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Sign up with Google Sign up with FacebookQ: Do you think littering is encouraged?
For example, people feel it is ok to throw garbage by the side of the road because, hey, some street cleaner will take care of it. If they go on a picnic and make a huge mess, someone else is paid to clean it up. In a restaurant, why be tidy? Someone else will clean it. The problem is that there are places where no one will clean it, like in a pond or a ditch, yet they still throw their garbage there. I know that we go on and on about how horrible it is that these people litter, as if they have on conscious. But if you grew up in a place where someone always cleaned up after you (like at home, if your mother always did everything for you) would you care where you throw your garbage? If everyone else is doing it, would it matter to you? This is not a "they don't care about the environment" issue. Of course I think it is changing, slowly. I don't see a lot of trash in certain places, such as college campuses. I think the students (for the most part) know to use a trash can.
I'm not sure if it's encouraged at all, but I don't think it is enforced here at all. I haven't really seen any littering signs. If they had littering signs up and charged people for littering like they do where I'm from people would think twice or they would at least take a look around to make sure no cop is looking. After that if they do it they know they will be in the wrong.
I think in the city everyone knows it gets swept up everyday, so no big deal. wait until they have to really start paying taxes and look at the cost for doing this. I think the street sweepers are the only hard working people in China,
In rural China I was shocked at the litter. I attribute it to just laziness.
I had a student who spat in the classroom. When i told him to clean it up, he said that was "ayi's job".
I got very angry and made him clean it up!!!!
Same thing, if I am the one who spills coffee in the classroom, then I am the one who cleans it up, Not the monitor and not ayi, who already has a lot of work without our :help".
chiarahz:
Similar situation happened to me at the HOSPITAL I used to work at. And the girl who did this was a NURSE! She tried to tell me it was ayi's job. Poor girl, I bet she regretted that after I embarrassed her in front of her colleagues and told her she was disgusting
GuilinRaf:
This little brat was a PhD student. For Marxist Socialist Thought! So much for a "classless society.
Chinese people have a lot of bad habits. Littering is one of them. When a foreigner shows they have better personal habits than the Chinese, it implies that the Chinese therefore have less culture than the foreigner. This causes cognitive dissonance so naturally they react by defending their behavior with reasoning of some kind.
It just goes to show that sometimes you can offend people by being polite.
crimochina:
actually you have it wrong. with chinese it is because they feel small and inferior when compared with the rest of the world. they have close to 1/5 of the worlds population yet create nothing. only copy what others invent. so it is more of an inferiority complex. anyone can critic the usa without us making silly retarded excuses. because we are confident in what we have and continue to contribute to civilization.
Cab drivers will roll down the window so I can toss an empty bottle or tissue. I never take them up on their generous offer and in turn they look at me in wonderment.
Obviously tiny foreign brains don't understand something so complex:
Foreign countries cause 99% of the litter and pollution in China because they want to embarrass China and make China weak and easier to invade. By the way American boats are approaching China right now, full of soldiers, in order to help the Philippines and Vietnam steal those islands. The world is certain that WWIII will happen in March because of current American attacks on China. Everyone knows this common fact so say goodbye to your loved ones and make peace with god, because this is the end.
Anyway, because foreign countries will always covertly cover China in garbage, it doesn't matter of the Chinese cover China in garbage: the net difference in litter will be very little.
It's not encouraged it's just not discouraged. Actually, I think the youths of China are actually trying to stop this in the cities. But the villages, they learn what's inside their courtyard is what matters, just dump all the rest on to poor mother nature
People are used to having someone else do the dirty work for them. As I said before it would be great if the cleaners had a day off so people can see how much rubbish they throw away and hopefully it will make a difference.
GuilinRaf:
Wont do any good.
Last university I worked at, there was one classroom I had that for some reason "ayi" refused to clean. She just wouldn't. And the trash accumulated. And the students kept dumping more.
Finally, I got fed up after class one day that I grabbed a broom and started cleaning the classroom myself.
As luck would have it, my supervisor was showing around a delegation of teachers from the UK (we had an exchange program with them). When they saw me sweeping and the BIG pile of garbage (not trash) my boss asked me what was I doing. I "innocently" answered that I was cleaning my classroom because no one else is doing it. I remember one of the teachers saying "disgusting".
The following week, "Ayi" was no longer skipping my classroom.
GuilinRaf:
It was not my intention, I just wanted a clean classroom and was willing to do it myself if necessary. However, when the opportunity arose....