These are the top complaints about living in China:

– Pollution

– Food safety

– Terrifying clowns

This was the actual entertainment at a children’s party being held in the lobby of some hotel where a friend was staying.

The Mandarin for clown is Xiao Chou (小丑), which translated directly into English means “small ugly”.

I asked my language teacher about the clowns, and why they are so scary in China, and she just shrugged and said “oh you know, if a child is being naughty the mother might say ‘you better behave or the clowns will get you!”

This is from my Mandarin text book, if you filled in the blanks the rough translation is… Clown: “Please you, come here” Adult to kid: “I politely suggest you go there.”

I googled “clowns in China”. China claims to have pretty much invented clowns, with a clown called YuSze who was around about 4000 years ago in the court of Emperor Shih Huang-ti Chiiu.

Of course, the Egyptians claim they had the first clown, some guy who was around 4500 years ago. China and Egypt are in a long-running battle about who invented stuff first, so I take both claims with a grain of salt.

Go to any mall in China and there will be a scary clown making terrifyingly mangled balloon animals. A flower delivery service in Beijing’s Gulou area is called Clown Fresh Flowers, and you can get flowers delivered by a (creepy looking) clown. The location of Clown Fresh Flowers means it’s not uncommon to see their workers wandering through the hutong, eating noodles, having a post work beer, all dressed as sad, flower delivering clowns.

The shopfront of Clown Fresh Flowers.

I recently read that France had a problem with teenagers dressing up as scary clowns and creating havoc and scaring people – they should move to China, they would be gainfully employed in no time!