I have been here for a little under a year and I thought that few things could surprise me anymore about China. I'm used to walking down a street with towering skyscrapers, fast food chains, corporate enterprises, etc and then turning into an alley and instantly being in a third world country. Buying bootleg dvd's of movies still in American theaters from a guy on the sidewalk is ordinary.
But today was different. Geoff is pretty sick, so like any good roommate, I started to worry about myself and decided to liberally coat every surface in the room with Lysol. So I grabbed an aerosol can and went to town. Ten minutes later when the room was covered and I was happy, a coworker came in to get some files to cover Geoff's class and noticed the room smelled like cool, crisp, mountain air. The can in my hand was a Glade air freshener. At least the room smelled better.
So not being content with clean smelling germs
, I went to Carrefour, which is a major department store in a very upscale mall in a major commercial district of Beijing. It's basically like a Wal-Mart Supercenter. I went to the home cleaning section and found 10 million cans of Glade including a lot that America doesn't have, such as green tea and white lotus, but no Lysol. I found Lysol in a pourable container, much like Bleach for counters and laundry, but no aerosol. By this point, I've walked up and down the aisle enough time to attract more attention. (Just being there is enough to get stares. If you ever want to know what it's like to be a foreigner in China, just dye your skin blue and go out in public.) Finally, a stock girl tries out her English and i ask where the aerosol Lysol is.
"Oh Sorry. Do not have."
"Why? Are you out?"
"No. Do not have. Bad for environment."
So let me get this straight here. This country is obsessed with staying healthy, to the point where you can get Hello Kitty designer facemasks and the government passes out free medicine to all the university students. Health tip posters and public service announcements outnumber people three to one. Not to mention, the whole Fun Week of Isolation I had several months ago to prevent the spread of H1N1. All this and they won't stock something that actually
works to kill germs and other illness causing things just because aerosol is bad for the environment? I understand the whole Go Green! motivation but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you get sick or the environment gets an extra toxin or two.
While pondering this, I began to walk around the store for a bit and passed the shoe section. (Another side note: NOTHING is logical in a Chinese store layout. Shoes were right next to the meat department...more on that in a minute) Now, not all, but a lot of sneakers come individually shrink wrapped. Now the explanations I have heard on this are 1) it protects the shoes from scoffs and other damage before purchase and 2) it discourages people from trying them on and thus spreading foot diseases like athletes foot, and fungal infections.
Seems to me if you were that worried about spreading disease, you could keep a little community can of Lysol in the shoe section, and just spray the shoe down right quick. But protecting the environment comes over killing any potential germs lurking around.
So now as I was pondering this and wondering what the environmental impact of shrink wrapping millions of pairs of shoes each day in plastic, I came across the foul stench of the meat department. In America, we wrap our meat in pre-sized portions by the ounce or pound and leave the sneakers out. Exact opposite in China. Raw meat is laid out and you just grab a hunk of what you want, slap it down on the scale, throw back any extra you don't want and you're on your merry way. Although if you're too lazy to not want to take out the organs in your chicken or duck, that'll cost you extra. I walked past an old woman who had her hands buried in part of a rib cage of a cow. If you want fish, you can choose alive in water or semi-alive on ice. The guy will even clean it for you....right there.
On the same board that he cleaned the last customer's fish.
And the customer before him.
Same with seafood, but beware of the lobster, he ain't going down without a fight. This isn't a street in a rural village, this is a major department store in an urban district of the capital.
In the end, I came home with another can of Glade because we're really low after this morning and a super mega deluxe family industrial economy size jug of orange juice.
Wonder how it tastes with a thin veneer of Orchid Meadow?
