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Loose Threads
Shanghai, CHINA -- The taxi driver. The friendly cashier at the Alldays convenience store. The guy at the next table slurping pork-and-mushroom wontons. These men all share one thing in common: the long fingernail. Ages ago, the week before leaving for Shanghai, I was sprawled on my couch, lazily leafing through the Lonely Planet’s guide to our stylish city. The editor mentioned the local grooming practice of leaving a long pinky nail – and occasionally a long thumb nail as well. He closed with the quip, “Come on, we all know what they use those for.” I bolted upright. What do they use them for? Calling half a dozen local beauty parlours and spas drew a lot of hemming and hawing. Rachel, an exceedingly polite receptionist at Dragonfly, tried her diplomatic best to deflect my impudently chatty questions. “You know, I’ve noticed that a lot of guys in Shanghai grow their fingernails long. Do you have any idea why?” She didn’t. Undeterred, I pressed on. “Oh, come on. Don’t you have a boyfriend? Does he have long fingernails?” Rachel gave a nervous giggle and finally said, “Well, maybe boys are just too lazy to cut them.” Hmm. In desperation for an answer, I turned to the sidewalk fruit seller. He handed me a bag of tiny oranges and said, “There’s no real reason. I mean, to each his own taste, you know?” He thought about it more, and added, “Well, I also think that they grow them to show people that they don’t have to work. Someone like me, I have to handle fruit all day, I can’t grow long nails.” Was this all there was? Long nails were the mark of a man of leisure? Finally, I corralled my reporters and demanded an answer. One by one, they reluctantly responded. “I grow my fingernails because I play the guitar.” “My boyfriend grows his nails because he likes to click them when he’s thinking.” “It’s just my habit.” Finally, Driver Zhang decided to cut the crap. “They grow them because they think it looks good. And it’s convenient.” A reporter pounced. “Convenient for what?” “Well, for cleaning your ears, of course. It really is very, very convenient.” Well. Now we know.
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