Yet another random tip.

[randomness]

In China, you should examine the sunscreen products carefully before you buy them. Available sunscreen often includes skin lightening additives. That's probably not what you want.

I noticed this while I was looking along the drugstore shelves for dry skin cream*. (Watsons, CapitaRetail Mall, Xizhimen.)

Another reported problem is that many local brands don't work, but that's a general problem with products in China.

*Also, you'll need plenty of moisturizer for Beijing. The city is dry, dry, dry: particularly in winter, but also early spring, late fall, etc.

Comments

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I sort of see how that might work. If one doesn't burn as easily, but one wants to keep one's skin light, SPF + lightening agents is an attractive product. There's a way larger bunch of those folks in the market for sunscreen in China than in the US for instance.

I feel like I know multiple Asian folks who tan heavily and deeply quite easily when they go out in the sun, compared to me and my central European skin that burns and doesn't ever get very dark. I sort of see how it's a really noticeable effect, for many Asian folks. And in a culture where many, many people were farmers a generation or two ago, well, tanning isn't the status symbol it has become in white Western cultures.