In China, it's the height of the tourist season for Qingdao's famed
beaches. But while many of the town's visitors want to enjoy the sand
and water, they're not so wild about sunbathing. So they often resort to
a local tradition: the face-kini, a sort of light cloth version of a
ski mask.
Often paired with a long-sleeved shirt, the face-kini reportedly costs from $2.40 to $4;
many residents simply make their own, out of old clothes. But observers
could be forgiven for thinking they've stumbled onto a vacation
community for superheroes in Qingdao, a city across the East China Sea
from South Korea.
The newspaper says, the head-cover reflects "an ancient
sentiment in China, like numerous other countries: a terror of tanning."
In many cultures, a tan doesn't imply health and leisure, as it often
does in Western advertising. Instead, it's seen as a connection to
outdoor work, and the peasantry. Preserving one's pale skin, the
thinking goes, implies that you lead a pampered, successful life.
Of
course, there's another way to accomplish that goal, and still beat the
heat: visit an indoor pool. And that's what Chinese folks do by the
tens of thousands. But even that has created a stir.
Photos of a few of China's gargantuan pools and water parks made news earlier this month — in part for the mass of humanity that seems to fill every foot of available space, and in part because web surfers were scandalized by what they called unsanitary conditions.
The Chinese bulletin board site posted several photos, showing thousands of people enjoying their (very) close proximity to
one another. More than one commenter on the story had the same idea:
"dense phobia."
a. What is a face-kini?
b. How is tanning viewed in some cultures?
c. How are Chinese avoiding tan?
d. What are the contextual meaning of the words: 'stir', 'gargantuan', 'web surfers', and 'dense phobia'?
