A Grey Hair in My Tofu

There's alot of talk these days about the greying of China, social security and health care for the elderly, so I thought we should take a minute to examine a few perspectives on aging in China - When a man reaches the fine age of forty years, he, like a fine cheese or an oaky port has reached his peak and we can call him Yi zhi hua, a flower. A woman on the other hand who finds herself looking back on her 40th is dou fu zha, which is the useless curds left over after making tofu. Other ways our students described women during a class discussion on age and beauty include as a flower at 20, a vollyball at 30 and a football at 40. Finally in a stunnig display of vocabulary by a boy from the back of the class, but equally stunning in it's level of inappropriateness (is that a word), a woman of 40 is "excrement". Rest assured he was beaten up thoroughly by the girls following that comment.