Personal Cleanliness: down and dirty

WARNING: NOT FOR WEAK STOMACHS

This month’s top lessons learned in China regarding personal hygiene:

1. If you are a saleswoman in your fifties, it is perfectly acceptable to belch loudly while you bargain with foreigners. Multiple times. There will be no discreet burping, no tactful hand-over-mouth diversion, no shameful blush nor bashful glances. Just unabashed belching. The tai-tais, speechless and horrified, will be unable to look at each other or you. My advice thus:

· Belch.

· Belch out loud.

· Belch out strong.

· Don’t worry if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear.

· Just belch.

· Belch a song.

2. If you are walking by the river, please feel free to squat and defecate at your own convenience. No need to discard your toilet paper in the proper trash receptacle. Just throw it right next to your steaming pile. Foreign mountain bikers will soon conveniently roll over both and remove the offending heap, trailing the paper behind like streamers.

Now imagine my mountain bike...


2. If you are brushing your teeth with a Chinese toothbrush, be prepared for the bristles to simultaneously degrade, release from the brush, and choke you. This can happen at any given moment. Have floss at the ready. There is no doubt: those bristles will lodge between your pearly whites and in your throat.
3. If said bristles are not removed immediately, do not worry. It is 100% ok to spit bristles (or anything else that might ever be in your mouth), on the ground. In front of everyone, I might add. A busy pedestrian street would be the ideal location for your hack, but any public thoroughfare will suffice. Side note: never leave house barefoot. Second side note: take cover (like an umbrella) when you hear throat clearing.
4. If you are walking down said Phleming Road (or driving a car or shopping or eating or well, doing just about anything) and your nose itches, your only natural recourse of action will be to instantly pick-n-flick. That’s right. Pick your nose. And then flick. Pick-n-flick. Highly effective.
5. Speaking of immediate action…if you are a shopkeeper and your ear (and not your nose) itches, no worries. Please purchase a very long Q-tip. (At least a foot long is best). Sit outside your booth on short stool. Clean ear. Carefully examine ear wax while customers browse. The ear wax should best be brown. And thick. And thoroughly repulsive.
6. If perhaps you have not yet attained the correct level of maximum repulsiveness, you have another opportunity! Please continue to sit on your stool. Remove shoes and socks. Clean toe jam. Examine toe jam. Expect no foreign customers to purchase anything without exact change. Realize that no one wants to touch anything you have touched!
7. In fact, if you are in China, wear gloves. Touch nothing. See nothing. Smell nothing. This is the #1 thing I have learned about personal hygiene in China. This month. Who knows what next month will bring?

Smell no evil. See no evil. Touch no evil.

With love, laughter and honest nausea,

Kimbeijingerly