Throughout my life, I’d be the first port of call for mosquitoes — in any country. I react very badly to mosquito bites: they’d swell up into a hard, hot, itchy lump. In Finland, after an al fresco meal at my friends’ summer house, I got back to my hotel to find both legs covered in bites. I counted them: 37 on one leg, 34 on the other. The lumps merged into each other. I looked like I had elephantiasis. As a child, the grown-ups would offer the consolation: you have intelligent blood.
If you’re vertically challenged, they’d say it’s because you’re extra clever. All your energies have gone into developing your brain power, so the rest of your body is deprived.
Ditto if you start to lose your hair. There’s a Chinese saying 聰明絕頂 / 聪明绝顶 / cōngmíng jué dǐng / “clever bright extreme top”. It means “clever to the highest degree”, but the pun-loving Chinese like to put a different spin on it: that “everything stops growing on the top of the head (头顶 tóu dǐng) if someone knows too much knowledge” (李懿 / Li Yi, 2022).
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