Old, Bad Habits Die Hard

Old, Bad Habits Die Hard (Originally published by Beijing Review - www.bjreview.com.cn)
By DWIGHT DANIELS

You can’t legislate morality. Or, can you? In much of the United States, you can’t smoke in public places. Even at outdoor venues in California, such as sports stadiums, you can’t light up the cigarette you might be craving. It could offend the people seated near you.

Ridiculous you say? Not really. It’s all in how you perceive it. You wouldn’t have to inhale smoke that you might find offensive. If the nicotine fiend seated next to you needed a fix, he’d have to walk to a designated area to smoke with the other addicts.

Of course no one is calling for an end to smoking in Beijing’s public places. Not yet. There’d be open rebellion.

But zealots will be doing so in a year or two, just as soon as China catches up with the rest of the world. Sooner or later, officials will decide that smoking (even second-hand smoke) is killing people. Lighting up will be banned at restaurants, bars, Internet cafes, and darn near everywhere the public gathers.

But the “disgusting” personal habits that can’t readily be controlled in this city-the garden variety, stomach-wrenching kinds one sees and hears every day-are a harder nut to crack. And for now, that’s where the focus should be.

We all know what they are, even though a recent survey of 770 respondents by the Beijing Social Psychology Institute helped put the spotlight on them again.

Topping the list are those throat-clearing spitters. Young and old, they hack and spit, and nearly 63 percent of those surveyed in March reported this as their top annoyance. The other 37 percent of us must be the spitters.

Next on the disgust meter are the growing groups of irresponsible dog owners who allow their pets to excrete waste upon our sidewalks, walking away as if their pets’ “poop” would magically be “scooped.”

And then there is the age-old problem of people who believe sidewalks are their personal rubbish bins.

Kang Yue, the survey designer, said its findings are fairly consistent with previous years, though 27 percent of those questioned said spitting seems to have declined marginally.

That’s encouraging. Strategically placed posters have been publicizing the problem, especially after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak of two years ago. The government saw the wisdom of that.

“[Those] surveyed said that publicity and punishment should be strengthened to make those with the bad habit change,” Kang told China Daily. “But it still needs more efforts from the whole society and every resident to achieve the goal.” That’s an understatement if ever there was one.
Sadly I also passed a few black plastic trash bags on the sidewalk as I ventured to the park this morning. Now as I sit on a bench to write this article and munch on my morning fruit, a woman has arrived with her cute little cocker spaniel.

The dog has decided to answer nature’s call and deposits its load. Having concluded its performance, owner and dog depart, leaving behind what nobody wants to see. I use the plastic bag that contained my morning fruit, to retrieve the smelly lump and dump it in a rubbish bin nearby, since it was just next to the children’s play equipment.

Call it my good deed for the day.

But there are more than 1 million pet dogs in Beijing. And I cannot clean up after all of them. Beijingers like to say they “raise” dogs. If you “raise” a baby, you must change diapers. If you raise a dog, you clean up after it: it cannot do this job itself.

Retirees seated near me no doubt wonder about me. If I could speak Chinese, we might talk about it, or I could ask them if they wouldn’t mind helping the government hand out pamphlets to spitters or dog owners about the problems they cause. I bet they’d be glad to do such a meaningful job, as their “good” deeds.

Or, they could write citations to offenders. But as an American, that seems a little extreme to me.

If the behavior survey was correct, some 44 percent of city residents believe Beijingers maintain “high moral standards.”

If that’s true, by convincing one other person among us to change, we can easily conquer these modest problems.
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The author is an American living in Beijing