Why DO So Many East Asians Spit All the Time?

Finally, a day off. I guess I can take the baby crying from somewhere off in the distance, outside the window, as I sit here, trying desperately to take a break from the work a day noise, chaos and pollution. After all, babies cry. No big deal, right?

But then there's the sound of yet another Korean man clearing his throat so loudly that I can hear from way up here in this cramped little high rise. An incredibly offensive and just plain disgusting sound that is soon followed by the horrific din of the same man hocking up fresh phlegm. Baby crying relentlessly; okay. More spitting everywhere? Now that's another story entirely.

Oh well. In China, the sound of spitting in public was so frequent that I've since estimated that I was forced to hear it, on average, about 4 or 5 times an hour. That's once every ten to fifteen minutes. ALL. DAY. LONG. And then, when I was forced for whatever reason (work, food, etc.) to venture outside, I'd have to also see the locals spit. Watch where you walk now, foreigner! There's fresh spit on the sidewalks every few yards in China. Even worse, when the weather got really cold in Shanghai, there was even frozen spit on the sidewalks. I'd never seen frozen human spit before. Now I have. Unfortunately.

And I wish I could forget.

That's why Far East Asians take their shoes off when they go indoors, you know. That's why. Not because of some misty-eyed, greener on the other side, idyllic garbage. That's why. Because it's still the Middle Ages over here. Despite the large-scale import of ultra-modern cell phones, computers and even nuclear weapons. In fact, outside of Western Europe and North America, it's still the Middle Ages in many respects in places all over the world. Believe it or not.