As far as hygiene is concerned, the Chinese behaviour can be contradictory. From one point of view they can be seen as filthy: storeowners dumping garbage on the sidewalk in front of their store, diners having a meal with no qualms concerning spitting out bone pieces on the table or even on the floor. It seems that the only thing which prevents China from looking like one big garbage can is the large amount of service personell - in the previous examples, streetsweepers and waitresses - who keep cleaning up after the rest of the population.

In other aspects, Chinese hygiene habits can be more strict than their Western counterparts, the best example being food hygiene habits. Apart from fresh fruit, you would be hard-pressed finding food in the Chinese cuisine which hasn’t been fried, steamed, cooked, boiled or grilled. This includes vegetables and even drinks - despite the growing popularity of cold drinks (I blame western influence), most Chinese are still quite used to the idea of a nice hot cup of boiled water in mid-summer. All of these habits are basically geared towards making sure that the food is relatively sterile and free from germs.

Some time ago I was trying to teach a Chinese friend how to make western-styled pancakes (the result was pretty bad but I blame improper ingredients and the lack of a flat frying pan). Before starting to prepare the food we went to wash our hands, and I washed my hands as I usually do, a quick scrub with soap and water. “What are you doing”, scolded me my friend, “these hands are about to prepare food that we’re going to eat!”, after which she applied generous amounts of soap to my hands and vigorously scrubbed them for a while. The same friend, thirty minutes later, spread peppers all over the dirty floor before proceeding to go and wash them with water. More contradictions.

The Chinese are also sensitive to the cleanliness of their chopsticks. Most of the small eateries avoid these problems by providing one-time-use dispensable chopsticks made from bamboo. When the Chinese city folk go to the countryside, where dispensable utensils are uncommon, they can often be quite cautious as far as chopsticks are concerned; it was explained to me that germs can reside in the outer layers of the wood and that washing isn’t enough to remove them. In these situations, the Chinese will often dip the tips of the chopsticks in hot tea or soup to sterilize them before use.

This habit was taken even further by the residents of the Guangzhou (and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese in other parts of the province). When having a meal in a restaurant in Guangzhou , the first thing brought to the table is a pot of tea and a large basin. The diners fill their cups with tea from the pot and swish the tea around a bit so it touches all areas of the cup. The chopsticks are then held above the bowl and the tea is poured from the cups over the chopsticks and into the bowl to sterilize the chopsticks. Finally the tea is poured from the bowl into the basin in a turning motion, so that the tea touches all areas of the bowl in the process. The cup, the bowl and the chopsticks have been sterilized by the tea and all the tea is in the large basin - the waitresses then take away the basin and replentish the tea in the pot. The interesting thing about this Guangzhou washing habit is that it takes place regardless of how clean the dishes are in the first place - this ritual will be carried out even in the fanciest of restaurants.