Public Spitting
22 August 2006
The Chinese are gearing up for the 2008, summer Olympics in Beijing.
This has included charging the Spiritual Civilization Committee with educating the general populace on such things as moral and correct public behavior along lines of, “Maintain Public Sanitation: No Public Spitting.”
Apparently the Chinese don’t want visitors from the West, coming to Beijing for the Olympics, to think they’re an uncouth race with excessive mucus.
Noting the amount of fresh expectorant every morning on the sidewalks near my apartment, which happens to be a couple blocks east of Mork and Mindy’s house, I’d say there’s a race of uncouth-types with excessive mucus in Boulder.
In fact, public spitting is not particular to China and Boulder; it’s a universal phenomenon, except maybe in Singapore where uncouth public behavior including spitting one’s chewing gum onto the sidewalk is punishable with a fine.
If China, with a population of a billion people, can mandate moral and correct public behavior vis-à-vis “no public spitting,” I think any city with phlegm and other bodily fluids staining their footpaths ought to consider the value of a Spiritual Civilization Committee.
With spit-free streets filled with couth citizens, well, we’d be living in value-added neighborhoods!
Hmm, I think there’s a moral in here about the dying art of etiquette, you know that code of conduct which the likes of Miss Manners draws on when answering questions along lines of “How do I sneeze in public without spattering everyone with lurgies?”
Really, Miss Manners answers questions like this!
It’s actually more disturbing to discover that people ask questions like that!
But since they do, and since Miss Manners has the answers to such questions, it may well be an indication that in the West, we already have an unofficial Spiritual Civilization Committee – in the guise of Miss Manners, that is.
Now if only the general populace would heed her advice!
