family values.

I have this completely untenable theory that China's relations with and perception of the West would be far improved on a micro-social scale if Shanghai's male expat population didn't have 'FETISH' engraved on their leering countenances.
The trend - of overweight, aging French, German, Spanish and American geriatrics- setting up shop in China - has spawned a market for unsavory and beautiful young female companions who conflate sipping on Bar Rouge cocktails and toting Italian handbags and expensive coifs - Western-conceived material wealth, in other words, for status.
These couplings (ubiquitous!) draw secret sneers from everybody not involved in this strange little economy, which is contained almost entirely within nightclubs and Western eateries. It's sad and funny to watch the women force-adjust their Chinese palates to salads and sandwiches, which don't go down easily for a variety of cultural reasons. The not-uncommon sight of bony, overdressed, overpermed Chinese twenty-somethings and fat, happy retired bankers parading one another around encapsulates far too many sad stories and Western and Eastern stereotypes for the educated mind.

Reinforce, reinforce, perpetuate, perpetuate / makes it hard to find a date. . .

In other news, met a retired UMass Amherst poetry professor at Vienna Cafe last night. Ran all aforementioned risks by accompanying him to a(n actually delightful) sushi dinner, where we reminisced fondly about the Pioneer Valley, the PVTA, etc.