Back from China..

kiltair · Post by **kiltair** » Fri Dec 15, 2006 3:02 pm

Hi,

Two weeks ago we came back from our 3 month trip in China... my apologies for posting so late, but I was awfully busy.. Some of which I will announce shortly on this board (even if it's not 100% skirt related..)

I had 3 skirts in my backpack: a dark blue Macabi skirt, an ankle-length dark grey skirt and a long black jeans skirt. I always wore one of them, unless it was too cold (eg. in the Himalaya) or too impractical (hiking on the Great Wall or biking near Guilin).

The reactions were mostly predictable: almost none. During these 3 months I got maybe 4 comments from Chinese people. A lot of them stared, of course, but said nothing. The comments were positive and encouraging. The girls found it looked good on me. Each time, I explained it was a "men's skirt" and that it's becoming the hottest fashion in Europe. As my Chinese language skills are quite basic, I couldn't say much more...

The reactions in the Tibetan area (*) were very interesting. I often got 'thumb up' signs from Tibetan men and women on the street. Monks stopped to talk to us, and we were invited a couple of times for tea. (We didn't like the yak-butter tea, but the experience was very interesting)
Why these reactions? Tibetan monks are ubiquitous in the street, and they wear a skirt.. The traditional male Tibetan dress consists of a long and thick coat which is draped around the waist... Once or twice I think I saw a Tibetan man in what looked like a black skirt...
So 'men in skirts' is not so novel among the Tibetan population as it is in the Chinese regions.

Greetings!

Jan

(*) We didn't go into the 'Tibetan Autonomous Region', but stayed in the borderregion. The Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan have a very large Tibetan population and belong to 'Greater Tibet', but have been under Chinese rule much longer.

skirttron · Post by **skirttron** » Mon Dec 18, 2006 10:54 pm

Hey, that's great, if people in China get the idea men's skirts are the hottest Euro fashion they'll all wear them and manufacture them in millions and we'll have won.

kiltair · Post by **kiltair** » Sat Dec 23, 2006 1:19 pm

Hi,

Winter evenings are long, there's nothing on TV and my wife works late at night... so an ideal time to scan in my slides and put them on-line:

http://users.pandora.be/jbruyndonckx/china1Album.html

Unfortunately, as I stood behing the camera, no pics of me (skirted).

Enjoy,

Jan