All of China

Kedo has mentioned to me that I haven’t updated in a while. As usual, he’s right.

So I figured that I might share something I saw a few days ago. In fact, Adam and I both saw it as we were coming out of the supermarket, and we both had the exact same train of thought: here was a situation that embodied all of China.

The supermarket is in the middle of the square; as such, it’s one of the greenest places in town. I would say that we don’t really have squares/pavilions in America, at least not ones that enjoy any amount of frequent use, but in China, they’re pretty big on squares. But it’s winter, so everyone is bundled up, although there’s no snow here.

Sitting across from the exit of the supermarket is an old man and a young boy. This is fairly typical: the old take care of the young during the day while the parents work. The old man is smoking a cigarette and the baby boy is wearing pants typical of baby boys: that is to say, crotchless pants.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the crotchless pants thing before. In case I haven’t, the Chinese are not so interested in diaper, nor are they squeamish about dropping a duke on the side of the street if they have to. So very young children just wear pants with no crouch so that they can do whatever they’ve got to do whenever they’ve got to do it. How do parents avoiding getting peed on?

I don’t know.

So you’ve got this baby, his little man free to the winter air, and this old fellow, enjoying a cigarette. The baby decides that some little white trinket on the ground looks delicious, picks it up, and puts it in his mouth.

You never do this in China. Never. Not ever. The ground is the enemy, the abyss. If it’s on the ground, it’s not coming back. Eat nothing off the ground. The average Chinese person won’t sit on the ground; they’ll usually lay down a piece of newspaper and sit on that. I don’t really get that, but I present it as Exhibit A in my case against the ground.

So naturally, babies can’t have that in their mouths, so what does the old guy do? He mutters some stuff in Chinese and then whacks the baby on the back of the head. Not some gentle, "Oh, no, no, precious baby, spit it out, please," tap, but a, "Get that shit out of your mouth," whack. Instantly the white thing flies back out onto the ground.

Now I say all of this like I’m making the old guy out to be kind of schmuck, but he’s not: he did the right thing. That baby would have choked on that thing for sure; there was no time for some gentle tap. Hmm? "He should have reached his finger in the baby’s mouth and removed it thusly," you say?

Wrong.

Wrong.

You should not eat anything off your fingers in this country unless you just washed them. People’s hands get filthy in this country because they actually do a lot of work. You know how in America you see people standing around road construction, looking like they might, at some point, consider working? In China, the same amount of people are just working, digging up shit, laying down pipes, getting it done. And where is home at the end of the day? On site. That’s right, they erect dormitories for the workers right there. By which I mean they lean two pieces of corrugated metal against one another and throw sleeping bags inside.

But yeah, sticking his hands in the baby’s mouth would have surely gotten the little guy sick.

So that’s all of China in one moment. Maybe you find it as funny as I do, or maybe you have to live here for a bit first.