A little while ago, a Facebook friend posted an article from the Straits Times regarding a Thai temple that was building separate toilet facilities for non-Chinese tourists. Apparently, the Chinese tourists' bathroom etiquette was so bad, and the state the bathrooms were left in was so nauseating, that they were relegated to separate facilities in order to protect people who were more familiar with things like indoor plumbing.
There was a related link to a story about why Chinese tourists are so rude. The writer suggests that education (or the lack thereof) plays a role in why they behave the way they do, as well as a general lack of understanding of culture wherever they go.
The writer says:
It seems that thousands of years after Confucius admonished his students not to
"impose on others what you don't desire," the Chinese now act in quite the opposite way.
Sounds like Confucius had a handle on the Golden Rule, something I try to live by myself, though I don't always succeed.
The writer goes on to point out:
Living in China, where the rule of law doesn't exist, means that everyone has to look out for their own interest. It also means that people have little or no respect for laws.
This is bound to happen when ordinary folk are forced to watch their laws being violated
every day by their leaders,... citing the Chinese idiom shang xing xia xiao, meaning
"people in lower class follow what their leaders in the upper class do."
I see this lack of respect for the law every day. One example is the way drivers ignore "the rules of the road."It's every man for himself out there. I usually sit shotgun, so I have the best seat in the house to observe this behaviour. People merge into traffic with out looking to see if anyone is coming, and if anyone is coming, they continue on anyway. Their attitude seems to be, "Fuck you, I'm coming in."
If anyone is ahead of your car, and you go to pass them, they automatically drift into your lane without signalling and cut you off.
I see fender benders every time I go out into traffic, and there've been the odd time I've seen pedestrians that've been knocked down while crossing the road.
Pedestrians take their lives in their hands every time they go out into the street, and I keep my head on a swivel. You just never know which way they're going to come at you. But pedestrians ignore the rules, too, and they're kind of putting a target on their backs the way they jaywalk and wander around out on the road.
To get back to toilets, it does seem to me that people think anywhere is as good a place to relieve yourself of quite a variety of bodily fluids.
Of course, there's a lot of spitting going on. The first thing any Chinese person does as soon as they get outdoors is to hhhhhhhhooooooooocccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh up as much phlegm as they possibly can and let fly with the loogies. And its amazing the number of times they seem to need to do that. I was walking from the gate to my complex to the door of my building, about a minute's walk, and I passed a mook going in the same general direction who had to hhhhhhhhooooooooocccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh and spit 7 times. The aural assault is sometimes a bit hard to take, and just how much phlegm can you hhhhhhhhooooooooocccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh up that often anyway?
Another way that mooks get rid of phlegm is to blow their noses onto the sidewalk. I remember trying that once, and the phlegm just sprayed all over my face. I guess you have to get the knack, but how many times do you have to clean your face off before that happens? And why don't you just use whatever you're cleaning your face off with to catch the snot anyway?
Why do I always have to think of everything?
The public urination is even more prevalent than it was in Korea. It's not uncommon to see a mook, or a group of mooks, pulled over and peeing at the side of the road. As in Korea, I can usually shift my gaze from the urinator to a restaurant or other public place that must have facilities the mook could use instead.
But as the article mentioned, public toilets are not well used by their patrons. I've been in enough over here to know that they should be avoided like the plague. People just do not believe in leaving the toilet the way they found it, so the next user is not inconvenienced. I remember going into a stall just after an old man. He had not flushed, and the paper he used to wipe his ass was left on the floor in front of the bowl.
Fucking mook.
Besides peeing everywhere, mooks also poop everywhere. I've posted pictures about the pedestrian underpasses near my first apartment before. Every once in a while, I would see that someone had left a turd there. I've never seen anyone actually doing it, like I've seen people peeing, but the evidence is there for all to see.
I don't think the people doing this really need to. There are places close by that have toilets, and taking a piss or a dump just anywhere you please shows ignorance of basic manners, in my opinion. But maybe the condition the toilets are left in puts them off as much as it does me.
I have an agreement with my bladder and my bowels. They do not put too much pressure on me, and I will get them home where it's safe. I'm like the character in "American Pie," who doesn't poop anywhere but at home.
One of the greatest inconveniences is that most of the stalls have slits in the floor that you have to squat over rather than the "throne" that I'm used to. I only use the slits to urinate in. Having to squat and take a shit is just beyond my capabilities now. And the Chinese agree. I was in the Shenzen airport, coming back from Hong Kong, and the facilitis had only one stall with a throne. The sign on the door said, "For The Weak Only."
Heh.
