A Chinese woman in Guangdong Province has temporarily lost all hearing in her left ear due to a furious, passionate, sloppy kiss from her beau, the BBC reports. Apparently, the news was so shocking that Chinese state-run newspaper China Daily ran a story in which it issued the following warning: "While kissing is normally very safe, doctors advise people to proceed with caution."
The doctor who treated the understandably confused 20-something attributed the incident to a loss of mouth pressure, which "pulled the eardrum out and caused the breakdown of the ear." The prognosis? The young woman is expected to regain her hearing within two months.
So I'll be frank: bad things have happened to me while kissing. I have had my lip nearly bitten off, I have been raked by braces, had various other collisions involving tooth and flesh, and not infrequently been slapped for various perceived slights accompanying or occurring prior to said kissing. What we have in the instant case is clearly an attempt at some new form of kiss that would probably be unrecognizable to Americans. Like the flag of Tajikistan, or various international treaties signed in Switzerland dealing with invading other countries and not torturing people.
Developing a new form of kissing is the only explanation my mind can accept, because unless this woman's boyfriend is a shop vac or a leaf blower, kissing as it is presently understood in Western civilization cannot possibly be fucked up badly enough where you blow out someone's eardrum, can it? Until presented with clear evidence to the contrary from reliable sources, I'm going with a Chinese plot to depose the French as the gold kissing standard as retribution for mimes and the Maginot Line.
