Street Fashion

We are in typhoon season. It seems as though there is one every week. You know it is on the way when the sky clears from grey to blue. This is followed by a couple of days of torrential rain and wind, and then a brief cool before the humidity and temperature begin to rise again. Last week's typhoon killed more than 300 people in Southern China - enough to make the papers but not the international press.

The rain brings with it some interesing street fashion. While there are plenty of cars in Shanghai, many people still cycle. When it rains, they wear diaphanous capes in an array of colours. These look rather like maternity rain capes as they are significantly longer at the front than at the back but the design is a good one as the fronts drape over the cyclists hands and handle bars. The hoods have a large peak which keeps off a lot of the rain and they are just the right length to cover legs but not get tangled in the wheel spokes. Not everyone has such appropriate rain wear. Yesterday, I saw a woman wearing a shower cap and another with a plastic bag perched precariously on part of her head. It wasn't big enough to cover her completely. The rain collected in a puddle on top of the bag and so served no discernable purpose other than to make her look like an escaped lunatic.

Speaking of escaped lunatics, at the end of our road is one of the largest hospitals in Shanghai. This very modern building exudes an air of western efficiency which is somewhat undermined by the fact that many of the patients seem to hang out outside it in their shabby striped pyjamas having a fag break or worse, wandering dazed and confused into the road, spitting within striking distance of me and my precious children or hacking into our faces.

The sun also brings some interesting street fashions. Lady cyclists wear white cotton capes which cover their arms and hang in a diamond down their backs as they weave their way bat like between the cars. I assume the purpose of these garments is to protect the skin from the sun and possibly to keep their clothes clean. Some of the capes are covered in multi coloured embroidery so that you think these women belong to some ethnic minority group which has updated its national costume to fit into urban Shanghai. Another favourite is the 'super visor'. These look like baseball hats with extended rims but for the fact that the rims do not point out but hang down covering the face and are made not of material but of tinted plastic. You can't help but admire their practicality if not their beauty as they act as sunglasses and pollution filters at the same time.