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The crowd, of course, was mostly local. It was also decidedly male, and middle-aged, though there were some women and couples in attendance. A lot of people were coming out of curiosity, but there was plenty of stuff to purchase, and purchase people did. At around 125 yuan (including discount), a mid-range vibrator is quite expensive for the average Chinese person, so that attests to the strength of their interest.
The exhibitors were a mixed bunch. Some were from Hong Kong, some from Taiwan, some from the West, and a good number of companies from the Mainland. Despite what my eyes were telling me about the crowd, the vendors all said the same thing: most if not all production was for export, and very little finds its way to the domestic market. This makes economic sense, at least.
Different merchants had different points of view about the market. One Chinese guy, whose company sells sexy lingerie, said that Chinese people just aren't ready to spend money on their sex lives. On the other hand, there was an American with a different sense of things. Having moved part of his production to China five years previous, he has seen small local sales, but growing at a very fast rate. He also told me that there are no products he makes that he doesn't sell locally. Taste, it seems, knows no borders. One scary stall had an inflatable doll the size of a large child, dressed in a creepily similar fashion.
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A selection of implements- Photo by Michael Elliott
This was easily the best part of the show: talking to the people at the booths. A favourite question to ask was "do you like your job?", but I never got the sense that anyone understood the implicit humour. Another favourite was asking people if they used what their company manufactured. Having a shop girl sit us down, get us water, and talk to us for five minutes about the lingerie her company made with a straight face, and then making her giggle and blush by asking her if she wore any of it was a special moment. Of course she didn’t.
In the end the normalcy of it was what stuck out. The kiosks were staffed by the same middle-aged women in polo shirts that work in most retail shops in the city, they just happened to be selling fleshy pink rubber things shaped like penises, instead of socks, or steamed corn, or computer parts. The straightest answer to any question of the whole show came from a woman who owned a Hong Kong confectionary company. When I asked her why her company had gone into adult products, she said matter-of-factly: "Higher profits." Of course, how could we have been so stupid?
by Robin Elliott
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