Obsessed with Clean...

...then why so dirty?

Chinese people seem a bit obsessed with whether something is dirty or clean. You can't put anything on the floor because the floor is dirty. The floor is always dirty whether you are in a restaurant, a train station, or your own home. Why is it dirty? Because it is the floor. People rarely will sit on a park bench without sitting on a newspaper. Why? Because the park bench is dirty. (Once saw a guy take a plastic bag out of a trash can and sit on that instead of sitting on the bench. How the bag out of the trashcan was cleaner, I don't know.)

Why is everything so dirty? In restaurants, people spit out bones on the floor and when the tables are wiped down often whatever is there is wiped onto the floor. I must admit that I agree with them that it is dirty. Even the tables are dirty. The 'five-second rule' (food is still good if on the floor for less than five seconds) doesn't exist here. If something falls off the plate onto the table, it might as well have fallen on the floor and been trampled by a pack of wild donkeys.

I just haven't quite figured out why if you are worried about whether something is clean or dirty there sometimes isn't much of an effort to make things clean.