Woolshop Mannequins

 

 Quite soon after we arrived in Tonghua Katharine and I met eighteen year old student Helen, who lived in term time in the city of Changchun but was spending the Summer break at the family home. She could hardly believe her luck at meeting two English-speakers in her home town and appointed herself as our guide as well as introducing us to her family.

 

Helen’s mother ran a wool shop in the main street, above a handbag emporium, where she was surrounded by ceiling-high shelves and counters full of knitting wool. It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the gloom, the light filtering through a narrow grimy window at the end facing the street.  

A dozen or so alabaster mannequins were standing in front of the window, ghostly white in the dimness, their faces having distinctly western features. They seemed to date from the nineteen forties, judging by their upswept, victory roll, plaster hair-styles. Those not grouped by the window made up a double row down the centre of the room. They gave the sweaters and cardigans they modelled an air of unintended lewdness, as few of the models had skirts or trousers.
 

The assistants in the downstairs shop had called out ‘Huanying! Huanying!’ in welcome, and congratulated Helen, who insisted we use her ‘English’ name, on having brought in two foreigners.

Helen’s mother, who looked about 30, a vivacious, slender woman in tight-fitting clothes, with red lip-stick and quick movements, looked more like the hostess of a Shanghai night-club than wool –shop proprietor. At first the shelves of  colourful skeins, convinced me that the locals spent all their time knitting, but I found out later that most customers would choose a pattern in one of the catalogues and then order the garment to be knitted by an out-worker with  a machine. In a city with a six month  winter at twenty below, a wool shop did good business.
 

She brought us a couple of stools so we could rest a while and looked on as Helen became quite agitated with the excitement of having us in the shop, waving her arms about and repeating, ‘Oh, I am so sorry, but my English is so poor’ She had already told us they lived on the premises; towards the back of the room there was a small partitioned area with a double bed, a TV and a dressing table. The parents owned the whole building, she said, and let off the ground floor and an upper floor to other businesses. This was the slack summer season for her business, but with the first snows, in October, she would move downstairs.