Maybe people who have lived longer in China know whether my friend’s assertion is true. All I know was that she was very uncomfortable talking about this, and that the pad options in China are very advanced. To draw this comic, I actually had to look up the terms for pads and tampons online: “卫生巾” (“Hygiene towel”) vs “卫生棉” (“Hygiene cotton”). Go figure.
That matches my experience. Sometimes even the Watson’s won’t have tampons, if it’s a small one. And the lack of readily available clean water makes things like the cup less practical too. If I’m only in China for a month or two, I usually just use pads and suffer.
Tampax was in China about 15 years ago… I remember the advertisement campaign, and it was called 丹碧丝. I learned online that tampons left the Chinese market because of bad sales. OB is still available in China.
Actually, after some research, I found: 1989年，丹碧丝公司将丹碧丝卫生棉条推入中国市场；1997年，宝洁公司全球性收购丹碧丝公司，将丹碧丝卫生棉条收购；1999年，全新丹碧丝卫生棉条进入中国南京市场。