Clothing—1981

Most Chinese owned only a couple well-worn changes of the basic baggy cotton “Mao suit” in solid blue, green, brown, or gray. A heavy winter jacket or many layers of sweaters and some lighter clothes for summer completed the wardrobe. There was almost no variety, although young women in particular were beginning to wear a few more colorful sweaters or other accessories under their Mao jacket at the time. Few people dared to stick out much, though. There is an old Chinese saying, “The nail that sticks out gets pounded down.”

Living in China for 9 months, I had quickly learned the secret all Chinese knew about clothing: A limited wardrobe is a good thing. There were no washing machines. I had to learn to wash my clothes in a wash basin with a washboard. Truth be told, I never really got the hang of the washboard thing, so my clothes basically soaked in soapy water a while, got squished around a bit, rinsed, wrung out, and hung to dry. One change of outer wear a week was plenty good enough. All my whites were pretty gray by the end of the school year.

I bought a blue Mao suit to wear (so I wouldn’t stick out quite so much) but found that no store carried my size. I bought the largest size I could find, and it was still a bit small on me. I wore it anyway. A friend who was 6’ 8” tall had a suite tailored, and wore it a lot, but of course he towered head and shoulders above the crowd, and so he always stuck out anyway. He had only brought with him a single pair of tennis shoes, which became badly tattered, but there was no way to buy a replacement pair. My leather work boots served me well through the long Beijing winter. Among the Chinese, leather shoes were a status symbol. Most people wore flimsy cotton shoes or very cheap all-plastic shoes.

The nicest thing about the Mao suit was that it was really comfortable—made of soft cotton, and cut very baggy. This was all fine by me. I never paid a lot of attention to clothes. As far as I was (and am) concerned, the Chinese had it right. They had the basics covered on the clothing side, and that was good enough. My imported clothes were a bit more colorful than the Chinese, however. My down jacket was blaze orange, and made me stand out from the crowd at tremendous distances.