It's neither temple nor wonderland

People here have absolutely no problem commenting on each other's physical appearance. From the subway posters encouraging women to lose weight to little Chinese people blatantly pointing at portly Americans to sizes that simply fit wrong in stores, Hong Kong seems to make foreigners super conscious of their shape and size.

Despite my own feelings of out-of-shape-ness, I don't think anyone here thinks I'm obese. Big, yes, but not terribly overweight. I'm a bit nervous, however, to meet up with my grandmother later today because I have gained approximately 15 pounds since I last saw her. And I remember once when we saw her several years ago, she immediately commented that my brother and sister had become fatter. I, thankfully, had been spared from any commentary. I also was probably in the best shape of my life at that time.

Over the past few days, I've encountered some humorous episodes centered around body image. For example, when introducing their production manager to me yesterday, a vendor representative said, "You will remember Mr. Wei because he's so fat!" And later in the day she commented that she knows when he's not doing his job because he gets fatter and fatter, thanks to being lazy and eating all the time.

This same woman also suggested I become a fit model for my company. I'm not sure how to take that, since the company makes only women's clothing and we had been staring at a size 18 dress form for our plus-size line.

And the other night, as I got my second dessert from the buffet (some ice cream to wash down a lovely souffle), my server told me, "You have nice body shape." This was a more humorous variation of the comment, "You take the fitness?" which I hear often from Chinese folks I meet for the first time.