Standout Stand-ins, or What you can buy in a capitalist China

Posted Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 3:56 p.m. by Chris Amico in News

Things to buy in Dalian: Designer clothes, fake designer clothes, new mom

New school clothes: 200 RMB
New mom to go with your new clothes: 50 RMB per month
New reputation: Priceless

There's a feel-good teeny-bopper movie somewhere in this story: Here in Dalian, we find Wang Pingping, a middle schooler whose mother just couldn't hang with the cool parents.

According to Pingping, her mother likes to wear casual clothing, which outlines her stout figure. Her daughter once suggested her mom should wear more professional outfits, only to get bitter response from her mom: "You brat! You're picking on my clothing. Just mind your own business, and leave the rest for me to worry!"

Since then, the school's regular parents meeting have been a huge concern for Pingping. Not only did her mother not dress well, but was also nosy, asking about other parents' salaries and other students' pocket money. And so Pingping felt her mom was not welcomed both by the students and parents.

Pingping tried very hard to impress other students so that they would forget about her mom, but the monthly parents' meeting was still unavoidable. She claimed she had a lot of nightmares about her mom's buffoon acts in parents' meetings.

The solution: Pingping paid her friend's aunt 50 yuan ($6.47) a month to fill in at school functions. When the real Mama Wang found out, her daughter didn't mince words: "Please consider your dress and manners from now on - it's not only for your own good."

Here's a job offer for the desperate: Pretend to be a Chinese businessman's mistress so his (understandably) irate wife can take a few whacks at you. (h/t Rick, via the Hao Hao Report)

"When the woman found out her husband had a mistress, she insisted on beating her up," the Beijing Youth Daily said, citing the advertisement posted on a popular online jobs forum on sina.com.

More than 10 people had applied for the job, the newspaper said.

The "successful" candidate would be 35 and originally from northeastern China and would be paid 3,000 yuan ($400) per 10 minutes, it said.

I wonder how much damage the missus can do. Anybody want to go a few rounds?

Comments:

apr 24, 2007 at 4:35 p.m. // China Law Blog said:

Your thoughtful post raises a number of very serious issues, to wit:

Is there a female under the age of 25 anywhere in China without a double nickname like PingPing?
Is there a middle schooler anywhere in the world who is not embarrassed by his or her parents and who does not operate under the usually false belief that only his or her parents are uncool?
Where the hell did this kid come up with that kind of relatively big money?

apr 24, 2007 at 7:11 p.m. // Jeremiah said:

Chris,

Since when has 250 RMB been so priceless?

CLB,

Agreed. The "double nickname" thing is making me a little weary. We have a friend here with a double nickname who has rechristened her American husband with his own double nickname. Naturally, when we refer to this fellow in the third person...for reasons passing understanding, we use the double nickname. I will now beat myself to death with a baozi.

apr 24, 2007 at 10:58 p.m. // Chris said:

CLB, I meant to add a point about capitalism washing away "all that is fixed, fast and solid" and making teens everywhere equally annoying, but I figured you could make it better. I'm sure my little sister contemplated similar schemes in high school.

Jeremiah,

Did I go too low on the clothes price? I asked a few friends how much they spend each year and went with the bottom end.

apr 26, 2007 at 5:20 a.m. // John said:

I wonder if I can hire a stand in that would take my place when my wife is upset with me. Nah. No amount of money is worth that.

may 9, 2007 at 7:17 a.m. // Meursault said:

My parents will be leaving the sanctuary of our small industrial hometown in the north-west of the UK for the first time ever this month, and will be making the trip all the way here to sunny China.

Perhaps their blunt British working class manners will embarrass me in front of my middle-class expat friends while they are here? Do you, Chris, know any well-to-do, middle-aged, sophisticated, white couples that I can hire for the week to shadow us and pretend to be my parents in time of need? There's 251 RMB for the couple being offered and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps for yourself as finder's fee.

may 9, 2007 at 7:19 a.m. // Meursault said:

Ooh... I do like how comments fade into the page after hitting the "Submit" button. I'm going to write another comment just to see that again.

may 9, 2007 at 11:58 a.m. // Chris said:

Meursault, That's a tempting offer. Do you need Britons to pass muster? And must they be actually married or simply acting the part? Make it a large bag of salt and vinegar, perhaps some salty popcorn (none of that too-sweet stuff) and we might have a deal.

may 11, 2007 at 2:15 p.m. // Meursault said:

Just come home at 2 AM on a Friday night and realised I left my precious S[HTML_REMOVED]amp;V in a dodgy Qingdao bar. Sorry Chris, but the deal is off.