The Simao InternationalIdentical Twin Symposium
Written by Cheeky Chinese Lips

The first thing that made me aware that Simao, China isn’t normal, even by Chinese standards, was their slogan “Welcome to Simao, the city of the of CANCER”. That’s spelled exactly as it was on a banner we were greeted with upon arrival at Simao airport. We soon realized the cancer reference wasn’t due to it being in China’s largest tobacco province, Yunnan (which it is) but instead referred to the Tropic of Cancer running right through town. The second thing that set alarm bells ringing was the full-scale replica Eiffel Tower which they’d built straight onto the roof of the town’s largest department store. The third, and reason I’m writing this article, was the outrageous number of identically dressed identical twins.

Everyone knows that identical twins love to dress the same; maybe it’s ingrained from their childhoods, being brought up by bargain hunting 2-for-1 parents, or perhaps from some extremely close relationship between the twins that I can’t even begin to understand. The twins of Simao, however, have taken being an identical twin to a whole new level by ALL dressing identically. But before I go on, let me describe the events that had led me to be witness to this incredible display of uniformity. I was in Simao as part of a football tour with my team, Sexy FC. Our tour happened to coincide with the International Identical Twin Symposium which had brought identical twins to this remote Chinese city from all over the world. There were long-haired, blonde identical Russians, there were fat identical Americans, but most numerous of all, there were identically dressed identical local Simao twins. On the evening of the twin parade the effect was staggering. Literally thousands of pairs of identical twins of all ages, all wearing red symposium hats and white t-shirts, lined up, parading down Main St. towards the centre of town. Past where we were snapping away with our cameras, underneath the enormous twin of the Eiffel Tower to the electric atmosphere of the town square where a huge stage had been erected with spotlights swooping the darkening night sky and TV cameras waiting to capture the magic.

Earlier that day we had played the local football in front of a large, excitable crowd. It seems the local community had turned out to see what they had imagined to be a touring team of foreigners along the lines of one of Manchester United’s off-season trips to drum up more support from their growing Asian fan base. What they got instead of premier league superstars was a bunch of fat, out-of-shape, hung-over ex-pats who due to the 35 degree sub-tropical heat were substituting themselves off whenever the ball went anywhere near the sidelines of the hard, rocky pitch.

The agenda for the day, which we had been presented with by the Mayor, stated that following the match there was to be a “rice paddy tug-of-war” in a nearby village. So although the nifty, fleet-footed Simaoian team had run rings around us on the field we were still confident we could put our bulky girth to good use in the tug-of-war.

However, when we turned up at the village tired, and in little mood for acting as cultural ambassadors for our respective countries, we didn’t find the Simao football team but instead found 12 of the largest Chinese men I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if they had been breeding them especially for this event or flown in from the Mongolian pro-Sumo circuit but these were some big boys. Thankfully, before the bout we were invited to have a quick drink from some nearby natural spring water pools. Obviously, due to our over-vigorous celebrating the night before and more recent football match in hot conditions we were delighted and drank deeply from the cool pools. It was only later we were to find out that these are called the “twin pools” and locals believe anyone who drinks from them goes on to be blessed with identical twins. Refreshed and gloriously ignorant at this stage we stripped down to the waist and entered the flag lined rice paddy to face off against our enormous opponents waiting across the muddy patch. They seemed to have been drinking heavily throughout the morning and they now cavorted in the mud, laughing gruffly and slapping the beefy, fleshy bodies of anyone within reach. You can imagine our trepidation, picking our way through the paddy’s sharp concealed underwater stems all the while knowing that there was a high chance the mud oozing into our football cuts contained human excrement. Backwater China is certainly no place for the faint hearted or weekend adventurer and knowing this we advanced in one line trying to look as formidable as possible for the flashing newspaper cameras.

The headlines in the Simao papers the next day were of local triumph over foreign barbarians. The photo showed well-fed Simao men clapping each other on the back and celebrating, rope in hand, as the mud/faeces-covered foreigners helped each other up. We trooped dejectedly back for more of the cool, clear spring water. The humiliation wasn’t complete however because the gathered crowd were then invited to help clean us off. In a scene reminiscent of a Nazi war camp movie, young children and cackling, toothless old woman alike relished in throwing buckets of icy water over us as we huddled together shivering in our muddy, sodden underpants.

After a shower back at our team’s hotel the mood lightened considerably with the news that the Mayor had personally invited us to sit in the front row for that evening’s entertainment. I have already tried to describe the overwhelming scene as thousands of waving twins arrived at the town square where a huge crowd of more locals already sat, waiting in temporary bleachers for the festivities to begin. The evening’s programme included fireworks, speeches, and ethnic minority models showing off their traditional costumes. The finale of the night was reserved for the international identical twins to be brought on stage and introduced to the crowd. I don’t know if it was the heady combination of the Eiffel Tower, spotlights and roaring crowd, or perhaps just too much of the free local beer, but as the line of 20 or so foreign guest twins walked past our VIP front row seats, a teammate and I looked at each other and with identical twin-like timing jumped up to join the back of the line.

Two things were in our favour for pulling off this audacious stunt; 1) we were foreign and 2) we were wearing matching Sexy FC tour polo shirts. What was not in our favour was that 1) we looked nothing alike and 2) I was a good head taller than my “twin”. An MC reading off a list moved down the line of twins introducing them in turn. When he arrived at us the MC looked at us, then down to his list, and then back to us with a blank expression. In a moment of sharp thinking never seen before, or since, in Sexy FC history, my twin grabbed the microphone from the MC and began introducing us in Chinese.

“Hello everyone, my name is Brian Lawrence, I come from America, and this is my twin Sam… Lawrence”.

The crowd went silent.

It was a decisive moment. It really could have gone either way; a lynching by a posse of locals for making a mockery of their symposium was a real possibility. Thankfully it went the other way; the crowd erupted into raucous applause in appreciation of Brian’s Chinese greeting. The MC looked relieved , the other foreign twins looked bemused but happy enough, and the VIP section of the crowd were crying with laughter.

We left the stage, arms around each others shoulders with Nixon-esque peace signs for the TV cameras.

That night Brian and I were heroes. We were given souvenir symposium red hats and t-shirts. We partied with the ethnic minority models and were toasted by the Mayor. We had literally made the festival by revealing that even the visiting foreign football team had a pair of identical twins of their own. Just as in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes everyone seemed willing to completely overlook the fact that we were different heights with completely different coloured hair and eyes.

It was by far and away the most surreal day of my life and makes me glad that there’s only one Simao, the city of the of CANCER, in the world. Simao will always hold a special place in my heart, perhaps I’ll take my twins back there one day.

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