- Chinese Spitting by SqueakyClean
18 y
5,082 9 Messages Shown
Blog: Observations
Did you know?
Chinese people think it's bad to swallow your own saliva. They try to spit it out instead of swallowing it. When you are walking around in China you will see a LOT of people spitting! It's mostly older men, but you can see anyone doing it. Sometimes you can see a person walking around with a drink bottle or can, which is their "spit bottle", a portable disposable spitoon. Ew!
By the way, I've been to China and Singapore, seen it done. Numerous times.
Here's some info about it.
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During the 2008 Olympics,
"Volunteers wearing uniforms emblazoned with the Chinese character for "mucus'' will hand out "spit bags'' to encourage "civilized spitting,'' said Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing's Capital Ethical and Cultural Development Office."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0807/p06s02-woap.html
Here's some discussion about it:
http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/viewthread.php?tid=498733
One person there mentioned this:
"First off, yes, I agree that where, when and even how one eliminates excess mucus is important, but to answer the question of "Why" - well, because it is far healthier to jettison that excess mucus than it is to suck it up an swallow it as so many do - and after all, "health" and working with the body instead fighting against it is something the Chinese culture has understood for over two millenia.
The autonomic reaction of the body to expel excess mucus is a design of nature to assist the body in preventing unwanted "reserves" of mucoid matter that provide prime growing ground for disease-causing bacteria - and that is a very good thing; and if more people would realize that "sucking it up an swallowing instead of getting rid of it" is one of the worst things one can do, then the healthier many would be.
I am far more disgusted when I see/hear some poor fool trying to clear the excess mucus from their pharyngeal tract - who then "swallows" what the body is trying to get rid so as to defend itself - than I am by someone allowing this natural defense system of the body to function as nature intended."
From hearsay, some people swallow everything. Others swallow regular saliva but spit out "loogies" (mucus). Others spit out everything.
Spitting out mucous makes sense, I do that, too (but into a tissue).
A lot of chinese men smoke, so it makes sense that they would have a LOT of "stuff" to spit out.
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Also related is Nose Blowing:
"In Germany, however, people tend to blow their noses really hard and loud (I swear, it sometimes sound like a loud fart!) in public. Heck, they even do it while they are all quietly eating. Some still use handkerchiefs but most use tissues. They’d rather that you you get it out than sniff the whole time.
And in China… blowing your nose into a tissue is considered rude if you do it in public. They think it’s disgusting. The best way to do it while in China? Blow your nose straight into the ground. Seriously."
http://www.escapeblog.com/page/2/
Singapore has a lot of Chinese, who spit and blow their nose on the street/sidewalk/grass.
"I saw a man blow his nose, but the mucus just strung out, suspended half the distance from nose to ground. He was only a metre away from me having lunch at a coffeeshop. For an interminable one and a half seconds, I was confronted with this disgusting sight."
http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2000/yax-190.htm
On a slightly different note, apparently the Malays have a thing about spitting while fasting:
"One of the cardinal rules of fasting, the older kids would teach us, is that we must not swallow our saliva. To do so would nullify our fasting, so we would constantly spit all day long until our throats became so dry. But we must not spit indiscriminately. If we did, and if a non-Muslim were to step over (langkah) our spit, our fast would batal (nullify). So, whenever we wanted to spit, which was all the time, we would look for a drain where there was running water to ensure that our spit got washed away and there would be no danger of an Indian or Chinese langkah our spit."
http://www.malaysia-today.net/MMblues/2006/03/taking-malay-out-of-kampong.htm
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SqueakyClean
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- What grossed me out was by white tiger
18 y
2,714
What grossed me out was watching the chinese spit bones on the table while I was eating.
Very noisy spitting too! Then you hear the bones clunk on the table.
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white tiger
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- Re: What grossed me out was by SqueakyClean
18 y
3,012
Well my mom still likes to talk about one time when one of the dishes served WAS bones. Little knuckle bones with NO MEAT on them whatsoever, just plain bone, with a little sauce. The man beside my mom popped back a bunch of those, crunching HARD with his teeth (she seriously thought he would break some teeth).
That was a dish. Bones with sauce. At a fairly nice restaurant, too.
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SqueakyClean
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- Re: What grossed me out was by Roooth
18 y
2,818
| yeah, I was wondering about the "spitting of the bones"...maybe it was a larger animal, like beef bones b/c where I was bones from fish, chicken, etc were literally eaten.
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Roooth
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- funny about cultural differences by Roooth
18 y
2,817
But from my experience, you're wrong! "Mostly older men..." I saw it with younger men, younger WOMEN and not spitting, HOCKING. UUUUCK! I lived in a small town for a month and some workers were in the room next to me. I emailed people back home and told them I woke up to the sound of Chinese loogies! lol, that was gross but the one thing I couldn't watch was the young girl, the cook, who would HOCK then lean over with her mouth kinda hanging open and...I have no more details, I had to look away every time. She was a pretty cute girl too...couldn't look...disgusting! YEEEEECH!
yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck
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Roooth
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- Re: funny about cultural differences by SqueakyClean
18 y
3,013
hahahahahahaha! I see that brought up some "fond" memories!
Well, in Singapore it was mostly older men, that's where I spent more time, but yeah... in China it's fair game! All are welcome!
Seriously - where do all those loogies come from?!???
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SqueakyClean
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- Also funny is... Extreme Gourmet by SqueakyClean
18 y
2,730
The large majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese. They still speak Chinese (mostly mandarin), although the main language for a lot of them is English. They have a lot in common with Chinese people, yet in many other ways are very different!
The Singaporeans have this TV show called "Extreme Gourmet." It's kinda like the gross food part of fear factor. It's where there is a Singaporean host, plus a foreign host like an American. These two go travel around China to different cities, and each city a 3rd Singaporean joins them (random local celebrities) and they all have to eat that city's "delicacies." Things like reproductive organs, scary bugs, worms, rats, "maggot fried rice" was one of them, eyeballs, etc. They'll have a sincere chinese chef or herbalist explaining how the dish is healthy and delicious, and show some locals chowing down. Then when the people on the show try the dish, they are crying, screaming, throwing up, and freaking out!
It's so ironic, because they are ethnically Chinese, they still speak and read chinese and can speak to the locals and understand them, but find the food scary! And they made a whole TV show about that! The show is in English. So on the show, it's 2 singaporeans and an american talking in english about how gross the food is, and freaking out.
It would be the equivalent of an American show where some caucasian Americans go to England and have to eat the local foods, and cry and freak out and throw up because it's so disgusting to even think about, much less eat. I mean, maybe "kidney pie" might have that effect, but overall that's just not possible.
I really liked "Extreme Gourmet", by the way. :-)
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SqueakyClean
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- I HATE STREET SPITTING! n/t by ren
18 y
2,556 Reply FCK TinyMCE
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