As a smoker, I've always been somewhat sensitive about possible stenches. Combine that with the well-known Asian opinion about white people being a bit whiff, and the times I've gagged on Patchouli or Aramis in office building elevators, plus the soggy dog odours on public transit when it's full of wet office workers during rainy days, and you can understand that there is a situation here. I worry: do I smell bad? Am I so rank that people gag?
Are little kiddies frightened by me? Do I offend shy young ladies?
Well, that last is a given, seeing as I'm an older man who smokes a pipe, eats meat, and am rather Anglo-looking. So I smell, and I probably support child-labour in the Congo and vote for Senator Bedfellow. All of which are manifestly horrible evils.
[Plus I growl. Which is neither here nor there.]
Never-the-less. This morning my apartment mate used too much cologne. Oh boy. Place still reeks like a rose garden crawled in here and died. And I've already had my first smoke of the day, so my nose buds should be dead to nearly everything right now.
Having an apartment mate whose sense of smell is below par is a blessing. I'm going to light up my pipe inside, fully confident that she won't notice a darned thing, even though she is a refined Cantonese female and therefore programmed to assume that we Caucasians are richly gifted in the compost heap fragrance department.
That said, I do need to do laundry.
Stinky stinky.
For obvious reasons I almost never go to Japan Town ten blocks away. I remember reading passages in James Clavell's 'Shogun' which were unflattering to our physical fragrances, and the Japanese are far more neurotic about that than even Chinese and South East Asians. They turn green.
Cantonese aren't. Any group that shops in places where salt fish is sold, combines shrimp paste with fatty pork at the drop of a hat, and has a fondness for deep-fried mystery objects to rival the Dutch, is not nearly so fastidious. Vocal, perhaps, but not obsessed.
One Cantonese smell that may startle the outsider is liniment for bodily aches, common for older people. Camphor and menthol, often combined with minty elements and cassia, rubbed on arthritic joints with wild abandon. White flower oil, rectify the bones water, and black devil oil (白花油，正骨水、黑鬼油 '
paak faa yau', '
jing gwat suei', '
hak kwai yau'). All available at every herbalist and general grocery store, the dominant smell on the Number One California bus rocketing down Clay Street, and what everyone remembers their grandparents smelling like when they visited them in their pokey little flat above the bookstore on Jackson Street. Fresh, sinus-clearing, and pungent. Plus it's the perfume in high quality stick ink, so it also recalls the scholar's study, book rooms, and those written taoist charms used to immobilize zombies ("hopping vampires", 殭屍 '
keung si') in a popular movie from 1985 (殭屍先生 '
keung si sin saang') as well as diverse scrolls to keep the ooga-booga away.
[In that last usage, it might no longer be effective; as a Caucasian I'm the quintessence of ooga-booga, and I head into Chinatown regularly. Perhaps my pipe-smoking has denatured it.]
Add sandalwood smoke and cooking smells to that, and a Cantonese person would easily overlook the slightly fishy odeur of masses of white people.
Certainly my apartment mate puts up with it. And she's refined and ladylike. Albeit this morning reeking of roses. Over the top and good heavens.
Catonese women also seem to be fond of house cleaning with strong-smelling substances.
My apartment mate uses a concoction which contains fragrant herbal oils and alcohol, and the downstairs lobby is minty from the landlady's efforts. I would imagine that whole areas of Asia have a lingering nose-echo of antiseptic, lemon, and citrus-fresh chemicals.
In addition to salt fish, sandal wood incense, and old codger liniment.
==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================
