What's with the spitting?

I went swimming with my cousin last week.  The pool by my apartment, 25 kuai a swim.  New, clean.  Bathers must wear bathing hats.  There are 3 seated lifeguards on duty at a time.  Pretty impressive.  There's even water in the footbath outside the changing rooms, although I don't know if there's anything in there other than water.

 

Anyway, after a very nice swim, Kira and I were resting by the poolside.  Alongside us were some men, in their late forties.  One choked up some phlegm, and spat it into the gutter by the poolside.  A few times. 

 

Kira and I were somewhat disgusted.  We didn't really feel like swimming after that, and left.  The water in the poolside-gutter is intended for spill-over from the pool, and with some minor filtering of course, returns into the pool and cycles around.  So, our nice gentleman's spit would be swilling around the swimming pool for quite some time to come.

 

The sad thing is that despite this, I will go back to swim there.  I'm not comfortable with the idea, because as my mother points out, I don't know how professional they are in the appropriate addition of say chlorine into the pool.  But I don't have much choice.

 

Hygiene and social comfort, are areas of compromise in my living in China.  If I'm going to live here like a normal person, there are many things for now that I will need to accept.  Maybe in 5 or 10 years they will have stopped, once things move along further.

 

Another example for you.  I eat breakfast at my office, which is pretty good.  I'm currently in the China Insurance Building in Pudong, opposite the Jinmao Tower.  On the second floor there's a small restaurant, they do a chinese breakfast for 5 kuai.

 

One of the options is of course a bun of sorts.  There are few people, Singaporeans I think that eat breakfast early most mornings.  They have a ritual however, which involves peeling the 'skin' off the bun, before eating it.  [Aside - I understand that many Singaporeans do this in Singapore]

 

And at lunch yesterday, my local colleague peeled the skin at great length off the two plums we were given as part of our 10 kuai food tray, before eating them - because of 'farmer medicine' - pesticide etc.

 

On the whole, if it's convenient to do, I'll do it.  e.g. eating an apple at home, I'll peel it and eat it.  But I bring apples to work sometimes, nice to eat at my desk.  But I'm not going to bring a peeler with me - the best I can do is to polish the apple.  It's either that or not eat the apple.  Or eat the bun.  Or swim.  Or travel around China in dangerous transport modes.... you get the picture.

 

To take us back to the title subject, sorry, I digress.  Spitting.  There seem to be a fair number of people here who feel compelled to spit.  They do that nasty choking sound to cough the stuff up.  I thought maybe it was to do with smoking, or chewing tobacco.  My friend winfun suggested it could be because they don't drink enough water.  Whichever, the problem in my mind isn't so much that these people spit, it's that they need to spit.  If you see what I mean?  Anyone know why some people here need to / tend to spit?