China: rude, dirty & annoying!

China may be growing to become the world's second largest economy, but living and working in this 'developing country' can be a nightmare. The country has many good things going for it. The food is delicious if you know where to eat, and it is a country steeped in history. But while a month long trip zipping from place to place may bring a little culture shock, and a few uncomfortable experiences, it is only after living here that one sees the real China.

The air

It's often said the grass isn't always greener on the other side, and with respect to China this is especially true. The first thing that hits you as you leave Beijing's modern international airport is the air. Today [15th October] the air is actually quite good. Blue skies hang over the city and the sun radiates a warm 22 degrees Celsius. Even the visibility is also excellent and the distant mountains can just be seen to the north of the capital.

But today is exceptional. Earlier this year the US Embassy set up its own air monitoring station atop its building in the east of Beijing and began to tweet its results via the micro-blogging site Twitter. The data disseminated by the US Embassy's twitterfeed @BeijingAir is in sharp contrast to that put out by China's official government body. According to the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, on 24th June 2009, the official air quality reading of the city measured "moderate". The Air Pollution Index (API) showed a reading of 69, the level of pollutants of 10 microns (PM10) from noon to noon. But on the same day, the US Embassy data showed the fine particles with a median diameter less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) was at 184, sufficient to classify the air quality as "unhealthy" based on US Environmental Protection Agency standards.

On some days the air quality has been described as 'Hazardous'. And it is noticeable.Buildings even a few hundred metres away disappear into the smog and cars occasionally resort to using headlights in the middle of the day. However, Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing's environment protection bureau, has dismissed the reading issued by the US Embassy. "Any attempts to question our figures with a single monitoring station are not authoritative enough," he said earlier this year.

China measures by a different standard than that used by the United States and set out by the World Health Organization. Readings of PM2.5 and PM10 particles give different results. In addition finer particles are more dangerous since they are less easily coughed up. Simon Hales of the Department of Public Health at University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand, has warned that exposure to such concentrations could be very dangerous over the long term. "In healthy people, exposure to urban air pollution over a few hours or days is unlikely to have any noticeable health impact. However, the best indicator of health impacts is long term (annual average) exposure. Long term exposure causes increases in overall death rates which we can measure in epidemiological studies. Long term exposure to air pollution in many Asian cities, (with average levels of over 100 mcg/m3 PM10), probably causes health risks similar to those caused by smoking a pack of cigarettes a day."

Since June the air quality, as measured by the US Embassy has hit 'Hazardous' several times. Even in Los Angeles, well known for high pollution, the air quality only occasionally reaches a level considered to be 'Very Unhealthy'. Here in Beijing the air can be almost unbreathable! In fact according to the US government's website airnow.gov an AQI of between 301 & 500, or 'Hazardous', can cause significant aggravation of symptoms in susceptible persons as well as decreased exercise tolerance in healthy persons. Levels above 400 may even be life-threatening to ill and elderly persons.

The dirt

Despite armies of street cleaners China is incredibly dirty. Streets are often littered with discarded food, fruit, paper and other waste. Even in some supermarkets the grime seen on floors would shock most westerners. The most noticeable dirty habit of many Chinese people is spitting. Chinese men especially have the disgusting habit of making loud hawking sounds and spitting the contents of their actions on the road, pavement or wherever they happen to be. While it is mostly men, women too can be seen participating in this vulgar habit. Some people even spit on the bus, and onto the floors of restaurants and public toilets. Many Chinese people also seem to blow their noses in a most indiscreet and vulgar fashion. Handkerchiefs or tissues appear to be too much trouble. Instead people are often seen to use their thumb and forefinger to press their nose and loudly blow out the contents onto the street.
Restaurants also display a similar disregard to hygiene. It is not uncommon to see restaurant staff exit toilets without washing their hands. Food preparation surfaces as well as floors would shock any health inspector in the West. But here in China, cleanliness and hygiene, like common sense, are not all that common. The risks of eating out lessen if frequenting more expensive restaurants or outlets like the KFC or McDonalds, though the chance of food poisoning still exists. Even for those with a caste iron constitution it is advisable to take your own chopsticks.

In England, meat left unrefrigerated for 15 minutes is supposed to be thrown away as a food and safety measure. But in China it is not uncommon to see meat lying out on the counter and the vendor using bare hands to handle it. In summer, it often lies out in the sweltering heat all day. On streets people sell vegetables and fruit, sometimes just laid directly on the ground. They are seemingly oblivious to the fact these are the same streets upon which people spit and on which dogs defecate.

Littering is another apparently accepted habit. A recent visit to the Forbidden City in the heart of Beijing revealed how many were just unable to comprehend the use of a litter-bin. The vast courtyard leading up to the entrance of the Forbidden City was strewn with tissues, sunflower seed husks, apple cores, banana peel, orange peel, discarded corn cobs, plastic bottles and bags. My Chinese wife, who has lived in Britain many years, was also shocked at the scene which resembled not so much an ancient monument to China's past than a garbage dump.

Many Chinese get very defensive when their country is criticised. Patriotism is strong and there are often people seen wearing "I love China" T-shirts. But it appears they don't love their country enough to use a trash can or to refrain from painting the streets with their saliva.

If you've managed to survive the food prepared in unhygienic conditions and made it past crowds of spitting individuals, you will at some time need to use a public toilet. You will wish you never had. Chinese toilets are arguably the dirtiest and smelliest in the world. Even festival toilets are no match for what you'll meet in a Chinese lavatory. There are cultural differences that can and should be tolerated, and there are just plain disgusting habits that hark back to an era of primitiveness when mankind still walked on all fours. China has squat toilets and Western style toilets. The squat toilets are traditional and are a cultural difference. But the toilet habits of many Chinese are not. They are extraordinarily dirty. Sometimes one might think even a dog has cleaner toilet habits than many of them.

A toilet in the Chinese countryside is a harrowing experience and one you will unfortunately remember for the rest of your life. The smell from a Chinese toilet can permeate the air for some considerable distance. It is a stench that on entering may send one into retreat. What may greet you is a row of rectangular holes in the ground all strewn with lumps of stale faeces and used toilet paper. There are no doors on the stalls, sometimes, even no partitions between the holes. But it isn't just the toilets in the country that are filthy. Even toilets in big cities can be particularly unsavoury. It is not uncommon to enter a cubicle to find the previous occupant has not flushed. Perhaps such bad toilet habits are learnt whilst very young. Children can sometimes be seen urinating on the street. Many Chinese children have never worn a diaper or nappy. Instead, they have a big slit that, when they stoop down, opens and allows them to urinate or otherwise. In the last few months I have witnessed mothers allowing their young children to urinate on station platforms, streets in the heart of Qianmen and at tourist attractions, including the entrance to a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Beijing.

Impoliteness

Rudeness and impoliteness are very common. No where is this better manifested than in the behaviour of many Chinese when it comes to queues. They either do not understand the concept of a queue, or they do understand but are too rude and selfish to respect queues. Whether at supermarket check-out counters, ATMs and train station ticket offices, there are always a few who will go straight to the front of the line and push you out of the way so they can be served first. At bus stops the crush seen as dozen of people attempt top force their way through the narrow door is like something seen at a cattle-market. Bag-straps snap, glasses are knocked from faces, mobile phones go flying and there is the occasional physical injury. Despite there being no room on the bus people still attempt to board sometimes becoming trapped in the powerful doors. Heads, arms and legs are often trapped in their vice-like jaws. On subway stations the sensible concept of allowing passengers to leave the train before attempting to board seems not to have crossed the minds of most Chinese.

The same display of disregard for others can be seen daily on the roads as cars and taxis manoeuvre for space. The blasting of horns is almost constant, even where it is obvious that no progress will be made from such actions. Greetings of "good day" and "good bye" are almost non-existent, unless one initiates. Even a "thank you" is rare.

Chinese people apparently care very much about losing their face. But such obsession in putting on a facade backfires. The government insists there is little or no promiscuity and actively bans websites it deems to be pornographic. Indeed its flawed Green Dam project was to weed out such sites. But while it talks about immoral western standards, its own streets are festooned with the same immorality. There are massage parlours with red lights, freely available pornographic magazines and a walk around the back-streets of Beijing will reveal countless adult shops openly displaying sex aids.

It can all be summed up as hypocrisy. The government claims its 'punishment' of Google was to stop the dissemination of pornographic images, yet its Chinese rival Baidu is left unaffected and sex shops remain untouched. The Chinese government, rather than acknowledging a problem, prefers to hide it so as "not to lose face". One could argue that the blocking of so many websites is about keeping down dissent and protests. But it is as much about not wanting to reveal the truth about what really exists in China.

Annoying

This all leads to how annoying it can be living in China. Chinese people may or may not know what really goes on in China, or elsewhere. Indeed they may not even care. Despite government worries over the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary, few people look back with any real concern. Most are far more focused on making money. Even when it comes to the Internet, the restrictions affect very few Chinese. Most use the Internet for chatting to friends using Microsoft Messenger of the Chinese equivalent QQ. Online games are also popular with "Happy Farm" being one notable example [more about that in another post]. However, while they all happily play in their virtual worlds of stealing sheep and discussing how much they earn and when they're going to have a baby through Instant Messages, many expats are sat cursing at computer keyboards.

Using the Internet in China is at best slow, at worst a complete nightmare. If you're a newsjunky, journalist, or techhead it is intolerable. Virtually all the western social networks have been blocked for months, and it doesn't seem like it will get any better. Google services are particularly affected. Google Docs has been hit with outages and will not open in secure mode [https]. Google Sites, Picasa Web, Blogger and YouTube, all owned by Google, are completely inaccessible. Other blocked sites include Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Scribd. Even news websites have been affected especially around National Day, as China celebrated 60 years since the founding of the Peoples' Republic.

Clicking a Google news link often leads to an error page and it all makes using the Internet extremely frustrating. As such one plays a continual game of cat and mouse trying to jump over or through the Great Firewall of China. Software that did work now no longer works and new versions fail after only a few days. For those just wishing to post messages or pictures on Facebook, Blogger and Twitter, there are email alternatives, but for most users it is the free use of the net that is required. Here, in the Peoples' Republic of China, that is not possible.

No country is perfect but China can, at times, be downright horrible. Soon after arriving another Brit told me that after a few weeks he just wanted to "go and punch somebody or something", such was his frustration. He's lasted nearly two years and says that while sometimes your days will be great at other times you'll wake up and end up crying in your cornflakes. It's not quite become that bad, but one year here will be more than enough.

There are some Chinese who are immaculately clean and who are very polite and honest. But sadly they appear to be a minority. For a country that is to become perhaps the second largest economy and with it bring greater influence to the world, this is indeed worrying. One hopes that the West might wake up and see what it is importing. The lead tainted toys, melamine adulterated milk and exploding tyres are only the half of it. If they export their dirty habits, double standards in business practice and tighter censorship controls we will all have something to worry about.