, civilization, confucianism, little emperors, new china, old china, one child policy, overweight, peking man, tang dynasty
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