Fashion

You know summertime is coming to Beijing when young people begin wearing t-shirts with nonsensical or utterly-inappropriate English phrases written on them. You realize quickly that they have no idea what the words mean, just like rappers in the U. S. don't know what the Chinese lettering on their tattoos mean.

My favorite T-shirt message last year was worn by a young lady in a shopping mall, and it read, "What The Woman Wants, She Gets." Her husband/boyfriend/whomever accompanying her should have just given her his cash and waited outside. Instead, he was carrying her purse.

Teens here are like teens anywhere else. They follow trends and want to look cool. The kids in Beijing are not at the extreme edge, as in Tokyo's Harajuku district, for example, but they're making their best effort. They're making colorful choices and prefer radical -- but not too radical -- artistic design. The words on the shirt are just extras, slogans that don't mean anything. Not that anyone aside from the few English-speaking foreigners in Beijing like me would be able to read them, anyway.

So far this spring, I've already seen a girl's shirt with the message "Let's Make Out." And a guy nearby was sporting a baseball cap reading, "I Don't Give A F***." Charming. I think those two were made for each other.