Public Hygiene

The concept of privacy is different in China than it is in most of the Western word. Of course, China is the most populous country on earth, so it is little wonder that Chinese people don’t bother or care to look for seclusion when going about their day to day lives. China is a crowded country. Good luck finding a place to be alone.

The differences between China and the West in the pursuit of privacy extend to nearly ever facet of life. The most striking of these differences, that is to say, the one that was most off-putting to me when I first arrived, is personal hygiene. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t to say Chinese people don’t take care of themselves. Most people born after the Cultural Revolution (roughly anyone under the age of 45) certainly care a lot about the way they look and of taking care of themselves. But, what we view as guarded, private activities, the Chinese comfortably perform in the most public of settings.

Tooth brushing is often done on the street with a bowl full of water (Who needs a sink drain when you’ve gone some perfectly nice asphalt on which to spit?). Men shave their faces in hotel lobbies and in grocery stores, sometimes with cordless electric razors loudly buzzing away as they pick through the produce section. People clip their nails (fingers and toes) on public buses, to hell with where the clippings might land. A friend told me a particularly frightening tale about a woman who sat next to her on a bus who was using tweezers to pull hair sprouts from a mole on her face. Charming.

Forget personal hygiene. China has invented public hygiene.

I walked into the teacher’s office at my school last week in and saw the head teacher washing his hair in the middle of the room with the help of a student. First, the student fetched the teacher a large bucket of water. Then the teacher bent over the bucket and had the student pour water over his head while he scrubbed vigorously. I didn’t see any shampoo. This was the very first thing I saw at work that day—public hair washing in an office. I knew it was going to be a good day. And, of course, it was.

A Humbling Experience. A Dumb American. A Near Riot.

A few weeks ago I had an embarrassing reminder of just how ignorant Americans sometimes are about the rest of the world…me included.

I was playing a game with one of my most advanced junior 1 classes (11-13 year olds) and everything was going smoothly until the very end of class. I had the class divided into two teams, girls versus boys. (Chinese people go nuts for any kind of competition and when I’m looking for a sure fire way to get every student interested and involved in a lesson I simply split them into teams and watch as epic battles ensue.) For this particular game I asked a person from each team a question (exp. How many states are there in America?). If they answered correctly they had a chance to throw a paper airplane at a large dartboard-esque target I drew on the blackboard.

The trouble began right after the final bell rang, signaling the end of class. When the bell rang the girl’s team (ironically named “The Winners”) was trailing the boys with a score of 25 to 45. I decided to give them one more shot. Almost every girl in class shot her hand up in the air to answer a question, eager for a chance to redeem their gender and snatch victory from the boys. The previous two questions I asked students to name the capitals of France and the U.S.A., so I decided to keep on this track and ask another capital. I chose a tiny girl with huge glasses to answer the question. She stood up with a massive grin on her face. “What,” I said without thinking, “is the capital of Australia?” (Before you read any further, please stop for a moment and ask yourself the same question. Do you know the answer? Are you sure? Ok, read ahead.)

Without pausing the student confidently answered the question. The only problem was, I either didn’t hear or didn’t understand what she said. “Can you repeat that?” I asked. She said it again. Whatever she was saying started with a K or a C, but I couldn’t understand it for the life of me. “Please spell that,” I said to her. “C A N B E R R A,” she said, pronouncing each letter clearly and pointedly. I wrote it on the board and stared long and hard. Canberra? I’d never even heard of that. “Wrong!” I yelled. “The correct answer is Sydney.”

That was it, the girls lost it. “No! No! You are wrong,” they screamed. “Our Chinese teacher told us the capital of Australia is Canberra!” It was at this point that I dug myself deeper into a hole that was already bored through the middle of the earth. “Well then, I’m sorry but your Chinese teacher is wrong,” I blithely said. “The boys win.”

Pandemonium. Anarchy. The girls were all standing and shouting at me in Chinese. I had no idea what they were saying, but they were frothing at the mouth. Two girls burst into tears. An unknown assailant chucked a wad of paper at my head. A few girls stood on their desks and began pumping their fists in the air (yes, this REALLY happened). I was half expecting a Molotov cocktail to smack me in the face. The boys meanwhile sat calmly in their desks, snarky grins smeared across their faces.

Things looked bad and I had to act quickly. “Maybe I’m wrong about Australia,” I sheepishly admitted. “I’ll look up the right answer for next class.” Then I gave the girls another question (the capital of England), which they easily got right. The tiny girl with huge glasses took a shot at the target with her paper airplane and missed. The boys won and I hurried out of class with my tail between my legs.

As soon as I stepped out of the classroom I phoned Tess (a fellow WorldTeach teacher at my school), told her my sorry tale, and then asked her the capital of Australia. She wasn't sure either, so she looked it up online and low and behold, the girls were right. I quickly thanked her and hung up. I felt queasy. Attempting to salvage some pride, I next called Jackie, another WorldTeach teacher and one who had just returned from a vacation in Australia weeks prior. If she didn’t know the answer, I reasoned, I was partially pardoned because most Americans must be ignorant shmucks when it comes to our friends in Oceania.

Jackie didn’t know either.

The next week I returned to the riotous class, confessed my sin, and apologized. Actually, the class seemed to have forgotten the whole incident. “Mei guan xi! Mei guan xi! Mei shi,” they kept saying. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. Still, I’m not sure how much effect the incident had on my credibility with the class or the amount of respect they have for me.

Stupid Americans. I knew I should have taken geography in high school.