Touch

"What do you mean we don't dance close? Have you seen the way they dance down south? It's the same as here."

This is Cam's reaction to me trying to explain to him that they don't dance quite the same way we do here in China. The problem is he's right, there's no way for him to be able to tell that their dancing isn't the same as here. The reason for this is because it's the men dancing that's different, not the women. And being of the male sex means that he has no way of knowing that the men dance differently with the women in the two countries.

I just took one of Cam's Japanese classmates (Yuki) home from dancing. She thanked me for helping keep her away from the "dangerous" men. She told me that she likes dancing just not with the dangerous men and she doesn't know who is going to be dangerous and who isn't. That made perfectly good sense to me simply because I understand the difference in dancing between American/Western men and Asian men (we're not talking Asian American). Japanese women and Japanese men have their own space when they dance together. There is no opportunity to feel any part of the male body when you're dancing with a Japanese man. As Yuki pointed out to me, if they try to dance with any part of their body (we're not talking hands here) touching the women, they are quickly responded with "Are you serious? Are you okay? What's wrong with you? Are you drunk?" A bantering that quickly tells the Japanese men that they are out of line. So to Yuki anyone who dances like that is "dangerous" because she doesn't know how to tell them "no".

The problem is that the majority of western men are used to dancing like that, that's just how we dance here. Every male here is going to try and dance with you like that. And we have some mechanisms that are our ways of telling the men "no" which are innate to us but have to be learned by the Japanese and Chinese women. These ways which we use are several - turning one's body away from the man (which often doesn't work as the man just moves with you), dancing around someone else or somehow getting another person in between you and the man, stopping dancing and do something else, get a drink or something, and the last one that I can think of right now is to simply lead a friend into your dance. If I'm with American friends and we're all dancing alone and someone comes up to dance with me, all I have to do is grab the hand of another guy OR girl friend of mine and they immediately know "hey, I need some help" or "hey, I don't want to dance with this person" and start dancing with me, taking me away from the man. I got into trouble in China once because my Chinese friends don't understand this, so when I tried to grab one of them they just ignored me and let me keep going with the guy.

So I guess in a way it's a little "dangerous" for me to go out with Yuki & Cam dancing. I end up having to dance to keep Yuki out of the way of a "dangerous" man and if I get in a situation I don't want to be in Cam doesn't understand that I don't want to be in that particular situation and there's no one else around to "help". I end up going back to the other ways for telling a guy "no". But to answer Yuki's question about how to find out which man isn't "dangerous" unfortunately the answer is every man in the west is "dangerous".