22: Fall/Floor

It’s fall in China right now, but what I think is hilarious is that there’s barely any street covered with fallen leaves. Every time I walk to work, I pass by many trees, but there are no leaves to be found on the ground. I’ve noticed that the Chinese have such an obsession over their floors and streets that they keep them perpetually clean. The Sanlitun Village Mall hires people to sweep up leaves as soon as they fall so the sidewalk looks immaculate. The Beijing subway floors are mopped every night (compare this to the DC metro, which I honestly believe hasn’t been cleaned since it opened). I once rode a bus to the very last stop, and they started cleaning the floors halfway through the trip, even though it was daytime.

It’s not just keeping the floors clean. Whenever I put my bag on the floor, I get stares, or a helpful Chinese person will pick up my bag, thinking I dropped it on the floor by accident. My coworkers will move my bag from the floor to a shelf, even though I don’t really care where my bag is. I asked one of them why they should care if it’s just a backpack, and her only explanation was that the floor was dirty, even though it wasn’t THAT dirty. One metro ride, a toddler slid off his mother’s lap and plopped down on the floor. The mom quickly picked up her kid, and reprimanded him. I’m starting to believe that the Asian squat is specifically because they have such a fear of sitting on the floor.

This is one of the weirder quirks of China for me. In America, if I sat down on some stairs for a rest, no one would really care. But in China, my coworkers or Chinese friends will tell me not to do that because the floor is so dirty. The way I see it, the floor is dirty, but it’s not like we never shower or wash our hands. It may be dirty, but things get dirty, so what? The fact that many people here feel like they have to keep their streets clean to the point that they’ll rush over to a fallen leaf as soon as it hits the ground makes me sad, because that’s what fall is about. You’re supposed to walk through these leaves, hearing and feeling the crunching, breathing in the cool crisp air. Call me sappy, but this is one of the things I miss the most about America right now!