Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

Being an incorrigible shopper who does not believe in online shopping, I often need to visit fitting rooms in shopping malls.

Let me tell the non-shoppers that a lot happens inside the fitting rooms, perhaps more than what happens inside the store.

Recently, I went to a foreign garments retail store that was having a sale.

There was a long queue in the unisex fitting rooms. Practically all the young shoppers in the store were Chinese.

Scene one: A young Chinese guy enters the store flanked by two chirpy girls. He tries on a T-shirt in the fitting room and then walks out to see himself from all angles in another mirror in the store. Two girls have differing opinions regarding the shirt, and spend the next 20 minutes explaining their opposing views to him, in detail.

The guy finally decides to drop the T-shirt and vacates the fitting room for a girl about to collapse on her high heels.

Scene two: There is a couple inside one fitting room. They have between then nearly a dozen items. One can hear them chatting and laughing loudly.

It takes them half an hour to choose two items.

 Scene three: Two girls in one room. One of them is on a long phone call, maybe with her boyfriend. She comes out and asks her friend to take pictures, then sends them to her presumed boyfriend for final approval.

Scene four: A girl goes to the fitting room, then comes out to show her dress to her boyfriend, who is holding her heavy bag. Rinse and repeat, ad nauseum. By the end, he is so cheesed off that he just tells her to buy the dress in order to finish his ordeal.

Exasperated by the circus of people around the fitting rooms, I decided to buy a pair of jeans without trying them on.

Fitting room shenanigans like the ones described above are not uncommon in China. On another occasion, when I was at the Silk Market, a poor retail assistant had to continually erect a make-shift "fitting room" by holding up a long piece of cloth to protect people's privacy from prying eyes while they were trying on trousers.

I couldn't help but notice however, when it came to my turn, that she had a wry smile and was trying hard to look the other way. 

This was still better than at a tailor I visited in Sanlitun, where there was also no fitting room. They made no attempt to give me any privacy, and I was expected to change in full view of passersby.

My conclusion is that in China, even fitting rooms are treated like public spaces. Sometimes, they can reveal some interesting peculiarities about society here.

For example, why do couples frequently go into fitting rooms together? Isn't that what mirrors for? And if you always need assurance from other people, what will you do when you need to make a decision independently in life?  

No matter how many times I see such scenes, these behaviors will always remain a mystery to me.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.