you’re not fully clean, unless you’re zestfully clean…
September 21st, 2004 stevel
RobertRichard mentioned in a comment on my last entry:
“Maybe Chinese men are sensitive to being seen with their clothes off, so a blind masseuse would be a good marketing ploy. E.g. we don’t care what you look like (as long as you don’t smell bad).”
Having been in an elevator with many a Chinese man (and woman, to be fair): they do smell bad. Okay, so that’s a huge generalisation, but I have to say, personal hygiene is not as important here as it is in the states. I don’t know if one can quantify B.O., but I would definitely say it’s higher here than in the states. 
B.O. aside, there are other things such as the ubiquitous spitting on the streets. 3 years ago, when I was here last, it was rampant (to the point that some guy spit on my sandal-clad feet, and when I confronted him about it, just looked at me as if to say “well, that’s your fault for wearing sandals”). If there’s one good thing SARS did for China, it was to help decrease the amount of public spitting. It’s still visible here and there, but has definitely gone down. Kudos to the Beijing gov’t (or SARS) for that. 
…. and the teeth. Don’t get me started on the teeth. Given that my sister, her boyfriend, and my girlfriend are all dentists (and one of my best friends has now started his own 4 year stint at dental school), I’m practically an honorary dentist. Hell, I’ve spent 5 years sitting in the lobby of the UCLA Dental School meeting my sister and girlfriend over the various years, reading their research posters. I can tell you that 4 UCLA dental students found that the Oral-B 3D Excel is better than the SoniCare, and I can tell you that Listerine really does help. But it doesn’t take any dental education to tell anyone that oral hygiene in China is baaaaaaad. People rib on my home country for having bad teeth, man…they ain’t got NOTHING on China. I’m not sure why either… I wonder if dental care is a good indicator of 1st world, 2nd world, developing nation, etc. status. ? It’d certainly be an interesting study, in any case…
(on a totally tangential note: does anyone find it somewhat disturbing that the first Google result for ‘United Kingdom’ returned is a CIA website)
[tags: ChinaBlog]
2 Comments Add your own
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1.
Richard Friedman | September 22nd, 2004 at 09:51
Err… that’s Richard, not Robert. But close enough.
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2.
steve | September 22nd, 2004 at 17:45
erk. i’m a retard. sorry!
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