Some men in China choose to grow their fingernails long or even just grow one fingernail particularly long as a symbol of wealth. After all, it’s hard to toil all day doing manual labor when you might break a nail.
Long fingernails were a status symbol, showing that that person literally didn’t have to lift a finger to do any work. It is known that most women had those extra long fingernails, not men. An upper-class man was expected to at least be able to write and pull a bow. It’s hard to hold a brush if you have those long fingernails, much less pull a bow.
In China today some men let the fingernail on their little finger grow longer than their ring finger because according to physiognomy, that will empower you, give you more authority, keep you from getting picked on.
A lot of fortune tellers let the fingernail on their little finger grow very long, as a mark of their profession. If you are out working in the fields or doing manual labor, long fingernails become an obstacle and will often get broken, splintered, or otherwise gnarled.
If you sport soft, slender hands with half-inch long, well-groomed fingernails it is taken as an indicator that you don’t work with your hands, that you are above the social station of a common laborer, that you live the sort of life that allows the luxury to possess such a pampered set of paws.
But modern China has a culture where many people are transitioning from poor to a middle class or even rich. “To be rich is glorious,” is the rallying cry.
Being poor here has perhaps never been seen as worse, as there are now more opportunities to socially ascend, and many fashions or bodily alterations are being done to give off the impression of being high class.
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