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In the end, it's about the joy of feeling like you've got your best friend by your side, and that she has your back. However, when women are off work, shopping or chitchatting with their "besties," they want to feel young and free, as if they were in school again. When they grow up, especially men, they need to handle tougher assignments such as earning a living and be independent. When we are young, girls and boys are encouraged to stay with their friends and classmates of the same sex, which falls within "proper" behavior in a conventional Asian society. Trying to understand this, I think it has something to do with wanting to feel young and carefree. You will rarely see grown man walking down the streets with their good buddy locked under their arms, while you can often see young, middle-aged and elderly women holding hands all the time. In middle school, just like the girls holding hands, teenage boys put their arms over each other's shoulders, and the tight over-the-shoulder lock would make them feel like good buddies.īoys grow out of it, except for some rare occasions such as graduation photos or when they are drunk, but girls don't. The shifting position of a womans hand might be interpreted as her being submissive to her partner while remaining a. Starfish (5) on one's back with the arms around the pillow. Freefall (7) on one's front with the arms around the pillow and the head tilted to one side. Soldier (8) on one's back with the arms pinned to the sides. On the other hand, there's nothing romantic in holding hands, especially between women, in our culture. Yearner (13) sleeping on one's side with the arms in front. One of my friends noticed that when we walk alongside each other, we not only hold hands, but also our fingers would, unknowingly, become interlocked, which is the most loving, intimate way of hand holding.Īs we have both adjusted to our differences, my expat friends who have been here a while have come to the point where they are not surprised if girls in pairs or groups are linking arms.Ĭhinese people consider hugging and kissing on the cheeks, either between people of opposite sex or otherwise, romantic gestures, both of which are seen as an innocent, friendly way of expressing friendship in the West. To me, there's nothing strange about holding hands with my girl friends. I was also shocked when I realized that many Westerners commonly think that two women have a homosexual relationship at the sight of two women holding hands or hooking arms. My friend, who didn't have much experience with Asian culture before coming to China, said that he experienced a huge culture shock. It's such an adorable rookie question that a lot of expats have wondered in the beginning of their life in China, or other Asian countries. He also said that if they are not gay, why do so many Chinese women hold hands, or have their arms linked with each other? He asked me if girls walking down the street holding hands in China are gay.
Right up to the end, he kept on painting.My American friend, who has just arrived in China, said he has been puzzled about something. Since then, his paintings have been featured in museums across the country, from the Birmingham Museum of Art to the American Museum of Folk Art in New York.
He finally decided on sugar as the best adherent, and through this combination of mud and sugar-and eventually paint when his paintings became more in demand-he created his distinct medium, "sweet mud." Sudduth claimed "you can paint a thousand dollars worth of pictures with just a cupful of sugar." After years of prolific painting, Sudduth's work finally gained widespread recognition, and he was chosen as one of the two artists to represent Alabama at the Smithsonian Institute's Bicentennial Festival of American Folk Life in 1976. His favorite and most used pigment was mud, which he experimented mixing with sugar, soft drinks, and instant coffee to make it adhere better to the plywood, doors, and other found wood he painted on. He would use grasses, berries, and even soot for color. She'd go out and get stuff outdoors, and I'd be drawing on a tree with the charcoal and mud." True to his word, Sudduth painted with whatever materials he happened to have on hand. "I started drawin' when I was three years old, and I been drawin' ever since," he said. There he worked for years as a farm hand, although even from an early age Sudduth had an affinity for art. He was born Main Caines Ridge, Alabama, near Fayette, where he lived for most of his life. Jimmie Lee Sudduth was one of the early masters of southern self-taught art. Two young girls walk together, arms linked, in this delightful painting of female friendship.