I’ve been seeing these long nails in Taiwan forever and think it’s the oddest thing.
Is there any real usefulness?
Clean ears? Scratch the cat? Pick teeth? Tighten the eyeglass screws? Tap on the table to get attention? The old men aren’t snorting cocaine or snuff, so it isn’t that.
It’s the Asian equivalent of beards. It gets the girls all hot and bothered. For added effect, make sure to cultivate three unfeasibly long hairs from a facial mole.
“For added effect, make sure to cultivate three unfeasibly long hairs from a facial mole.”
Haha!
Think tobacco snuff, turned temple style, turned massive nationwide amphetamen addition plus a nice habit of nose picking.
note you only need it on one hand, not both 
Superstition. For keeping the backstabbers at bay etc. It’s stupid.
It’s for luck, or something along those lines.
Yeah, the long pinky nail and unkempt, six inch mole hair aren’t the most aesthetically pleasing sights from an outsider’s perspective. When in Rome… 
I consider them to be a public service. You know immediately the sort of chap you are dealing with if he has a massive finger nail or hairy mole.
Not always a “chap.” I’ve seen more than a few of my female Uni students sporting a hairy mole special.
What I’ve heard it’s that there’s a belief that men whose pinky is shorter than the intermediate phalange of the ring finger are more susceptible to receive orders from their wives. As result, they let the fingernail grow as to avoid such faith…
Cleaning ear wax, which incidentally in most east Asians is dry and crumbly and needs to be cleaned out (as opposed to our wet sticky stuff).
Seems useful just to scratch the inner ear, not really for cleaning purposes. Or so I hear.
