"Are you growing a mustache?" asked a Chinese friend. "Well, yes I am," I replied.

"That's very brave of you," she said.

Brave? Iris Chang was brave. The troops at the Somme were brave. I'm just growing a "mo" here. I know what she was getting at though; it was her own way of saying: "That thing under your nose will see you ridiculed by many because it makes you look like a 1920's railway baron."

One time, this same friend of mine stared at my bottom lip (which is thicker than my top lip, or maybe even Mick Jagger's) and asked: "Is it sore? Is it swollen?" "No, it's just big," I snapped back defensively as torturous memories of schoolyard taunts came flooding back.

But let's get back to my 'tache, of which my expat friends have been equally observant. "Dude is that a mo?" one particularly amused chap asked, pointing and laughing so hard that he doubled over. He followed up with: "I think it's cool, don't get me wrong." Hmmm.

Now to clarify, my moustache is not yet a dense cookie duster, like Ned Flanders's or Clark Gable's. It's still at a spiky, embryonic stage - think the thin coat of hair that is found on the skins of exotic fruits.

My logic was that if I shaved away everything else and left the humble tuft just above my top lip, I'd get the ridicule out of the way so by the time I reach the Tom Selleck stage, I might just garner some respect. Errol Flynn-type respect.

So as a show of good faith to my family, friends and colleagues that I am willing to accept their barbs as an inevitable stage in the painful process that is facial growth maturation, I have devised a list of insults more imaginative than "nice mo, douche bag" or "you look stupid, stupid head".

1/ When was your nose declared a shade area for endangered species?

2/ Dude, you should wipe after you squeeze the blackheads above your lip

3/ Now there's a good hiding spot for the Magna Carta

4/ Did you get punched in the face by a girl with hairy fists?

5/ No seriously, you look hot man, just like the Monopoly guy

6/ Are you being ironic? Or do you just hate yourself?

7/ Until that thing either retreats into your skin or is treated with pesticides, you stay away my kids

8/ Want to eat hot pot? Oh, sorry friend. I forgot that you need to stay away from naked flames

9/ At least you could have had the decency to manipulate hair that others don't have to look at

10/ Hey Dr Fuzzenstein, "it's alive!"

11/ If I punched you in the face not a court in the land would convict me

12/ What's the bounty on that red-tinged fugitive you are harboring?

13/ Does that absorb soup, blood or other spilled liquids?

14/ I'm sure that thing somehow speeds up global warming

15/ Hey, your mum called. She wants her mustache back

I understand that flavor savers, hippie lips and pushbrooms may be an eyesore, but those who cultivate them are people too. At least have the heart to mock them in original or innovative ways.

(China Daily 11/15/2007 page20)