I used to think I was worldly, well-traveled, and tolerant. After many years of traveling and studying abroad, I enjoyed dispensing advice on how to adjust to new cultures, where to go, and what to pack (see previous post). I even claimed I did not get culture shock anymore, since I was so used to trotting the globe and being all cosmopolitan.
Suffice to say I was punished for my arrogance a week ago.
I spent that day studying for my finals, and decided to take a shower before going to sleep.
Our shower stalls are divided by matted glass walls — they are not exactly diaphanous, but not opaque, either, and you can see vague outlines of the body of the person showering next to you.
As I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating, I detected two girls’ voices close to me; they were chatting in Chinese too fluent to be that of any of my fellow students (no offense), so I figured they were our Chinese roommates.
Since I could hear water running in the stall next to mine, without thinking, my mind registered it as one of the girls was showering, and the other was standing outside talking to her.
But when I looked up, I realized there were two body contours in that stall.
So at first I though they were making out, and delicately turned away.
(Going to a very liberal international boarding school and then living at a dorm at a fairly liberal college alters your expectations of dorm showers).
And then I realized they were chatting in a regular, friendly manner — no heavy breezing of flirtatious intonations. I carefully glazed up — and yes, I could see two body contours also lathering, rinsing, and repeating, each in their part of the shower stall. The stall was pretty small, so they were pretty close to each other.
I looked the other way, and saw that the stall on the other side of mine was available, so they were showering together voluntarily, not because there was no other place to shower.
And that’s just blew my mind.
I walked out of the shower having forgotten to finish rinsing my hair, and went to my room. I must have looked pretty confused, since my Chinese roommate asked me what was wrong. Having concentrated enough to speak Chinese, I asked her:
-In China, do girls shower together?
-Yeah.
-And that’s, um, common?
-Yeah. I don’t really like it though, but many of my friends do.
-Do guys do that, too?
-Some do, yeah.
I still don’t know why it shocked me so much.
It the two girls were in fact making out, I would have not cared at all. I am very liberal, and I certainly don’t care what people do in the showers in their spare time. I don’t exactly have a puritan approach to nudity, either. I have been happy to go to nude beaches with friends in Germany, and I have been to plenty of public saunas/lockerrooms/etc. I go to a local gym where women feel free to stroll around naked while changing in the locker room, and that does not bother me much.
Unless it was a complete shower emergency, it would just never occur to me to shower with a friend. In some dorms in China, hot water is turned off at a certain time. So, say, if I got back from the gym with a friend, and there was just one shower stall, and we had ten minutes, I would not mind sharing a stall — although I’d probably wear bikini or underwear.
But in my opinion, showering with friends just does not cut it as a social activity.
The stall is small, there is one shower, which means you have to take turns. Our dorm stalls here are larger than those at Yale, but not gigantic, either.
I have never been known to take long showers, so showering time is not exactly sacred to me, either. In fact, if I get back to my dorm from shopping with girlfriends, and we decide to take a shower and then go eat out, I will be waiting for them long after I am done showering and changing. There is not much to do in there, even with letting that conditioner soak in and scrubbing my body raw, my showers are never longer than 10 minutes.
I do think that showers are relaxing, but I just don’t get what one is supposed to do there to spend around 20 minutes or more — I always guessed people had some sort of secret shower behavior. Standing still while the hot water is flowing over you and pretending they are in the Caribbean, doing their secret dance routine, singing etc. That would make people wish for some privacy in a shower, right?
Even though I don’t seem to have any of that secret showering behavior, I still don’t understand why shower with friends. And no, I am not judgmental or critical, I just honestly don’t see the point.
Going to a spa together, getting hair done together, painting each other’s toenails even — all of these fit in my understanding of social interactions with females (and males, too, sometimes). Women often bond over some sort of grooming rituals, and what’s a better foundation of friendship then getting pedicures and discussing the latest trends in nailpolish?
I don’t think I have ever heard anyone else comment on this topic — I am guessing it might because most foreigners in China don’t come across showering Chinese that often.
Or maybe no one else finds it strange?
I used to think I was worldly, well-traveled, and tolerant. After many years of traveling and studying abroad, I enjoyed dispensing advice on how to adjust to new cultures, where to go, and what to pack (see previous post). I even claimed I did not get culture shock anymore, since I was so used to trotting the globe and being all cosmopolitan.
Suffice to say I was punished for my arrogance a week ago.
I spent that day studying for my finals, and decided to take a shower before going to sleep.
Our shower stalls are divided by matte glass walls — they are not exactly diaphanous, but not opaque, either, and you can see vague outlines of the body of the person showering next to you.
As I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating, I detected two girls’ voices close to me; they were chatting in Chinese too fluent to be that of any of my fellow students (no offense), so I figured they were our Chinese roommates.
Since I could hear water running in the stall next to mine, without thinking, my mind registered it as one of the girls was showering, and the other was standing outside talking to her.
But when I looked up, I realized there were two body contours in that stall.
So at first I though they were making out, and delicately turned away.
(Going to a very liberal international boarding school and then living at a dorm at a fairly liberal college alters your expectations of dorm showers).
And then I realized they were chatting in a regular, friendly manner — no heavy breathing or flirtatious intonations. I carefully gazed up — and yes, I could see two body contours also lathering, rinsing, and repeating, each in their part of the shower stall. The stall was pretty small, so they were pretty close to each other.
I looked the other way, and saw that the stall on the other side of mine was available, so they were showering together voluntarily, not because there was no other place to shower.
And that just blew my mind.
I walked out of the shower having forgotten to finish rinsing my hair, and went to my room. I must have looked pretty confused, since my Chinese roommate asked me what was wrong. Having concentrated enough to speak Chinese, I asked her:
-In China, do girls shower together?
-Yeah.
-And that’s, um, common?
-Yeah. I don’t really like it though, but many of my friends do.
-Do guys do that, too?
-Some do, yeah.
I still don’t know why it shocked me so much.
If the two girls were in fact making out, I would have not cared at all. I certainly don’t care what people do in the showers in their spare time. I don’t exactly have a crazy puritan approach to nudity, either: I have been to plenty of public saunas/lockerrooms/etc; I go to a local gym in Beijing where women feel free to stroll around naked while changing in the locker room, and that does not bother me much.
Unless it was a complete shower emergency, it would just never occur to me to shower with a friend. In some dorms in China, hot water is turned off at a certain time. So, say, if I got back from the gym with a friend, and there was just one shower stall, and we had ten minutes, I would not mind sharing a stall — although I’d probably wear bikini or underwear.
But in my opinion, showering with friends just does not cut it as a social activity.
The stall is small, there is one shower, which means you have to take turns. Our dorm stalls here are larger than those at Yale, but not gigantic, either.
I have never been known to take long showers, so showering time is not exactly sacred to me, either. In fact, if I get back to my dorm from shopping with girlfriends, and we decide to take a shower and then go eat out, I will be waiting for them long after I am done showering and changing. There is not much to do in there: even with letting that conditioner soak in and scrubbing my body raw, my showers are never longer than 10 minutes.
I do think that showers are relaxing, but I just don’t get what one is supposed to do there to spend around 20 minutes or more — I always guessed people had some sort of secret shower behavior. Standing still while the hot water is flowing over you and pretending they are in the Caribbean, doing their secret dance routine, singing, etc. That would make people wish for some privacy in a shower, right?
Even though I don’t seem to have any of that secret showering behavior, I still don’t understand why one would shower with friends. And no, I am not judgmental or critical, I just honestly don’t see the point.
Going to a spa together, getting hair done together, painting each other’s toenails even — all of these fit in my understanding of social interactions with females (and males, too, sometimes). Women often bond over some sort of grooming rituals, and what’s a better foundation of friendship then getting pedicures and discussing the latest trends in nailpolish?
I don’t think I have ever heard anyone else comment on this topic — I am guessing it might be because most foreigners in China don’t come across showering Chinese that often.
Or maybe no one else finds it strange?
I think I would be a little freaked out by this as well. I am an American so I might be more uncomfortable than you were. I think different cultures have different standards for nudity and America probably has one of the stricter ones. I can imagine that this would be shocking even if you were used to nudity in general. I’m assuming that there were several other showers open at the time so this was done entirely voluntarily.
I’m not shocked by it at all. I’m from Holland and around here were not extremely uptight, but were also not as open minded as scandinavians about nudity. However, female friends showering together is not weird in Holland, at least not in my opinion. Up until my sister was 11, she showered together with her best friend. I’ve also read about teenage girls and grown woman showering together on forums. I’ve also read on a forum that most female friends around here have no qualms about seeing eachother naked, it happens very often. If you ask them why they shower together, they will probably say it’s just more fun, more practical. It’s comparable to sharing a dressing cubicle in the swimming pool. If you don’t care about being naked around eachother, then why should you care about showering together? It’s not wrong or weird in their eyes. You know how girls are, lol.
I feel that being comfortable with seeing each other naked is very different from showering together. Indeed, in many countries women change in front of each other at the gyms, spas etc. Even if you are happy to hang out with your naked friends, I feel it’s impractical to do so in the shower — after all, you squeeze two people in one small cubicle, so you can’t really enjoy warm water all the time, as you have to share. I guess ‘more fun’ is a good explanation; but once again, why in the shower? There are plenty of other ways for girls to bond — manicures, shopping, whatnot.
I joined the military about a year and a half ago and remember that boot camp was my first experience group showering. But when it’s all you got, you get used to it pretty quick and it just becomes a way to get clean. Why not chat there, as well as other places? People are social by nature, I say.
… Now, that said, I don’t go out of my way to shower with other people if I have a shower to myself, but it is what it is. I just think of it kind of as making the best of limited resources. Sometimes you just value cleanliness over privacy.
Peter, thanks for your comment.
I am sure that group showering at a book camp would not surprise me — but when it happens at a comfortably furnished dorm with many showering stall available, that’s what puzzles me; no limited showering resources there.
Come to think of it, most Chinese students of both genders go to some sort of military training after high school — maybe that’s where they got used to it.
Or maybe Westerners are much more individualistic at heart and prefer to do everything alone, while many Asians think that group activities are just more fun.
During my two year posting in Shanghai I discovered first hand the Chinese predilection for casual closeness. Some examples:
- hotel rooms would be shared with strangers (admittedly low end hotels).
- my interpreter would often often lean against me with a casual indifference to the sexual content we would assign to such contact in Europe.
- once in Nanjing Road, Shanghai I gawked in surprise at the contents of a confectionery shop (then a rare sight). In no time at all a bevy of young women crowded close around me to see what I was staring at. As I later wrote home to my wife, never have I had so many young breasts pressed against my body (and I deserved the response I got!).
- again and again I would be surprised by the free for all rugby style scrum that would develop at places where we would normally normally queue with polite deference for each other.
My observations were that crowded homes and crowded cities create a high level of tolerance for casual closeness that would be offensive in Europe. This is reinforced by a society that places community membership well above individualism. I would guess that many forms of casual closeness are ways of affirming bonds in the close knit groups that characterise Chinese society.
Once again…great post and more food for thought in the arena of cultural differences!
I am a BIG fan of showering together but this activity is always reserved for a member of the opposite sex…nothing casual about it. It’s not practical at all, in my book, but done to experience closeness with someone I care about…deeply and intimately. There’s nothing practical about standing there shivering while your partner rinses their hair or feeling bad because you’re rinsing your hair while they glare at you wishing you would hurry up so they could get warm again while looking like a drown rat! Don’t even get me started on the differences in tolerance of water temperature! Now, why do I enjoy it so much again?
I have to agree, Anna, that if the two women had been kissing it might not freak me out quite so much. Strange how that might not be so much of a culture shock?
I also have to agree with Peter. I know that different cultures have different rules about “personal space” and mine is somewhat limited, sorry to say. I have friends and aquaintances who come from different Latin countries who get in my space when talking and it still sets me off a bit. They tend to talk within a distance that is usually reserved for whispering about someone that is standing close by or for telling a secret. It always gets my attention since I think I’m getting some sort of juicy tid-bit of information. If it’s a female friend…well, it does something entirely different since a woman inside my personal space is usually a woman that I have taken a shower with!
I was actually going to write a follow-up on this post, but the semester is well underway now, and it is keeping me busy.
So it turns out that in China, due to lack of resources and overpopulation, people routinely shower together, because they are used to doing whatever else together. Plus, privacy is not exactly a known concept here. There are public restrooms in Beijing that have no walls between the stalls, and most people think it’s no big deal.
Additionally, while we are the topic of showers: I am currently studying abroad in Peking University, which is supposed to be China’s Harvard. It’s probably more competitive than Harvard to get in, and it’s supposed to have some of the best facilities in all of China. And most dorms here have 4 people in one room, and no showers in the entire building. They have to walk to a different building to take a shower! Imagine walking back to your dorm in Beijing winter with wet hair… fun, right? Many schools in Beijing just stick you in a room with 7 other people in four bunk beds. Electricity turns off at 11pm, and if you happen to return to your room past that time, and you live on the 12th floor, you have to walk.
This really makes me think that Americans are maybe just a tad too spoiled.
But then, maybe it’s lack of good facilities that cause China to only have 5 (6, if you count Charles Kao) Nobel Laureates ever. What kind of academic achievement could we be talking about when you have no privacy in your room and you have to walk a mile to take a shower in the cold?
Hack again?!
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