There is a big pile of garbage below the newer block of flats opposite our kitchen window. It has been there almost a week now and it stinks, this heap of plastic bags of rubbish. many of which are open to vermin as they are not tied shut. When will someone come and take them away. Is it garbo’s holiday or is it another manifestation of the lack of regularity and regulation which pervades Chinese society? Well, yes, in another sense it is an over-regulated patriarchy in which the higher ranks believe they have the intelligence to control general behaviour in society. I would like them to prove it and start to notice all the neglect of human welfare at the lower levels and change the attitudes that support the copntinuation of the problems.
It is part of the Chinese mentality to throw rubbish and leave it for someone else to clean up. I’ve seen young men throw sunflower seed husks on the floor without a thought that their mother will have to clean the mess up and I went into a shop the other evening after normal closing time and saw a young male staff member peeling an orange and throwing the skin on the floor for the cleaner to take care of. Where are these scenes in movies? I’ve never seen a Chinese movie in which a Chinese woman comes into such a scene and declares a feminist position on it. Mao Tse Tung said ‘Women hold up half the sky’. Maybe Chinese men should clean up more, then. It must be difficult to hold up half the sky while cleaning up sunflower seeds with the other hand.
Walking past shops at closing time one must take care to avoid the rubbish flying out the doors for whoever cleans the footpaths and streets to take care of. At any time of the day a cigarette carton or paper can fly out of a shop onto the footpath. Littering is so prevalent in China it must rank with smiking as something many people think they have a right to do.
The thing that offends my Western sensitivities most are the small restaurants and food stalls who will sluice their washing up water and water they have used for cooking onto the sidewalk in front of their establishment, making it a feeding ground for bacteria. They will carefully take a container of scraps to the kerbside and deposit the contents on the road. Because of this China has many stinks. It is so bad that there are places where the bypasser must be careful not to slip on the greasy residue. Rainy days are a worry for the walker because of that. At night it is not uncommon to see rats and mice on the footpaths. I have had that experience several times.
Rotting food scraps are just a feature of the landscape and cognitively dissociated to the extent that it must not have seemed important to clear the pile of garbage away from the classy apartment building opposite my window. Maybe the cleaners weren’t paid enough or maybe someone offended them. What may have been more important likely was to solve the problem without anyone being permanently offended, to avoid anyone losing face. Never mind the many small children who walked past every day on their way to school, the risk of disease from the multitude of flies that would have hatched as time went on, and the risk of disease from other vermin.