Continued …

Not only did I go out today, (Fourth of July) but I also did my hair and makeup. As draggy as I’ve been feeling lately, that’s something to celebrate. I want to see a doctor and get some tests done, just as a checkup. I don’t know if I am depressed or bored, or both, but there is a nagging feeling of fatigue that I just can’t seem to shake.

I’m not sure if it’s the transition from feeling like I’m working every day to vacation. I had to spend the last four weeks or so grading, and I did it so I wouldn’t feel burnt out every day. Thankfully, my university is very laid-back, and no one was cracking a whip to get the grades done. That’s a very good thing.

And I’ve got this mindset that I can’t truly have fun unless everything is done. No play before work, but if we truly lived our lives like that, no one would do anything fun. So I try to get a certain amount done before having lunch, taking a nap, or calling it quits.

Pleased to Meetcha

I have some new readers so I decided I’d interview myself so they could get to know me.

Gloria: Can you tell me a little about yourself?

Gloria: Don’t you know me by now??? Geez!

Gloria: Your new readers don’t know! Give them something, at least!

Gloria: All right. I’m Gloria. I am from Indiana. I moved to China when I was 51, partially out of boredom; partly because I was tired of working anywhere from 2 to 8 jobs and getting nowhere.

Gloria: That’s better!

Gloria: You’re welcome. I have lived in China for a little over five years now, and I love it. The day to day stuff. Not the job stuff. Don’t ask me about that.

Gloria: Uh… okay. What else?

Gloria: I’ve been writing something since age seven. I’ve been a professional writer for over 30 years now. I do a lot of blogging, and I post weekly on LinkedIn, or I try to, and I have several pieces on Medium. One of my articles was published in Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World’s Richest Country last October. I was so proud of that.

Gloria: You should be! What do you do for fun in China?

Gloria: Depends on how I feel and the weather. Sometimes I go out exploring places I’ve never been to. I go for walks, I take pictures, lots of them. Thinking of selling them online. The malls here are amazing. Think of the American mall’s glory days in the 1980s and 1990s, and that’s what Chinese malls are like. They’re fabulous! Other times, I stay home and watch tons of YouTube. I’m trying to watch my money, and staying home is free.

Gloria: I thought YouTube and all them were banned.

Gloria: They are. But don’t believe the hype. You can get around that.

Gloria: Hmmmm…. So how’s the censorship in China?

Gloria: At my jobs, I’ve been told not to mention the three Ts: Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet. I avoid stuff that criticizes the Chinese government. What was wild was that I taught The Handmaid’s Tale and Nineteen-Eighty Four here in China right about when the book banning in the US started up. It kind of made me wonder which country was “freer.”

Gloria: Inflation is bananas in the US. How is it in China?

Gloria: People will hate me for this, but I haven’t really noticed. I eat at Subway probably twice a week, and that runs me around $9 for what I get. Burger King is slightly more expensive. But Subway gets the majority of my fast food money. There’s a pizza place that probably runs me $12 for a 10-inch pepperoni pizza and a couple of Cokes. It’s hard to gage what my groceries cost because I don’t buy everything at one place.

Gloria: Why not?

Gloria: Because even though they have stores like Walmart and Sam’s Club, you can’t find everything in one place. It’s frustrating. Like, interesting lettuce I usually buy at Olé.

Gloria: “Interesting lettuce”?

Gloria: Yeah. If you want something other than iceberg or romaine, you have to buy it at Olé. Although I’ve discovered frillice and I can get that at Sungiven Foods, which is right outside my apartment gate. Olé also has my favorite potato chips too. That store is good for more western stuff. But it can get expensive. I buy my meat at Metro, and sometimes online. Turkey is impossible to get in the store. I have to order that online, same with cocktail sauce for shrimp.

I can walk to four grocery stores near my house, and there’s several stores that sell just fruit. There’s one store that sells veggies and meat; they usually have eggs too. I like that I can buy two eggs if that’s all I need. Sometimes if I buy 10 or a dozen, they go bad.

So I don’t know exactly what I spend on groceries. I’ve given up stocking up at Walmart. I used to go there all the time, but now I don’t. Like, today I bought probably two pounds of hamburger and two pounds of chicken, and it was around $20 or so. That will last me for several weeks, if not more. My appetite has been down.

Gloria: Speaking of appetite, tell the folks how much weight you’ve lost.

Gloria: Since arriving, I’ve lost probably 35 pounds. That’s 16 kilograms for those of you who aren’t American.

Gloria: That’s quite a bit. How’d you do it?

Gloria: There were lots of factors: several bouts of food poisoning, unfamiliar food, unrelenting heat, urban exploration, walking to the bus stop two times a day for five days a week. Plus, there are things you just can’t find here in terms of junk food. They have junk food and all, but I’m not interested in eating steak-flavored potato chips. Snack cakes are pretty limited to Moon Pies. Forget about getting Ho Ho’s here, or Cosmic Brownies.

Gloria: Do you miss those?

Gloria: Strangely, not really. Last summer I broke down and ordered some Hostess stuff, but I had to wait weeks for it. It was coming from Canada. And if I wanted something quicker, I’d still have to buy online. You cannot buy cake frosting at the stores here.

Gloria: WHAAAATTTTTT?

Gloria: Yeah. I had to order it online. Baopals. It’s like Taobao, but in English. It’s where I get my cocktail sauce. Because even though you can find five different brands of ketchup on the shelves, they won’t have cocktail sauce. I had to make my own with wasabi paste and ketchup, then a friend ordered horseradish paste for me. Then, I found out about Baopals.

So if people in the US wonder why they struggle so much with weight, it’s pretty simple. A huge, HUGE variety of all sorts of food that’s bad for you, and people don’t exercise. It’s not like I told myself, “Here in China I’m gonna lose a bunch of weight.” It just happened. The Chinese are not so much into sweet things. If the food is sweet, it’s usually not that sweet. On the other hand, the spicy food here is a bit too much for me. And I think there are additives in US food that don’t help either. Reduce your choices of food, and change your lifestyle so that you only work ONE job, and you don’t have a side hustle, walk for at least a half hour a day five days a week, and the weight just might come off.

Gloria: This is all pretty interesting, but I think we should save some questions for next week.

Gloria: As you wish. In the meantime, here are a few posts our readers might like to check out.

https://nowaylaowai.home.blog/2024/04/21/sams-club-on-a-saturday-afternoon-in-china/

Yes, they have Sam’s Club here. Don’t go on the weekend unless you enjoy shopping with thousands of people. I started to get anxious after just a few minutes.

https://nowaylaowai.home.blog/2024/01/21/shopping-for-makeup-isnt-fun-anymore/

Normally, I LOVE makeup. But this post explains why it isn’t so much fun to buy anymore.

https://nowaylaowai.home.blog/2021/12/29/commerce-as-art/

This Beijing mall was a combination of art museum and consumer mecca. Andy Warhol would approve.

I complain about a man, and talk about how picky I am when it comes to men.

https://nowaylaowai.home.blog/2019/03/28/the-journey-begins/

And if you want to know what prompted me to leave, this post tells you about it.

Shopping for Makeup Isn’t Fun Anymore

A short while ago, I had a sty in my eye. Normally, when I have had them, they’re small but tough blisters on my eyelid. I scrape them with a toothpick and they’re gone.

Not this one.

This one lingered and went into my upper eyelid. I had drops and it finally went away. But not without some really bad pain. One night, when I squeezed my upper eyelid, I was rewarded with some of the worst eye pain I’ve ever had. I was convinced there was something in my eye. The mother of all eyelashes maybe.

That “something” turned out to be a tiny glob of skin from the blister I’d popped. The skin was trapped between my eyelid and eyeball, and I fished it out with a cotton swab. I took a photo. It was small, yet big enough to be agonizing.

Imagine THIS being trapped between your upper eyelid and eyeball!

I was glad it went away, but not happy with having to repurchase eye makeup. It’s one of the reasons I try not to spend a lot of money on mascara, eyeliner and shadow. Because… WHAT IF?

So I went makeup shopping. And it was disappointing.

Back home, I’d just go into Ulta when I wanted something. Their clearance racks are legendary, and NYX has become my go-to brand. Urban Decay had a shadow called “Lounge” that was game-changing.

Here, things are a little different. I’m exposed to a lot of brands, many of which I can’t afford. Dior. Chanel. Tom Ford.

Which is why I was thrilled to discover Wow Colour, and The Colorist. Back in the day (five years ago or so) I walked into Wow Color and nearly fainted. Imagine a store with literally dozens of different makeup brands, some known, some obscure, plus a bunch of beauty tools. Add in a place for bored boyfriends to hang out, and you’ve got the gist of these stores.

Shopping bags from the stores that originally won my heart.

I LOVED them. They also carried a tiny selection of some more expensive brands (samples, mostly) but they seemed to have it all. Except for one thing. The eye shadow seemed the same.

It didn’t matter what brand it was, it seemed like every single eye shadow palette featured warm pinks, peaches and browns, with some orange thrown in. Blushes tended to be warm, as well, and sometimes neon pink. The eyeliners featured a huuuuuuuge (sarcasm) range of brown to black. And for a long time I was baffled.

Then, it hit me. It was because basically everyone looks the same. I know it sounds mean, but it’s rare that you see a young person with blonde hair, or anything other than black/brown hair. And for the girls, it will be in a ponytail. Add in similar skin color, and it’s obvious I’m not in Kansas anymore. Or Toronto. I’m sure that I was Wow Colour and The Colorist’s oldest customer; a quick glance around the store and I was the only foreigner as well. But I didn’t care. Let the older Asian women go to Carslan and SKII. I wanted a bargain.

Alas, that was before.

Years ago, seemed like both shops carried American as well as Asian brands, one had Wet and Wild, the other had L.A. Colors. I found a Wet and Wild palette with ten colors that were actually differemt. They had a couple shades of green that were great, and a sparkly brown. I should have taken a picture of it before I threw it away, because I don’t think they make that palette anymore. It also had some lighter shades as well. But not wanting to risk another infection, I threw out all my eye makeup, and the brushes. I even threw out my recent Make Up For Ever eyeliners, which I’d had for less than four months. That hurt. It’s not like they’re $5 apiece.

So I replaced everything, but I had to go to four stores. And as for eye shadow, I had to get that online. Sephora, MAC, KKV and Make Up For Ever just weren’t cutting it. And “Lounge” is nowhere to be found.

Another annoying thing about the more upscale stores is that you look around and think, “geez, this is a lot of makeup.” On closer inspection, you see the displays tend to repeat themselves. Every time you think you’ve found a new collection of eyeliners, you realize it’s the same stuff you first looked at when you walked in the store.

And why didn’t I go to Wow Colour and The Colorist you may ask? Well, I did. But they’ve shifted their focus to more skin care than makeup. The makeup brands hardly feature any western names at all. And Foccalure, which actually had purple eye shadow at one time, vanished. I remember their eye shadow display boasting a 16 square-foot assortment of eyeshadows that nearly made me gasp. They were individual colors, which I like because you can put together your own collection, instead of having to buy the palette for the one color you want, and wonder how you’re going to use the rest of them.

Even going to KKV, which fascinated me when I first discovered it a few months ago, wasn’t very impressive for their makeup selection either.

As for blush, I’m not out of that. But because I just can’t seem to find what I want, I used a Kiss Me lipstick as cream blush, and it works. It’s the right color, a cool, deep pink instead of the neon girly pink I seem to see a lot of.

You also may ask, “why didn’t you check out Walmart?” Are you sitting down? You sure? Because here’s why:

Walmart does NOT have a cosmetics section.

I’ll repeat:

Walmart does NOT have a cosmetics section.

Some Walmarts may have an in-store kiosk dedicated to L’Oreal or Maybelline. But mostly, it seems that the Walmarts (always located in a mall, I’ve not seen stand-alone Walmarts here) usually have makeup kiosks meters away from their mall entrances. But the stores themselves devote what would normally be the makeup aisles to skin care. I loathe Walmart, but when I get back to the states, I might just go to one and drift around the makeup aisles and soak in all the fabulousness. Then, I’ll go to Ulta. God knows what I’ll do there.