With all the nose-picking, loogie-hocking, and public urinating that my Chinese friends and neighbors do, it’s easy to identify habits they have that I find disgusting. It’s been eye-opening for me to discover that we have some habits that disgust them, too.
(Please bear in mind that China is changing at a breakneck pace, and that there’s probably lots of younger folks or urban folks who think some of these are just fine. I’m including those that I’ve specifically been told are gross.)
1. Eating animals that have been dead for days
Meat is fresh in rural China. FRESH. That pork was oinking this morning, and chickens and fish are still alive at vendor’s stalls. Generally you’re only buying the meat you need for that day, which means that the animal is eaten within hours of being slaughtered. So, to think that there are hunks of animal flesh sitting in plastic-wrapped trays for days at a time before you buy them is pretty gross to someone from a Chinese village. Even my Chinese city friends warn me that meat in a wrapped tray is the stuff the supermarkets are trying to get rid of because it’s about to go bad. If it’s covered in plastic, you can’t easily prod it or smell it to judge its freshness. The good stuff is sawed off the carcass while you wait. Mmmmm…FRESH.
2. Sitting on a public toilet seat 
Americans go through elaborate rituals to ensure that their delicate parts never actually touch the seat of a public toilet. There’s the disposable seat cover, the toilet paper throne, the hover technique. Or, you just bite the bullet and pray the last user did not have some horrendous communicable disease. That makes using a public squatty seem simple and even CLEAN. The only part of you that touches other people’s stuff is the bottom of your shoes.
3. Blowing your nose while talking to other people 
I’m convinced that snot never actually makes it to the front nostrils of most Chinese people. It’s snorted back and hocked out long before it gets that chance. So, perhaps to them, just the thought of mucus coming out those openings is nasty enough, but to have the audacity to blow it out with gusto into a flimsy paper barrier when you are in the presence of others is just too much. Keep that habit to yourself, thank you very much. Or do like everyone else does, and learn the proper exit for snot: out the mouth and onto the public sidewalk. Or just pick your nose like a respectable human.
4. Eating butter and jelly on the same piece of toast 
Dairy products in general are a bit of a mystery for my village friends. It’s a weird, exotic thing that most have never seen, and few have a desire to try. (Just remember that information the next time you think, “They eat DOGS?” Yeah, well, you eat the mammary secretions of another animal that have been allowed to mold.) They also can’t readily tell the difference between butter and cheese. Putting one of these foreign substances on bread is weird enough. Topping it off with sweet jelly is gag-worthy.
5. Keeping kids in diapers ’til age 2 
You may not like the thought of split-crotch pants, but some of my Chinese friends find it pretty repulsive to imagine human waste being squashed all up in their kids’ privates, especially if that kid is able to run, jump, and climb. Imagine if someone told you that in their culture, kids wear diapers until they’re 6 or 7. Glance in the mirror quickly to catch your look of horror and disgust as you picture changing the nappy on a 1st grader. Yep, same reaction they have to us.
6. Hugs and kisses in public 
This one is definitely in flux. If you go to any college campus in a city, you’re guaranteed to see couples holding hands, hugging, sitting way too close on a bench, and possibly even kissing. However, there are plenty of other places and other age groups where this just does not happen. There’s simply not PDA between couples, even married couples. Not even good friends give each other hugs. Seeing foreigners do that sort of thing can make locals feel really awkward and uncomfortable, and seeing people kiss right in front of them is nasty. So, if you want to give your husband or wife a quick peck, get a room!
7. Eating with fingers… 
Traditional Chinese table manners dictate that one should never touch food with one’s fingers. That’s what chopsticks are for. So, it’s pretty shocking to see Americans go at their food like cavemen, grabbing it with their grubby mitts. When a Chinese friend first told me about this, I started to explain that no, we use forks, knives and spoons. But then I realized just how much food we eat with our hands: sandwiches, burgers, appetizers, party food, snacks, fruit, baked goods… Yeah, I guess we do eat with our hands. You win this round, pengyou.
An interesting note, though: Fast food in China is changing this one. It used to be that places like KFC and McDonald’s would give out plastic gloves for patrons to use while eating fried chicken and French fries so that one would not need to actually touch the food. Burgers were eaten by keeping the wrapper on and slowly peeling it back with each bite. However, I’m seeing more and more fast food patrons who simply opt for the American Caveman method of touching the food directly. (Though I still haven’t seen many abandon the method of keeping the wrapper on the burger while eating it.)
8. …and then licking fingers 
It’s bad enough that the Cavemen straight-up touch their food, but then what do they do when their fingers get a little bit of ketchup on them? They suck it off. Suck it off their nasty fingers like uncultured pigs. My local friend once did a pretty hilarious imitation of Americans doing this, sucking on each finger with relish and smacking her lips with appreciation. She was giggling the whole time because she had no idea that civilized people would ever even think of doing this until she encountered Muricans. When in China, use a napkin, folks. And never show your friends the Carl’s Jr. cheese paper commercial.
Photo credits, top to bottom: Small Town Laowai; Flickr users Sam, Josh McGinn, Steve Snodgrass, Gordon, Marco, Jed Scattergood, Quinn Dombrowski.
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October 8, 2014 at 9:57 pm
A lot of our food looks like vomit and has no flavor, compared to Sichuan food. Creamed corn? Biscuits and gravy, anyone? And I never contemplated what red velvet cake might look like to someone who had never seen it before…is it meat? Blood pudding? Gross!!
October 8, 2014 at 10:40 pm
It’s so true! Mashed potatoes, meatloaf, chicken & dumplings all look pretty nasty if you’ve never seen them before. And we’ve had friends who were very wary of trying Christmas cookies or a friend’s rainbow cake since they look unnaturally colorful.
January 8, 2015 at 10:23 pm
This is pretty interesting. While reading the eating with the fingers part, I was thinking how chopsticks sort of feel like an extension of eating with your thumb and index fingers. So, I often feel like I am picking at my food with chopsticks and love them because I can just reach out and grab small random bits of food as I feel like it. And….hopefully they do realize that Americans wash their hands before eating and have an obsession with hand sanitizer. Thus eating with hands is not quite so gross.
January 9, 2015 at 10:01 am
Heather, that’s so true! It’s especially true at the end of a big meal, when everyone is just picking little bits, right? I’ve also wondered if part of why they don’t like touching food with their hands is not so much that they worry their hands are dirty, but that it feels gross to have food on your fingers if you’re not used to it. Either way, I think it’s still a shock for some of my friends here to see Westerners touch food with their hands.
January 12, 2016 at 2:19 am
My son, who lives in Luoyang, sent me a link to your blog. I can see that I will learn a lot from you before my husband and I travel there for his wedding to a lovely Chinese girl in June. Thank you for the education! I certainly don’t want to offend his new in-laws.
January 12, 2016 at 6:57 am
Congratulations on their upcoming wedding! Don’t worry too much. I’ve found that Chinese people are incredibly gracious about any faux pas that foreigners may commit.
February 16, 2016 at 5:47 am
Umm, me in Beijing in 1984 gingerly stepping over the defecation of “trained” toddlers on the sidewalks of the capital city. Trained to what? Trained to squat and let fall. Thank you, I find putting strips of toilet paper on the seat of the toilet deals adequately with who’s been there before me, and I confined my kids’ off-loading to the same plumbing wonder. I don’t mind stepping on watermelon rind and seeds so much, though it’s sticky and yucky, but kindly keep all bodily fluids off the public pavement. And two months gave me a new rule for eating : I only eat meat from critters (fish excepted) that have either two or for legs, and eating Spot or Fluffy is out of bounds. I do appreciate chopsticks, and
Yes, I’m a weird American.
February 16, 2016 at 7:53 am
I still have yet to eat Spot, and I’m not going to go out of my way to have that experience. 🙂
April 30, 2017 at 9:25 pm
Eating with your fingers? I’ve been to quite a lot of KFCs in China but have seen nary a chopstick or plastic glove. How do Chinese eat french fries? Maybe with a plastic fork? But then there’s Peking duck, which is traditionally wrapped in a pancake along with scallions, plum sauce etc. Or Muxu rou, also eaten wrapped in a pancake . . . aren’t these traditionally eaten by hand?
Some of the items also have to do with hygienic realities of the modern era. Supermarkets are still evolving in China, and there may be some justification for looking askance at meat that’s shrink-wrapped in the cooler in the local Walmart, but in markets in the US and Europe the meat so presented usually hasn’t been there “for days,” and will be fresher and safer than the Chinese person may be likely to believe (although probably not tastier). My mother in law has been here in the US for months but she is still horrified by the idea of drinking tap water without boiling. Of course this also has to do with preferring hot liquids.
Sucking fingers–admittedly kind of gross, but perhaps the cultural difference has something to do with what Chinese are commonly doing with their fingers, and infrequency of handwashing.
But thanks for the heads up on nose-blowing, as I may be doing that unconsciously. But come on, this grosses out people who hock and spit anywhere? Or, I will add, blow their noses without tissue? Just because they turn their heads away from you? It can’t be for reasons of public hygiene can it?
June 29, 2017 at 10:11 pm
It’s very interesting to think of how realities (like the ones you mentioned) or cultural history have affected these things. Good points!
April 5, 2018 at 6:48 pm
Haha, thanks for that Emily! Can I add picking one’s teeth without covering them? And using english terms like ‘newbie’ that sound too much like really bad words in Mandarin and made my coworkers grimace? 🙂 And eating really sugary things…our older Chinese friends thought that was disgusting. This was a fun remembrance. (We are back in the US – yr.5- after 9 in Tianjin. – Is there a way to contact you personally?
April 5, 2018 at 9:35 pm
Those are excellent additions, Mike! Yup, better to avoid all of those. 🙂 Glad I could take you on a trip down memory lane. If you’d like to contact me, you can email me at emily@emilysteelejackson.com.