Dirty, Dirty, Dirty

Dirty, Dirty, Dirty

The Chinese are very superficial – they care mostly about how things (and they) appear to the rest of the world instead of what the quality of that thing or themselves is really like on the inside. Your face and clothes, and the person you seem to be, are the most important; your character and what you actually are inside comes a distant second. Thus they have become masters at advertising, but producers of low quality products, products that are even poisonous with their unsafe levels of lead content. You can go into a supermarket in China and buy a Chinese product wrapped in the most wonderful packaging, but the thing inside tastes like crap. If you buy the same kind of product manufactured in a foreign country, it may not be as attractively packaged, but the odds are that it will taste a lot better.

And so it is, when you step off the plane and into the airport, you should find yourself in a clean surrounding. But once you get outside onto the street, it’s a whole different story. The first negative thing I noticed about China was how unbelievably dirty it and some Chinese people are. Now, not all Chinese people are dirty beyond belief but so many of them are that at the worst times, it can seem so.

By far, the most noticeable dirty habit of many Chinese people is spitting. Chinese men especially have a disgusting habit of making loud hawking sounds and spitting the contents of their actions on the road. While it is mostly men, I remember lots of times when I looked at what seemed to be an attractive woman, then was completely turned off when I saw her eject a white ball of spit from her mouth onto the sidewalk or road as casually as if she were a bird ejecting shit from her bottom. In the winter, it is even worse because everyone gets the common cold and then the spit usually has yellow or green mucus in it. When I am walking to the bus stop on a morning in winter, I wonder if it would be less disgusting if I didn’t look down and didn’t care where I stepped, but then I think it's less disgusting to look down and see the spit so I wouldn’t step in it. And to make matters worse, in winter, the spit freezes and stays there for months.

So maybe some may think spitting on the road isn’t so bad, even though it’s literally every 5 seconds that someone is hawking. But get this: many Chinese people even spit on the bus, and onto the floors of restaurants and public toilets. One day, I got really angry. I was eating in a restaurant and a Chinese man sitting some ways from me hawks and spits; the spit lands less than a foot away from where I am so I turn around and ask him if he is nuts. He stares at me like if I’m a madman, then gets up and leaves the restaurant. Spitting on the floor in restaurants is not unusual; in fact, it is common and no-one takes the slightest notice when it happens.

Restaurants happen to be some of the dirtiest of places in China. In the West, we can be very particular about what goes into our bodies and how it is prepared. But in China, cleanliness and hygiene, like common sense, aren’t all that common.

I have often thought I should start a curio cabinet filled with all the strange things I and my friends have found in our food. The cabinet would quickly fill with the weirdest assortment of both organic and non-organic matter: everything from human hair and fingernails, to things of animal origin like bugs and a spiky caterpillar, to stones. But that is a project still in the making. One of the reasons is that I’ve been occupied with many things in China; another reason is that there simply is no recourse when you do find strange things in your food. This is the dirty way it is and probably has always been so it is simply accepted and ignored. Once my wife, who is Chinese, and I went into a restaurant and ordered noodle soup. She started eating it and discovered a bug in the soup. If this was a Western country, there could have been lawsuits costing the restaurant millions of dollars. But in China, well as my wife asked me, “What can I do?” Besides get a new bowl of soup which I refused to touch.

Yet really, what can you do? You still have to pay for the soup, bug or no bug, and there just isn’t any official or non-official agency you could complain to when you do find unsanitary conditions. Most likely, you’d get laughed at if you attempted it.

Once I was in a restaurant near my home and there was dried blood from some poor animal, on the floor. The chefs themselves had dried blood on aprons, which were also stained with a myriad of black marks. I think it would've been cleaner not to have worn an apron that's probably never been washed in the first place. In England or the USA, a restaurant wouldn’t let you enter if you’re bare-backed. In China, it can turn into something of an embarrassment when your host takes you into a restaurant to treat you for a meal, and suddenly, you’re turned off eating because the chef, waiters and patrons are all be barebacked.

And then there was the time when I went to eat barbequed vegetables on a skewer and saw the chef using one end of a skewer with food already stuck on it to scratch his head. After that, he put it on the coals to cook, then served it to me. It's a wonder I haven’t died from food poisoning. Yet. But I have, several times, had the worst diarrhoea in my life. When you get diarrhoea here, it can run for 2 weeks and not less than 3 days.

It is no wonder that the diarrhea is so bad when it comes. But it is the most amazing thing that China is one of the world’s most populous countries. With the dirtiness and lack of safety standards, you’d expect people to be dying like flies here. In England, I used to work for a grocery store. If meat was left unrefrigerated for 15 minutes, you were supposed to throw it away as a food and safety measure. But this is China. When you go to markets, the meat is lying out on the counter and the vendor is using bare hands to handle it. In summer, it lies out in the sweltering heat all day.

Dirtiness is a daily, year round phenomenon in China. Every winter in the north-eastern city in which I live, people start preparing for the long, cold winter by drying cabbages and leeks. The put the vegetables to dry on the sidewalks without seeming to realize that these are the same sidewalks on which people incessantly spit and blow their noses, and on which dogs pee and defecate. Cars also constantly pass by, dumping the heavy metals and other pollutants in their exhaust fumes on the vegetables.

Now I can finally see some good in KFC and McDonalds. They have the cleanest restaurants in China. But those are foreign restaurants, run on foreign standards of hygiene. The average Chinese person knows little and cares less about cleanliness.

Something else attesting to this, yet that no-one manages to notice in China is when Chinese people blow their noses. Not that there is usually anything special to notice, except that many Chinese do not use napkins to blow their noses into and they do this everywhere. They use their thumb and forefinger, press their nose in between and loudly honk the contents out onto the street. In China, you can be walking down a busy street and all of a sudden, the person in front of you abruptly stops and indiscreetly spews snot onto the sidewalk, and you’d better be quick to dodge it. Talk about living in filth. They will often do this too on to the floors of restaurants and buses, especially in winter.

Littering is another habit that is accepted. People in every country litter, but the Chinese do it with a much, much greater frequency. In winter of 2006, I took a boat trip along the Three Gorges. The scenery was magnificent but my “cruise” was marred by the pigs I traveled with. There were a group of Chinese people next to me sucking sugar cane. They threw the sucked pieces on the floor. When they had a piece of litter, they tossed it over the boat into the river. In keeping with the Chinese tradition of doing things in a nonsensical manner, they tossed everything over the side of the boat except their own damn selves. Such beautiful mountains, such a historic river; how could anyone be so thick-headed? There was a huge bin 3 metres, yes 3 metres away. But many Chinese people cannot use their brain if they have one. They don’t think about others or their environment. They can’t think for themselves. The rubbish will be staring them in their face and they still can’t make the connection between litter and ugly, or litter and bad for the environment and eventually, for us and our children. The only thing they care about is themselves and others in their circle who they feel can help them. If you’re part of their circle, they will break their neck and put themselves through all kinds of trouble for you. The Earth is hardly ever in that circle. The floor of my boat became so dirty, I was mystified as to why they even bothered painting and carpeting it for these animals.

Could it be that the Chinese are practicing for the littering Olympics? Maybe, though a glance around China would prove otherwise, they feel that to win first prize in that event, they need more practice and so everywhere becomes a target for litter, including bus and train floors. Once I traveled from Wuhan to Beijing. At the end of that journey, the train’s floor was covered with spit, wrappers of all kinds, tissue, sunflower seed husks, apple cores, banana peel, orange peel, piss, more sunflower seed husks, egg shell, plastic bottles and bags, and bread that some bitch didn’t want to eat.

If you tell them not to litter, they look at you like you are a weirdo and ask you what you are doing in China. You are a foreigner; it’s not your business.

Chinese people refuse to accept that they have a problem. They will deny it. As an example, when I was teaching a class on cultural differences, spitting came up and one lady vehemently denied that Chinese people spit more than in any other culture. She noted that her husband had been to Germany recently and saw people spitting on the street too, with a greater frequency than Chinese people. So I questioned my German friend: do people in Germany spit like the Chinese? My German friend was vehement: that’s bullshit. You will hardly ever see people spitting on the street in Germany, except maybe the Chinese there.

Because of my experiences, I chose to believe my German friend over the Chinese lady. Similarly, in the USA or England, there are some people who spit on the street but that is not very common. Later, I thought I should’ve asked the Chinese lady, “If spitting is not a problem in China, then why have 4 cities banned it?” But I wasn’t thinking quickly enough.

Accepting that there is a problem is the first step to solving it, but the Chinese haven’t gotten this far. Despite having, as they will often boast, a very long history of 5,000 years, modern China is not as evolved as the rest of the world and the modern Chinese are not mature enough to admit that their society has a lot of problems. So nothing gets done to fix their problems. Yet, the Chinese do have a very big problem with basic standards of cleanliness. Often, I look at them and think, “What is wrong with these people? Can’t they see how disgusting the ground looks with white blobs of saliva? Don’t they comprehend that there are serious public health issues with blowing your nose onto a bus floor? Don’t they love their country enough to use the trash can, instead of littering and destroying the environment?” But after two years of living here, I have come to the conclusion that most of them can’t and don’t. Something is seriously wrong with their brains and their logic in thinking.

The littered floor of the most horrible train ride I've ever taken in my life - Wuhan to Beijing, 24 hours. On the floor are spit, wrappers of all kinds, tissue, sunflower seed husks, apple cores, banana peel, orange peel, piss, sunflower seed husks, egg shell, plastic bottles and bags, and bread






Jilin Province borders North Korea where dog meat is a delicacy. Here are two dogs on their way to a pot. Food hygiene and safety is abysmally absent in China.

This is also about food hygiene. In this market, vendors handle meat with bare hands. In summer, the meat lies unrefrigerated all day.

Wintertime also sees issues with food hygiene. People start preparing for the long, cold winter by drying cabbages and leeks. The put the vegetables to dry on the sidewalks without seeming to realize that these are the same sidewalks on which people incessantly spit and blow their noses, and on which dogs pee and defecate. Cars also constantly pass by, dumping the heavy metals and other pollutants in their exhaust fumes on the vegetables.