It's the little things

The average Englishman is five foot ten. Your average Chinese man is five foot six. Four inches doesn’t sound a lot but it really does make a big difference when everything is designed just that bit smaller.

Take steps. In China they seem to be a tad shallower than in the UK; not a problem until you want to climb a mountain like Qing Cheng Shan which has thousands upon thousands of them. It’s like being a hurdler and having the distance between jumps altered: it completely messes up your stride. But as well as being too small to climb comfortably one by one, they’re also too big to take two at a time. You’re in a constant state of step limbo. It’s the same sensation as riding a bike constantly in first gear: your legs are going like the clappers but you’re getting nowhere fast. (Bikes, of course, are also tiny by the way. I shouldn’t complain because the school bought me one specially but I do feel a bit like Coco the Clown under the Big Top every time I use it. I just need to get a hooter to complete the effect.)

Then there’s buses. Nine times out of ten you have to stand on a Chinese bus and hold on to the ceiling rail or the handles that dangle from them. Trouble is they’re just a bit too low for the likes of me and invariably on a crowded bus you have to put up with these big chunks of yellow plastic banging constantly on your skull. The double deckers are even worse; even Chinese people have to stoop to ‘move down the bus’ so it’s contortion time for us laowai (foreigners).

At home, my desk is so low I can’t even cross my legs. It’s like living and working in a nursery school. The sink in the kitchen is way down there somewhere so you’re likely to slip a disc doing the dishes. And cold feet are an occupational hazard in bed as neither mattress or blankets aren’t quite long enough. (In Xi’an I met a hostel owner who, as part of his renovations, was bringing in brand new, ‘western’ size beds for the sake of his foreign backpackers.) In the bathroom, the shower is at – i.e. not above – head height so you have to crouch in a rather undignified way to get properly wet. Not a pretty sight.

Hey, I know worse things happen at sea and all that, but I thought I’d mention it.

And thank goodness I’m not Dutch. On average, they’re six foot one.

Thanks to shortsupport.org for figures.