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Thank goodness for the Russians!
You may find it odd to hear a Westerner, especially one from the US, say that these days, but if not for the Russians, I would be hard-pressed to find clothing in China to fit my Anglo-Saxon-sized body.
I came to China three and a half years ago stocked up on shirts, pants, winter jackets, gloves and even socks. This initially seemed unnecessary since, over the years, I'd worn lots of made-in-China clothes back home. But friends had warned that in Shanghai, where I first landed, clothes likely to fit me would be expensive, when I could find them at all. (Where does Yao Ming shop?)
Everywhere in the world, sizes on clothing tags vary, but I found that not only were European sizes more common on tags than US sizes, the variance also was far greater here. I found if I took an XL size back home, even an XXXL might be too small.
Still, I was just fine with the clothes I came with and bought on trips back home, needing only one emergency infusion of socks shipped from Stateside. All was well until I decided to get healthier and lose weight (more than 13 kilograms so far).
Soon I could fit into my "skinny" clothes, and then those became too big. I got to the last notch on my belt and still had to hold up my pants at times.
I wasn't too worried because, after all, I lived in Beijing now, and many people in North China are bigger than southerners - taller and beefier. I don't tower over people as much as I did on the Shanghai subway, and it isn't uncommon to find myself standing next to a Chinese guy taller than me.
I went shopping at foreign-owned stores, but found that not only were clothes not in Northern European sizes, inventory is targeted at young and very skinny guys. What to do?
Enter the Russians. Big, stout, barrel-chested Russians who eat caviar with their hearty black bread. Bless their souls. The place to go was Beijing's Alien Street Market - where Cyrillic script replaces Latin letters just below Chinese characters on signs.
Reportedly, there are fewer Russian traders shopping in Beijing these days due to exchange rate issues. The Russian language that I studied for about six months about four years ago has dwindled through disuse to little more than "hi", "goodbye", "thank you", "how are you?" and "I do not understand", so I couldn't have had much of a conversation, anyway. Sure enough, in one of the first stalls we came to, I found a pair of pants that fit like a glove. I was sure an image of St. Basil's Cathedral momentarily illuminated the space above the local merchant's head.
So, I'll be going back to the Alien Street Market. And should China's new Belt and Road Initiative bring more Russian speakers to China, that hopefully will mean more accommodative clothing for us lumbering Westerners.
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